2 Samsung Drives, Virus Damage?

[EXCellR8]

Two of our engineers at the office are both experiencing nearly identical problems, on identical drives... so I have a theory. They work with a lot of the same clients so, is it possible, that a virus may have come through attached to an email and fried both drives by way of hijacking and overtaxing each drive? I noticed an excessive amount of drive access for the last few days; I could not seem to identify the culprit process.

Either drive fails to complete a virus scan, backup or clone, and chkdsk will eventually hang on processing files. Of course, neither machine has ever been backed up so I am stuck with trying to figure out the fastest possible way to get them back up and running--with replacement SSD's of course.

I don't think there are any quick fixes, which is impossible to explain to them, but it does seem like one drive is slightly more responsive. I've tried a few different methods on either device but not much is doing anything. Any suggestions? ...or do I just start them from scratch and insist that they learn to back up their computers?

We have MS exchange so email isn't an issue, but I'm sure they have other local data that may be lost.

 

[Rifter]

Two of our engineers at the office are both experiencing nearly identical problems, on identical drives... so I have a theory. They work with a lot of the same clients so, is it possible, that a virus may have come through attached to an email and fried both drives by way of hijacking and overtaxing each drive? I noticed an excessive amount of drive access for the last few days; I could not seem to identify the culprit process.

Either drive fails to complete a virus scan, backup or clone, and chkdsk will eventually hang on processing files. Of course, neither machine has ever been backed up so I am stuck with trying to figure out the fastest possible way to get them back up and running--with replacement SSD's of course.

I don't think there are any quick fixes, which is impossible to explain to them, but it does seem like one drive is slightly more responsive. I've tried a few different methods on either device but not much is doing anything. Any suggestions? ...or do I just start them from scratch and insist that they learn to back up their computers?

We have MS exchange so email isn't an issue, but I'm sure they have other local data that may be lost.

I have zero sympathy for people who do not do backups, especially if there is a system in place to do backups and they are just to lazy to use it. In a work/production environment especially there is no reason not to do backups.

Id say start them over fresh and hope they learn there lesson.

 

[EXCellR8]

oh i agree with you 100% and it's really tough to hold my tongue when they reply with "I don't have time for this" like someone else could just say "BAM, it's fixed!"

i've told them time and time before that relying on a single drive, especially a cheaper 2.5" drive, is absolutely insane. they should not be saving stuff locally anyway, but that's an entire different matter.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Time to talk to their bosses?

There should be a company policy in place. We have both onsite backups to USB drives and offsite backups of source code to a svn repository (not on Amazon) and to Amazon S3 buckets as a series of version snapshots.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Probably not a virus, and a recent samsung SSD should take some pounding anyways.

But you could certainly have near-simultaneous failures of similarly defective hardware from the same production batch.

If you're the IT department and they're not, ensuring that systems are backed up is ultimately your job, not theirs.

 

[deustroop]

I have not the pleasure of trying these suggestions, but anyways

You are likely aware that GNU "ddrescue" is a data recovery tool that copies data from one file or block device to another, trying to rescue the good parts first in case of read errors.

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/

Here is a thread discussing ddrescue and whether it is the best tool to clone a failing hard drive.

https://www.sevenforums.com/general...ery-2.html?s=4aa13862b58af6bdc693230a60b28ca9

Here is another note on cloning failed drives with the same app.
https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-to-clone-hard-disks-with-ddrescue/


You may also set Macrium Reflect to ignore bad sectors when creating an image

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Imaging+disks+with+bad+sectors.

You should install another drive with appropriate OS to run MR .

 

[coercitiv]

Either drive fails to complete a virus scan, backup or clone, and chkdsk will eventually hang on processing files.

Just to make sure, the drives have been removed from their original systems and your attempts to diagnose/fix them are done on another system with an independent OS disk, right?

 

[EXCellR8]

drives are always removed before testing.

i am responsible for the server and company data, not the individual users' computers. once the systems are deployed, they are not always in the office if they need to travel. there is a common misconception that just because they rank higher in the company, and make substantially more money, that it's my fault if they can't take care of their own systems. by that logic, I suppose I should also help them shake & wipe when they are done using the toilet?

it's 2017; backup up a single hard drive is not a difficult task

 

[DaveSimmons]

> it's 2017; backup up a single hard drive is not a difficult task

Does your company have a policy in place? Installed software and cloud accounts to do the job?

If there is no policy and no supplied solution, this is a management failure that needs to be addressed. Leaving each worker to figure out their own tools and approach is not a good way to preserve company data.