-1

Okay I don't know if this is a smart question and I found this answer here How do I clear everything (data, viruses) from a thumbdrive?, and didn't understand it fully. I thought formatting a drive was enough to get rid of all data.

I used my usb drive in a computer that is clearly messed up. So when I got home I formatted it, and then did a scan (it's Ubuntu but I have avast installed) to make sure files transferred between my desktop and laptop are clean, and well there wasn't much to scan seeing as I just formatted it, but I understand that apparently you can have hidden files and stuff still?

The scan doesn't show anything when I click show hidden files and it also says that its only using 4.1kb; it always says that; I'm guessing that's for something.

So Question 1, is it possible that the virus is still there?

And Question 2 if formatting does clean a drive, although it's Linux, would it have infected it, like the way someone can be a carrier of a cold and not be sick.

Community
  • 1
Vikashx1
  • 19

2 Answers2

2

If you told Ubuntu to format the flash drive, and it did indeed format the partition(s), the flash drive will no longer be able to infect a windows computer.

Technically, yes, infected files can still physically exist on the drive, but there is no file descriptor pointing to that file, so you will never even be able to read the file, unless you randomly guessed the location of it and used a tool to copy the raw data [like dd].

If you want to wipe the flash drive of all its previous files, just fill up the drive, either with a blank file [in command line dd if=/dev/zero of=/PATH/TO/flashdrive/bigfile then delete it after it fills up all the way. If you're using fat32 you will have to do multiple files as it has a small max filesize] or pick a file and keep copying over and over.

tl;dr Do not worry about it, it is safe.

Matt
  • 10,201
1

Formating a USB drive is mostly the best way to get rid of viruses. That 4.1 kb is, I think, the MFT (master file table) of your drive. So nothing to worry about.

Showing hidden files on Ubuntu is Ctrl + h in Nautilus.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Internals

Seth
  • 59,332
Thomas15v
  • 1,633