I know it sounds like a weird question, but hear me out. I have a lot of experience with virus & malware removal, but I haven't done any in a few years.
I recently attempted to do one so I did the following:
- From a clean computer, I downloaded MSFT's malicious software removal tool & other virus/malware scanners/removal tools from Kaspersky and loaded them to a clean USB thumb drive.
- I boot the infected Windows 10 machine into Safe Mode
- I plugged in the thumb drive
- I ran a Kaspersky scan. It detected 1 item, I then 'destroyed' that item.
- I restarted the machine a few times.
- However, now when I plugged back in the thumb drive it won't detect it at all.
- I tested it in a working, clean computer (the one I am writing this question from), and it isn't showing up properly.
- I see the "removable disk" show up EVENTUALLY (like literally 10 - 15 minutes after I plug it in) in my list of disks, but I can't browse it at all.
In other words, the thumb drive is no longer accessible on either the infected computer (in safe mode) or on a clean computer.
What could have caused this and how can I rectify this?
Edit 1
Another concern I have is, I am thinking the easiest approach may just be to wipe the drive clean and do a factory restore. I want to backup the existing data, however with this first thumb drive seemingly damaged I am hesitant to use another external drive to backup the data.
What are my options?
lsblk
,fdisk -l /dev/sdX
(replacesdX
with proper string likesdb
;lsblk
should tell you the right one, unless the drive is really damaged). Do you need to recover data from your thumb drive? or is making it work (as initially empty) enough? Zeroing the thumb drive MBR may bring it to life:dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1
. If you're new to Linux then you'd better paste the output of saidlsblk
andfdisk
first (you may call me in a comment then), and wait for further guidance before you usedd
.