Linux can save your data (NewsForge)

Linux can save your data (NewsForge)

Posted Aug 9, 2004 23:57 UTC (Mon) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
Parent article: Linux can save your data (NewsForge)

I have made use of a Knoppix CD for many data recovery jobs. It's a handy way of getting data from a badly virus-laden Windows machine (since the virus will not be able to propagate on Linux), and then nuking the hard drive decisively using dd(1). No boot sector virus, trojan, worm, or whatever will be able to survive being overwritten with null bytes.

With the addition of a Linux-based virus scanner that can detect Windows viruses, I can even delete the virus-infected programs and files without A) touching the rest of the disk, or B) risking the infection spreading. In the case of boot sector viruses, well, I'll still be overwriting the boot sector with dd(1), but that can be restored afterwards using fdisk. And I can do the same tricks on other platforms, too.

Yes yes, a very handy tool indeed.

---

(Log in to post comments)