back up data without infecting portable device?

[fleawhale]

Hey there kind knowledagable people!

my PC has just started suffering from a particularly nasty virus which has hijacked my anitivirus (panda) and infected it in a way that means it won't work to scan for viruses properly or protect my computer in any other way, even in "safe mode". My first thought is to backup precious data onto a usb hardrive, format hardrives completely, then reinsatall (a hopefully more secure!) operating system. My concern is about pluging in my external hardrive into the infected machine. I do not want to go to all this hassle just for the virus to infect my external hard-drive and consiquently my freshly installed system (and other systems!).

Any ideas as to how I can backup my data without carrying the virus with it would be greatly appreciated!

Ed Jones

 

[AnotherHiggins]

Before you reformat everything, you might want to give this a shot:

thread760-1521235
It's a free, downloadable ISO for a bootable disk. I haven't had to use it, but it seems to have helped a lot of folks.

[tt][blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

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