One of my computers will not boot. It may have been infected. If I attach the hard drive from this computer to a slave of the hard drive of another computer, will I be able to access files on the old hard drive? Are there any serious risks? Responses can be sent to Jcoft@aol.com.
John Creatura 0 Newbie Poster
nanosani 20 Technize.net addict Team Colleague
you can do it easily .. no risk that I know of is involved.
dlh6213 27 Posting Maven Team Colleague
No risk, but if you have FAT on the computer you put it in, and NTFS on the one you put in as a slave, you won't be able to see it.
Thong_Ispector 2 Practically a Master Poster
To avoid the problem of NTFS vs Fat32, Fat16 and Fat12 problems I would suggest you get a copy of Linux...
Any of the LiveCD's such as Mepis or Knoppix both available in bookstores with books on Linux or downloadable all over the place. They are ISO images, just burn a CD and boot it up in the problem PC, It runs in RAM and dosent install to the hard drive and it will auto configure to your hardware. You can then connect via a network cable or burn a CD backup of the drive etc...
They are very handy to have around... I have rescued two different Windows computers with them this week alone...
The only risk of using the drive as slave in a second PC is accidentally executing or copying the virus to your working PC. If it does work, run a virus scan immediatly...
Be a part of the DaniWeb community
We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.