How do I get some important off an old harddrive?

Question

I pulled this internal harddrive off my old pc. It is badly infected. I have hooked up to my laptop through an ide to usb cable. I have not searched through the drive as of yet. Is there any software that will help me extract these files without getting my current system infected?

Answer 1

Yes, I would put it back into the old pc and use a bootable cd-based OS running linux that will support many methods to recover your data, and since it is linux based it will be completely immune to whatever has infected your windows based os hard drive.

Here is a great guide to get things going

Computer First Aid Using Knoppix

http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppi...

it describes many methods like cd / dvd backup, usb keychain/hdd, copy to network drive, etc.

cheers

Answer 2

PC mover may help.  It can be done manually though without having to buy extra software.  It would help to know exactly what kind of important files you need though (documents, pictures, mp3s?) in order to better guide you through the recovery process.  E-mail me if you need more help

Answer 3

The first thing you should do is perform a very thorough virus scan to see exactly what files on your old hard drive are infected, and to make sure the virus hasn't copied itself into your new system.  In my experience, viruses plant themselves in system files, not documents, music etc.  Assuming that's the case, there shouldn't be a problem with simply selecting the files you want to save and copying them to your new system.