Gaming Formatting and Viruses

[MrDillDough]

I'm just wondering, but does formatting get rid of viruses? I always thought it did, but now I'm not really sure about it.

So for example, if I had a flashdrive infected with a virus and I wanted to format it, would this effectively get rid of the virus on the flashdrive? :S

 

[KingdomBlade]

I'm just wondering, but does formatting get rid of viruses? I always thought it did, but now I'm not really sure about it.

So for example, if I had a flashdrive infected with a virus and I wanted to format it, would this effectively get rid of the virus on the flashdrive? :S

That's because it get's rid of everything it can. EVERYTHING. It wipes everything clean. No traces left.

I think you get it.

 

[Maz7006]

So for example, if I had a flashdrive infected with a virus and I wanted to format it, would this effectively get rid of the virus on the flashdrive? :S

In theory yes, but remember your PC would be filled with those worms/trojans etc. So your back to square one.

But in general, wiping or formatting a hard drive clean gets rid of pretty much everything.

 

[MrDillDough]

So for example, if I had a flashdrive infected with a virus and I wanted to format it, would this effectively get rid of the virus on the flashdrive? :S

In theory yes, but remember your PC would be filled with those worms/trojans etc. So your back to square one.

But in general, wiping or formatting a hard drive clean gets rid of pretty much everything.

So if the computer I use to format it with has a virus of some sort on it, it just gets infected again?

But what if I format my computer, and then move on to formatting my flashdrive? Will there still be a risk?

 

[playallday]

Format the USB stick and hard drive with a Linux Live CD. Much safer.

 

[Chris_Skylock]

99.99% of malware can be deleted so need to format the PC. ask help and you'll be worried free. I once infected by an un-deletable malware but it was removed after a week of supervised care from an online community of malware experts. So I dont recommend formatting your system

 

[notnarb]

A flashdrive can't be infected with a virus. It could have a lot of virus programs on it, but unless you are stupid enough to autorun setup.exe on everything that enters your computer, the viruses won't spread until you run them. If the viruses aren't run, they can't do anything so even manually deleting all of the viruses on the flashdrive should work - also accomplished by formatting.

 

[dark42]

Disable autorun, then you can format a virus-filled flashdrive without worrying about it infecting your hard drive.

 

[clownz]

I recommend Gparted to format the flash drive. Gparted is an awesome linux live cd and very friendly and easy to use. Def take the recommendation to disable autorun, and always be careful with files unless you really really trust them because any one can *bind* a virus/worm/trojan to a file and make it undetectable. Antivirus can only detect what they program as signatures, and if a signature is unknown, new, or unseen (sometimes if a header is corrupted just right of a file) it can be executed on windows when you execute a simple .exe program.