- Mar 14, 2015
- 1
So here's the question: my father has Family Treemaker files on that USB that we really need to recover.
Because of the speed of the reinfection (none of the data files were opened after I copied them back on the the PC), I'm going to guess that the malware traveled on the USB, either in the folder structure or the firmware. (As a side question, can this USB be cleaned and safely used again?)
If the data files themselves are not infected, I thought about possibly copying them up to an online Dropbox or other account to strip off the malware (copying just the files, not the folders), then downloading them to a PC running Ubuntu (not Windows)...then transferring them to a fresh (never used) USB and back to the original (reformatted again) Windows PC. Or is there a way I could try to clean the data files themselves?
These files are not encrypted (no cryptolocker or ransomware), and they had their original creation dates when I copied them onto the USB, though that may not mean much.
Because of the speed of the reinfection (none of the data files were opened after I copied them back on the the PC), I'm going to guess that the malware traveled on the USB, either in the folder structure or the firmware. (As a side question, can this USB be cleaned and safely used again?)
If the data files themselves are not infected, I thought about possibly copying them up to an online Dropbox or other account to strip off the malware (copying just the files, not the folders), then downloading them to a PC running Ubuntu (not Windows)...then transferring them to a fresh (never used) USB and back to the original (reformatted again) Windows PC. Or is there a way I could try to clean the data files themselves?
These files are not encrypted (no cryptolocker or ransomware), and they had their original creation dates when I copied them onto the USB, though that may not mean much.