external hard drive and viruses?

[firemalt 10]

Question... If I connect an external hard drive to my desktop, download a something from the net to the EHD, and then find out it has a virus... would it stay contained to the EHD, or would it be smart enough to infect the EHD & the desktop?

[Guest fivestar]

Depends on the virus and what it is actually written to do.  99% of the time it would infect the desktop too once the virus was accessed.  Get a good antivirus program.

[haumana 1,222]

you can always have a virus, however, not all are active ... it's just a matter of having decent antivirus software to detect it prior to downloading it - on in the case of a bit torrent / Ares type of download - that the antivirus will detect it immediately upon completion of the download. That being said, you can always delete the offending file without activating/trigger it to start.