Quarantine another hardrive

[chewythe2nd]

Hey everyone I need some safety advice on a risky thing I want to help a friend out with.
My friend has got a old pentium 3 computer with a IDE hardrive thats windows 2000 is broken due to some insane virus that happened about two years ago and we dont have a cd to repair the OS but it has data he wants to get back so I said I could plug the hardrive into my computer and since I have all my antivirus software up to date I feel it that those viruses wont be a problem. So am I really safe or will those viruses pull a fast one on me the moment I boot if so is there a way to secure the hardrive so my antivirus can get a chance to remove those viruses or there actually a safer way?

By the way I am using F-Secure 9 antivirus if that helps

 

[itzdanielp]

Due to the fact that the virus is about 2 years old I would feel pretty safe plugging it in if my AV was up to date.

But, my suggestion would be to get a Linux Live DVD, unplug your good HD, boot from the DVD and plug the infected drive in. Copy the files into a flash drive, and scan the flash drive. Generally viruses don't really infect documents, but it is always possible,

 

[WR2]

If you're only copying files over to another media (like CD or USB drive) it's a safe operation.
A virus needs to be executed and load into memory before it can start making mischief.

itzdanielp's suggestion about using a LIVE CD would let your friend work on his system without having to remove the drive. A bootable CD has the entire OS on it and runs directly from the CD - not the hard drive.

It's not Windows - but Ubuntu is enough like Windows to navigate with the File Manager and move/copy files work the same way. Works fine as a Rescue CD.
Ubuntu Desktop

 

[WR2]

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