How to easily backup your hard drive and scan for viruses

This is the method, which I use to do all of my temporary data backups and virus scans. This is especially important for virus scans as the majority of viruses now target system files and system folders to help remain hidden. Add root kits to the mix and virus scanners the run on the operating system have little chance of removing a virus once it has burrowed in.

First, go and buy an external hard drive. It can be USB, SCSI or firewire but make sure you have a computer can support the device. If you plan on using two computers (which is easier by far than one), then make sure each computer can support the device. Also make sure the device can be easily disassembled. You do not want to destroy it.

Now, disassemble the external hard drive. You should see a standard hard drive along with the electronics connecting it to the external cords. Remove the hard drive. If you only have one computer, then you will need to save it. Otherwise, put it into you computer and use it for additional storage.

Connect the device to a clean computer that has all of the scanning tools installed. If you want to do a backup, make sure you have enough disk space (that second hard drive can be very useful here). Remove the drive needing scanned from the computer and attach it to the devices cables. Then turn on the device. It will appear as a new drive in the explorer. You can now back up and scan the drive as if it was installed in the computer. Once complete, stop the device, turn it off, remove the hard drive and reinstall it into its original location.

If you only have one computer, you will need to use the second hard drive to create a clean second computer. Remove the main hard drive and install the second. Then reformat the drive and install the OS for the computer as well as the scanning tools. From here, you can then scan and backup as done in the paragraph above. Once complete, remove the second and reinstall the first. Keep the second hard drive in a safe place. Anytime you need to scan again, reinstall the second as master and then put the first in the device.

You can do the same thing by switching hard drives around and changing jumper settings (which is what has to be done with only one computer). But this way does not involve having to continually start and stop the computer to try different jumper settings and risk infecting the clean hard drives OS. It also makes use for that old Pentium II that is just lying around collecting dust.

Finally, you can use this method to do other disk maintenance items like disk defragmenter, disk scan, and restoring deleted files. And if you have an extra long IDE cable and an extension for the power supply, you should not even have to remove the hard drive from its original computer.