I have an old laptop from around 2012 that I stopped using in 2015. I downloaded music and movies on it and was told at the time that it might have been infected with malware. I recently sold the laptop, but its hard drive still contains important photos. The buyer offered to connect the old drive to my current laptop with a USB adapter and copy the pictures over. Is there a safe way to recover the photos without putting my current computer at risk?
2 Answers
The safest practical approach is to avoid booting from the old Windows installation. Start the new computer from a Linux live USB, such as an option that runs Linux without installing it, then connect the old drive and copy only files that are clearly photos to a separate USB drive. Disable USB autorun, and scan the copied files with up-to-date antivirus software before opening them on your normal system. Malware hidden inside image files is possible but very uncommon; the bigger risk is accidentally running an old program or script from the drive.
If you want maximum separation from your everyday laptop, have the photos copied using a disposable computer or a virtual machine, then scan the resulting USB drive on your current computer. The fact that the drive has been sitting unused for years does not make malware disappear, but it also cannot actively do anything unless compatible software runs it.
Copying only ordinary image files is much safer than transferring the entire old user profile or launching anything from the drive. I would still scan the photos before viewing them.