Troubleshoot How to Securely diagnose old P4

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cornblack

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Aug 29, 2017
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I have an old P4 pc lying around. that have intel dgc101c motherboard and only 1GB of ram(ddr1).
now i am on skylake and 16gb ram.

at first i had an 80gb(pata) hard drive on that. it failed because of some mbr or heat issues.
after that i've added 500gb(sata) hard disk that i want to use as an extra storage in current pc.
before using the old drive i want to check it if it contains viruses/malwares etc.
how do i do this?

my approach is to use puppy linux or some sort to analyse the data on both drive format, copy them if useful.

any suggestions?
 
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cornblack said:
before using the old drive i want to check it if it contains viruses/malwares etc.
how do i do this?
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Temporarily install it as a secondary (NOT boot) in your current computer, or in an enclosure attached to your current computer or attached with one of these (nice to just have on-hand) to your current computer, then scan the heck out of it. If me, I would probably reformat (not quick format) it too.
 
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cornblack said:
i think its risky dont want to infect my new drives.. wanted to test it in safer/older envoirment..
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That is EXACTLY why I made a point to state with emphasis "secondary (NOT boot)".

There is NO RISK if you install as a secondary drive. Nothing is going to run or execute from that drive if simply attached or installed as a secondary drive. Note I have a little shop and this is exactly what we do all the time. I have a docking station that connects suspect drives as secondary drives to my computer. I then run my scanners on it without ever exposing my computer to anything malicious.
cornblack said:
wanted to test it in safer/older envoirment..
Click to expand...
Sorry, but that is a contradictory statement. Older environments are less safe, not more safe.
 
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