viruses, memory cards and cameras

wheresdavid

I am not sure if this should be posted here or not :scratch .

here is my question/dilemma: i am away traveling for a long period of time. i decided not to bring my laptop due to its' weight.

I am currently in thailand and i bought a portable hard drive with a usb connection (ie i can't pop in my memory card). i also have a 40 gig epson p1000 (?). i loaded some photos onto the portable hard drive (supposedly it has a western digital hard drive) everything went fine and then today at an Internet cafe i tried to load more photos. well i got an error message saying I/O error (or something like that). i took it back to the place i bought it from and they said it had a virus.

here is my question (s) since i have to use internet cafes to burn DVds of my photos and also use the computers to copy the photos onto the portable hard drive (as another backup) what do i need to do to prevent viruses from getting onto the DVDs and or hard drive? also, do i have to worry about the memory cards getting a virus? if the memory card has a virus how do i get rid of it? just by formatting? at lastly, if the DVDs that i have already made contain photos with viruses are the photos lost or can i do something to get rid of the viruses? life would have been simpler if i had brought my laptop so i could burn my own Dvds.
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kdog

The store is most likely pulling your leg. Disk drives don't get viruses. Sure, they can store viruses, but not so that they would affect the drive per se. A virus is something that gets installed on the computer. To do that, it's written to the C drive, possibly replacing system files, updating the registry, ect. Storing a virus on an external media doesn't pose a threat unless you instruct the computer to run it.

There might be a virus that uses auto-run capability to infect a DVD or media such that when its connected that the computer will run it. However, reformatting the drive or media will absolutely destroy the virus. It cannot harm the media. Furthermore, a PC with anti-virus software would almost certainly detect the threat and complain when the media is attached to the computer.

You could reliably check for an autorun type of infection by examining the file structure of the media after you write it. It should contain only the file folders you backed-up. If there are no other files or folders other than the ones you wrote, it's unlikely there's any problem with it. I'm assuming you always verify the contents of your data DVDs after you write them by randomly checking some picture folders. If not, this is a good habit to get into. Certainly if your computer asks you if you want to run anything when you insert the DVD into a different computer always say no! That would be an indicator that something is wrong. You should always open the DVD with a basic file explorer or picture application (Photoshop Bridge, or whatever.)

Anyway, if the store is telling you a computer virus has damaged the disk drive they sold you to the point that they cannot fix it by reformatting it, they're full of crap.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on viruses or Windows, and it's a pretty complicated area. My opinions are based on a fairly broad knowledge of computers in general and it's entirely possible I missed something. I welcome any other knowledgable folks to contribute to the discussion.

Good luck,
-joel

PS: Why change the default font? It only makes your messages more difficult to read.

claudermilk

That's the first time I've ever heard that. I would tend to agree the shop is full of it and just doesn't want to deal with it, or is trying to drum up some support revenue.

colourbox

It is also possible that the particular person you talked to was one of those unfortunate people who uses "virus" as a synonym for "glitch" or "problem," especially if English is not their first language.

For example, a friend was telling me about a minor issue that happened on her computer the other day and the first thing she asked was "Do I have a virus?" After many years of computing I know that a virus is usually not the cause of most minor glitches, but perhaps due to media hype, there are many people out there who scream "omg virus!" when anything odd happens.