External Drives and Viruses

[Jack Russell]

A friend of mine wants to use an external hard drive and leave it connected to his computer (for convenience) and to use it exclusively for all his music files.

My question is: are external hard drives immune from any virus that might infect the main O.S. and main hard drive(s)?

My gut feeling is that this is a bad idea. There are all kinds of viruses out there, and I suspect that some of them are sophisticated enough to wipe out any external software if there is a wire running to it. The only way to be 100% safe is to put it on a separate storage unit and put it away. Viruses can't yet jump through thin air, right?

 

[AlChuck]

If the drive is connected and mapped to a drive letter on the PC, it's as exposed as anything on the boot drive.

 

[Jack Russell]

I thought so. Thanks!

Anyone else????

 

[Dogman]

You are correct sir!! I belive anything on any harddrive that can be seen by the computer is vulnerable, at least to some degree. This includes anything on a network that does not have sufficient protection either. Leaving the HD connected, would just be like having a second, or possibly third, HD on that machine. So, it all depends on how safe the machine as a whole is, from viruses etc. But you are correct, if it aint connected, it's safe.
Ed

 

[MichaelM]

It shouldn't be any more or less prone to a virus than any internal drive. I can't see why it would be a bad idea. I mean the driver and stuff to make the computer talk to the drive would be read only... IE - If something destroyed the filesystem, you could still reformat the drive. A virus shouldn't be able to wipe out the drives driver software... I had to reformat my flash drive a few times from people pulling it out while it was writing and corrupting the filesystem. No big deal. I would think it wouldn't be any worse than having an internal drive dedicated to music files.

 

[Rokket]

I just got my external drive, and it's connected full time. I am running Norton and keeping it updated, so hopefully nothing will get in. I just don't want to go the hooking up/disconnecting route everytime I want to use it. And since it's got all my audio on it, I go into it every time I boot up anyhow...

 

[Jack Russell]

I just got my external drive, and it's connected full time. I am running Norton and keeping it updated, so hopefully nothing will get in. I just don't want to go the hooking up/disconnecting route everytime I want to use it. And since it's got all my audio on it, I go into it every time I boot up anyhow...

Howdy, Rokket!
Yeah, that is a drag to hook up and disconnect. So the option would be to use a data stick instead, which is what I would use. How do you back up all your music data? Or do you?

 

[xstatic]

In general, viruses usually target files on your OS drive only. I have never gotten a virus on any of my storage drives. With a little common sense and some level of protection, your dirves should all be pretty safe. Een if you do unplug it though, you still run some risk to it form a well written virus. Not while its unplugged, but after you plug it back in. If you have some sort of virus on one drive and you somehow activate it, all dirves currently connected at that time are at risk, assuming the virus is of the type that is designed to affect drives and their files. In general though, I would imagine your drive is pretty safe, even when plugged in.

 

[altiris]

Viruses mostly attack files in your winnt folder or(widows folder), system32 folder and registry. Spyware reside in these locations too. Also I’ve seen the windows media player hijacked. So when you play a song it will call more spyware and Trojans from the internet. If you notice your media player icon looks different you may be infected.