I have a hard drive that I want to install as a slave drive on my newer computer. Can I run a virus scan on the hard drive after I've slaved it to my new one? Or does that pretty much ensure that if my old hard drive is infected, that my new one will be? Should I load an new anti-virus program on my old machine, and do it that way?

Most AV proggies will allow you to scan individual drive and folders, at least PC Cillin does. So you can direct a scan of your slave drive after installing it. If you should happen to get a virus on your master drive, it will not automatically infect your slave. Only if you save a file containing the virus to the slave, but your main AV program should prevent this. To the best of my knowledge, virus/malware do not have the ability to auto-jump partitions or drives.

If you should happen to get a virus on your master drive, it will not automatically infect your slave. Hate to argue, since you got some good advise, but this simply isn't true. If a share is enabled for this (either the default admin share or other user defined share) then any infection that looks for valid shares will spread to this directory. So as long as you are not logged in as admin (which if your installing a drive is kinda ridiculous to assume) you are ok. But as admin you are not. Just to clarify that point... J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m

Yes, I know about shares; if you will notice I said that a virus cannot "auto-jump" (indicating that the virus creates a fresh search path to other partitions and drives and installs itself) and that is correct. A shared file is the equivalent of a saved file on the drive because there is a direct path from the share to the new drive. Therefore the virus has a path to follow. The same thing as what I said: "if you save a file containing the virus to the slave...." etc. At this point in time a virus cannot create new, fresh tree paths; it must use existing paths and directories to follow and install itself in. That is why we can trace it with HiJack This and other spyware/AV proggies.

Yep, just wanted to clarify that point... A virus can't, but a worm can. Another clarification, since most infection vectors these days are worms not virus. J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m