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laptop full of trojans then hard drive failure


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I was working on a friend's laptop that was infested with trojans. I have everything under control and was running some last check scans when I got a BSoD. When I rebooted the laptop the hard drive was making it's final cry before death and the computer can't find it.

Some of the infestations she had were: Fraud.SafetyCenter, Fraud.Win-Antivrius, Fraud.WindowsPolicePro, Fraud.XPAntivirus, Win32.TDSS.ntf, Win32.ZBot

Is it possible that these malwares caused the death of the hard drive? It is a 5 year old hitatchi travelstar. Or was it probably just it's time to go?

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No, there are no trojans/malware that I know of which can cause hardware failure.

On the other hand; numerous Trojans will eat your permissions (which may look like a failed drive) when you hurt them badly.

If the system says no hard drive, that's hardware. If it won't let you login, it may be damage caused by the malware.

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Careful! Hard disk drive quality is a moving target. IBM sold its storage division to Hitachi (2002ish?) because of the infamous "deathstar" drives; but, Hitachi has since reengineered their drives and current models are very good. Seagate has been my vendor of choice; but, they currently have a defective series which came from a plant in Thailand and some are still on retailer's shelves. Western Digital has accounted for more than 50% of the data recoveries I have seen in the past 7 years, followed by Maxtor at about 20%.

Right now, I would choose Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, or Fujitsu with Hitachi edging out Seagate because of their handling of the defective drives.

P.S. I have been doing data recovery since 1979 (on cassettes and floppies!) and have seen well over 20,000 failed drives.

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Careful! Hard disk drive quality is a moving target. IBM sold its storage division to Hitachi (2002ish?) because of the infamous "deathstar" drives; but, Hitachi has since reengineered their drives and current models are very good.
I agree there, they might be not the fastest but they are so well made these days. I use them for my systems and also less to none returns from customers. If I can't get Hitachi I go with the Seagate 7200.12 drives or WD.

I don't know about the heads but most are made by TDK? Just wondering...

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My experience with Hitachi drives is excellent, as well as with Excelstor (technology licensed from Hitachi) - though I don't have an experience of 20,000 dead drives... And for Laptops, Hitachi have (among the) fastest drives. Prefer a 7200rpm, it makes a huge difference. And as big a capacity per platter as possible.

Find as many P-Ata drives as you want at eBay.

Did you test your drive with the appropriate software? Drive Fitness Test is there:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

just in case a trojan has overwritten your hdd's boot sector.

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Malware creating hardware failure: maybe...

Because many firmwares can be flashed from within Windows, which I don't see as an improvement because of this security concern.

Also, settings of chips can be changed from within Windows, as is done for Cpu clock for instance. Changing the temperature alarm as well as the frequency or the supply voltages could be harmful. Zap the Ram for instance. As far as I know, any adjustment done by the Bios can be done from within Windows as well; it may need an account with administrator rights, or may need to install some driver or service.

Such malware would need to be sophisticated and maybe specialized on some hardware, but sophisticated malware already exists.

Edited by pointertovoid
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