Can a virus remain after formatting?

[orion23]

Will formatting a HD kill all viruses (like it better than "virii") and infections, or is it possible that something will survive? if so, how do you get rid of if?

TIA!

 

[montag451]

If you format a hdd, the virus dies, even if it is an MBR virus.
To be on the safe side though, I wouldn't quick format, although that would do the job.

 

[Captante]

Formatting should kill a virus, but keep in mind that after a single format some data can still be recovered from a HD... in fact I've had errors that hung around through several formats that ended up needing whats called a "zero-fill" to eliminate... all a zero-fill does is write data to every single sector of the drive & it can be done with free utilities from most drive makers like On-track dick manager.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

A regular format will NOT remove an MBR virus. You need to wipe the MBR. A better idea would be to zero the entire drive with a security eraser.

However MBR viruses are very rare.

 

[montag451]

My mistake =-
About 5% of MBR viruses can survive a format.

 

[orion23]

What is a good (hopefully free) utility that can "zero" the drive?
Is this done with a bootable disk?

TIA!

 

[bendixG15]

Just go to the web site of the drive maker and check out their softwar downloads.
Last time I looked, they all had "write zero" software downloads and instructions.

You can also google for free "third" party software that will do the same.

And yes, its done with a bootable disk....

Just be warned, that it takes a long time..many hours, depending on the size of your drive.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

I use Killdisk Pro. There's a free version that does 1 pass. You usually want to do a minimum of 3 passes for a security erase (to keep someone from recovering your data later with a file recovery utlity) but 1 pass is adequate to eliminate an MBR virus.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: bendixG15
Just go to the web site of the drive maker and check out their softwar downloads.
Last time I looked, they all had "write zero" software downloads and instructions.

You can also google for free "third" party software that will do the same.

And yes, its done with a bootable disk....

Just be warned, that it takes a long time..many hours, depending on the size of your drive.

thats for sure... last time I had to do it, it was a 120gb WD PATA drive & it took like 15 hours... :roll: