The article describes how to check for viruses on a USB flash drive, how dangerous infection of removable storage devices and how to cure the infection.
Digital age
С каждым годом доступность цифровых технологий is growing, and for a long time no one will be surprised by a powerful computer, tablet or smartphone with Internet access. Such technologies have become firmly established in our world, and many no longer represent life without them. And it's not just about entertainment, they greatly simplify any work, communication between people and other processes. But over time, a whole pile up of attackers who use digital technology for various crimes, theft and personal gain, they are called hackers, and their weapons - computer viruses.
It began long before the ubiquitousdistribution of computers and the Internet. The very first viruses were peculiar jokes and sweepstakes, they did not pursue evil intentions, but over time everything changed. Especially when computers began to use various financial organizations, and people use credit cards and other electronic currencies.
Antiviruses were developed to protect against them, butmalicious programs can bypass them, and very often unsuspecting people participate in their distribution, for example, with the help of an already infected flash drive. So how to check for viruses flash drive and clean it from them? In this we will understand.
Distribution methods
First, let's talk a little about why viruses attack flash drives and why it is dangerous.
Any virus, both biological andcomputer, you need to somehow distribute yourself. In the case of digital technology, the Internet and vulnerabilities in operating systems and antivirus are necessary. And at some point, the hackers came up with an interesting and original solution in their own way: the viruses began to copy themselves onto the circuitry.
In practice, it looks like the followingin the following way: when a computer is infected, the virus doesn’t impersonate for some time, and when a removable device is connected to the computer, be it a flash drive, floppy disk or hard disk, the virus is copied onto it and when it is connected to another computer it already infects it. Such malware can not give out itself for a very long time and be activated by the creator’s command immediately on hundreds of PCs. And if this happened, then how to check for viruses flash drive?
Checking
First you need to decide on antivirusthe program. All of them perform the same task, but some differ in functionality, for example, they do not have an intelligent module that recognizes a threat that is not yet in official databases. So, if you need a warranty, it is better to use several anti-virus utilities at once, since they are free and you can find them on the official websites of the full software versions.
In the case of a regular antivirus, you need to open "My Computer", right-click on the flash drive icon and select the antivirus scan item.
If temporary utilities are used, then before starting them, you must specify the check zones, in particular, a flash drive. So now we know how to check for viruses on a flash drive.
The duration of this process is highly dependent onpower of the computer, specific protective software, “crammed” flash drives and several others. By the way, most modern antiviruses can check all removable media automatically immediately after they are connected, or you can manually configure this parameter. So now we know how to clean the flash drive from viruses.
Errors
By the way, flash drives, like all storage media,sometimes affected by file system errors. This happens mainly due to interruption of reading or writing information, power failure and other things. In any case, if the flash drive does not immediately fail, but the system reports errors, you can try to fix them. So how to check the flash drive for errors? On Windows, the system itself will offer to start the check if there are errors. But you can do it manually. You need to select a flash drive in My Computer, right-click, then select Properties, Tools, and Check Disk for Errors.
But sometimes it also happens that standardmeans of the OS cannot do this, then a specialized program comes to the rescue. You can check the flash drive with third-party software, for example, Flash Memory Toolkit. This is free software, which can be found on the official website. If you can correct errors, the program will do everything automatically and you can use the storage device again.
Conclusion
So we figured out how to clean the flash drive fromvirus and check for file system errors. It is advisable to carry out these actions regularly, as they will save you from infecting your computer and losing important data. But there is no perfect protection, besides viruses are constantly being modified by their authors.
