Inactive Infected External HD - Want to do virus scan

[JeffreyZ]

Hello,

I have done a pretty deep preliminiary search of the web to solve this problem and can't seem to find my exact situation - any help is GREATLY appreciated.

My WD external hard drive has been functional for two years and all of a sudden stopped appearing in the My Computer window. When I go to disk management, I cannot re-assign a drive letter or access the disk at all as it seems to not be initialized. According to what I have read, there is a 90% chance that I have a virus.

I would therefore like to do a scan of the external HD somehow to determine if I do have a virus and if there is any way that I can cleanse it rather than wiping the external HD clean. I am afraid that my secondary backup of photos and documents is not totally up to date and I will lose a lot if I have to wipe clean. If all this fails, I may go to a data recovery specialist and pay $$$ to recover the files.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[JeffreyZ]

Windows 7 ultimate, 32 bit.

Will post any other details if needed. Thanks

 

[Broni]

Welcome aboard

Connect the drive to another computer and see if you have same issue.

 

[JeffreyZ]

Thanks Broni.

I tried that the other day with a MacBook running Windows XP on as partition. In that case, the disk management utility didn't even recognize that the disk was plugged in, nevermind allow me to run it.

So to summarize

My WIndows 7 PC - Comp recognizes the drive, but claims it is not initialized
WIndows XP on MacBook - Comp does not even detect the drive.

What do you think is my next step?

 

[Broni]

It doesn't look good for the drive but I'm not a hardware expert.
I suggest you start new topic in hardware forum.

 

[JeffreyZ]

I am braced for the worst.

About starting a new thread - Will do. Thanks for your help.

 

[Broni]