Surplus. Uh-huh.
If there's such a surplus then why are prices going up-up-up?
We're supposed to be on the "cheaper" winter blend right now and prices are creeping back to $4 a gallon.
Frankly I'd rather pay the Chinese for solar panels than the greedy old white men manipulating the gas prices.
Usually these things just blow up the partition table. That makes the drive pretty much unusable until you restore it. To actually wipe the data will take some time, up to hours depending on the size.
I am not sure what you mean by "forensic programs that the cops use" but if these are real cops they actually look at the data blocks and they will be there unless they got overwritten (that "hours" thing I was talking about)
For all practical purposes wiping out the partition table and the indexes will make a drive toast and that happens pretty fast. You can see the raw data but it won't be that usable if it can't be put in context.
Usually you can inspect a drive on an expendable machine.
If you really want to look at a drive you think is that infected, use a bootable CD tool. Then it can't spread. Back in the FAT days, Norton would usually fix most of these problems without losing the data. I am not sure what works on NTFS drives.
These days I just depend on good backups and I don't hesitate to wipe the infected drive and starting over when someone brings me a "virus" machine. Start with a "write all 1s" program (AKA low level format, even if not true) Then partition it and format it. .
I suppose it might be possible to have a virus that would overwrite the BIOS but that would have to be somewhat machine specific.
I remember such a virus back in the 90's. It would screw up the BIOS in any machine running a Microsoft OS. O_o
TDD
I'm thinking that "smart" malware would update the drive firmware rendering it inoperable until that firmware was replaced. Depending on how the drive is built, reloading the firmware may be no easy task.
I looked for the actual event and here's what I found. It was last year at Aramco. Here is one report on it:
"More than 30,000 computers that it infected (at ARAMCO) were rendered useless, and had to be replaced," he (Leon Panetta) said.
That's the story line that I heard reported at the time on probably CBS news too.
However if you google for it now, there are a lot of hits on other subequent reports that seem to say that the virus destroyed data, hard drive partitions, etc. in the more normal fashion, ie not so that the eqpt has to be replaced. I think that this looks more like a case of Panetta mistating the facts:
A disparity between Panetta's statement that "more than 30,000 computers that it infected were rendered useless and had to be replaced," which "virtually destroyed 30,000 computers" is Aramco's official response, which said that "the virus affected about 30,000 workstations. The workstations have since been cleaned and restored to service."
But is it possible to overwrite the bios and not have enough boot code there that would allow the PC to be reloaded? Not sure. Certainly there have been PCs that were bricked doing bios updates. But then some, as Oren just posted, apparently have more than one bios. But then could a virus whack both of them? Who knows... At the end of the day, you would think there would be one section with the most basic intelligence in the flash chip so that part can get the machine up again to reload a full bios. And that most critical part would be in a part of the chip that can only be programmed by applying a voltage to a pin that the computer cannot do itself. Flash chips with that feature existed as long ago as the
90s. But what each and every PC manufacturer does is obviously up to them....
Natural gas prices at the wholesale levels are going down. If your supplier is raising the price that is another problem.
creeping back to $4 a gallon.
That is gasoline, electric plants don't use gasoline.
men manipulating the gas prices.
So you prefer greedy old chinese people and their US partners ... OK
That pretty much says it might theoretically be possible, not that anyone has actually done it. You can still reload the firmware if it did get clobbered.
I would suspect that you just had another bad Caviar drive to add to my magnet collection if I saw it and it failed the data lifeguard tests. The answer would be in the error code.
:
are creeping back to $4 a gallon.
white men manipulating the gas prices.
Not to mention all the govt borrowed and printed money that went down rat holes like Solyndra. How much nat gas could you buy with $500mil?
Maybe. That would depend on what was left of the drive firmware. If there are no smarts at all, seems unlikely that your going to reload it's firmware through just the standard interface used by the PC.
Per Stormin Mormon:
What kind of anti-virus were you using?
On my daughter's machine, Avast threw a warning once but my macho son-in-law just *had* to click the button that said "Ignore this warning" and the system got hosed beyond recovery.
It wasn't a Trojan, but a bad USB controller that moved me to a backup scheme where at least a couple of my backup drives are not readily available - i.e. I have to drive to get to them.
That way, when things go really South, and it hasn't dawned on me yet that something is hosing my backups as I attach them in an effort to recover... the non-availability will hopefully save me from myself.
I also have a rule - which I will hopefully have the presence of mind to follow - that once I am down to a single backup, I will never, *ever* attach it to the problem PC. Instead, I will make copies on another PC and use the copies.
Why not?
The easy way to do this is download Disk Wizard from Seagate/Maxtor and clone your C: drive. Store it somewhere and when you get some strange crash you have a good starting point. You can just store a disk image, you don't need a spare drive but that does make an easier fix. Refresh this clone periodically.
In that regard it is best to keep your C: drive as small as possible and keep your data files on another drive. Data is simple to back up and restore. The C: drive is harder to restore because of the way Windoze installs software. You really need a cloned drive.
IIRC, it was AVG paid version.
Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
What kind of anti-virus were you using?
Pete Cresswell
Because the drive has to have enough of the correct fimware so that it can recognize the necessary commands, receive the new firmware, and program it into the drive's flash. If you wipe out all the firmware on the drive, it's just a brick.
I suspect most of the drive firmware is initially loaded via an ICP type hardware port with a specialty programmer, while firmware updates rely on the existing firmware being functional to enable the PC side interface to be used to load a new image. If I'm correct, reloading firmware on a damaged drive would require the proper programmer hardware module and software to run it.
Home data security plan:
Put PC backups to NAS automatically at least weekly. Portable disks to match NAS disk size, do full copy backups monthly, updating the onsite disk, swap with the offsite disk, update that disk and place back in fire safe.
Total cost $500 or so, and pretty solid data protection without too much fuss.
Per snipped-for-privacy@aol.com:
I use drive imaging utilities.
Started out with one of the many DOS utilities, moved to something called "ShadowProtect" for reasons that probably are not of interest here.
But, for me, losing the "System" drive isn't all that big a deal - because I keep my data on a separate drive/partition. It's the data backups that I am so obsessive about. I can rebuild a system.....
Rebuilding a system drive is a pain in the ass. You have to track down all the install disks, the secret codes and such. Then you need to go through the applications and get all the configurations the way you like them, restore the cookies with all of your passwords and install all the updates. Data is a whole lot easier. You just copy it over and you are done.
This allows you to restore to a new drive quickly - but if the microcode on a drive goes bad, it is going to be pretty difficult to get the clone back onto the dead drive. There are likely programs available similar to the old "low level format" used on MFM and RLL drives - but they will be VERY specific - kinda like the low level format was specific to both drive and controller back in the early days.
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