Checking a Flash Drive

[anonprivate]

Sometimes I insert a flash drive into a Windows machine.

There is always some risk of the usb drive becoming infected.

Using Linux, I don't need to worry about infections, and don't need anti-virus/anti-malware software installed.

However, iIwould like to check flash drives and if necessary clean them.

My question is: To avoid installing anti-vrus software ect, is there a reliable online checking/cleaning site?

Thanks

[vinnywright]

I do not know about on line checking ,,,,,but if you think a stick is infected you can "clean" it by zeroing it with "dd" (disk duplicator) .
but be very carfull you are pointing it in the right direction ,,,,, "dd" quickly got the nick name "disk destroyer" as 1 wrong drive distinction and your disk is gone , it will happily over right your mane drive or any other with no asking "are you sure" .

you would first make sure what your flash drives drive assignment is then

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX iflag=nocache oflag=direct bs=4096

should clear it of anything .

if /dev/sdx is the drives drive letter assignment ,,,,after this it will nead to be repartitioned and formatted ,,,,,,,

VINNY

[Rod J]

I don't know of any sites that would check the whole of a flash drive over the internet (which could take considerable time and bandwidth to do that). But I have used the following sites to check files on a flash drive which I thought were possibly suspect. You just select the files (only one at a time unfortunately) and it uploads them and checks them with several AV programs concurrently.

https://www.virustotal.com/en/

http://virusscan.jotti.org/en

Another way to go about scanning the whole drive would be to boot up a live rescue CD and scan the flash drive locally. I used Parted Magic (http://partedmagic.com/) just recently to do that. It comes with ClamAV already installed and you just download the latest definitions and then start scanning the drive.

[anonprivate]

Thanks to both.

I think I'll stay clear of dd.

Not as straightforward as I hoped

It seem the simplest solution is to install an AV programme, but it seems a little excessive just to check flash drives used in Windows. Some of the Windows machines will have AV programmes that I can use.

I don't suspect any of my flash drives are contaminated, but then I might well not notice.

I just like my devices to be clean.

Still in thinking mode.

Best wishes.

A