Safely wipe a portable hard drive with a virus?

Da Man of

How can I safely wipe a portable hard drive without infecting my computer? A few weeks ago, I got a virus on my desktop and one thing led to another. Finally I figured out that it was on my portable hard drive (one of those you plug in using a usb cord.) How can I safely wipe the hard drive clean without infecting my system because whenever I connect the hard drive, I get a virus.

Answer
This anti-virus program should detect the virus and catch it just before it infects your computer:
http://download.cnet.com/Avast-Home-Edition-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10019223.html?tag=mncol;pop

Also I do recommend scanning both your system and portable drive when you are done. There maybe another type of infection on your pc such as spyware/adware I would recommend this program to deal with these threats:
http://download.cnet.com/Ad-Aware-Free-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10045910.html?tag=mncol

my ps3 won't recognize my portable hard drive?

ryu

i right clicked on the portable hard drive and went to format but it only has the option ntfs

Answer
The HDD needs to be formatted using FAT32. If you don't have it formatted as FAT32, the PS3 will not read it.

If you are using a Windows based PC (XP, Vista, Windows 7, etc.), you will not be able to format the HDD to FAT32, you have to download third party software in order to format it.

Most people use Swiss Knife ( http://download.cnet.com/CompuApps-SwissKnife-V3/3000-2248_4-10070864.html ), however, Swiss Knife only formats up to 500GB. If your HDD is bigger than 500GB, you will not get the rest of the memory using Swiss Knife.

I recommend you use FAT32Formatter ( http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/ ). The program is free (just like Swiss Knife), and it will format your whole drive, no matter how big it is. I use a 1.5TB HDD, so I could not use Swiss Knife, and it took me a while to find FAT32Formatter. Not only is it easy to use, but you get all of your memory.

FAT32Formatter is compatible with Windows2000, Windows XP, and 32-bit Windows Vista. If you aren't using one of these, then you will have to find an alternative if you are trying to format an HDD larger than 500GB.

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How do I connect my portable hard drive to my Bravia TV?

annelu

I recently brought a 1TB WD Elements portable hard drive hoping to connect it to my Bravia TV and watch files such as avi. For some reason my TV doesn't seem to identify the device. But once I try multiple USBs it does. My friend recommended buying a blu-ray player. Is there another way around this, like having to alter my settings? Thanks in advance.

Answer
I know that a tv's USB 2.0 only supports a handful of video files. I know MP4's work, maybe avchd and h.264 (commonly used in cameras/camcorders). I know months ago I had tried .avi files on our tv's on the sales floor; samsung, sony, lg and had no luck.

As for not recognizing it,and i'm not sure how it's set up, it may not want to recognized a HDD USB device. It may only be flash drives or thumb-drives, whatever you want to call them. What I usually recommend is to get one of those WD TV boxes. Just plug in any USB device and itll recognize it.

http://reviews.cnet.com/portable-video-players-pvps/western-digital-wd-tv/4505-6499_7-33396690.html

# AVI , MKV , MOV , WMV , XviD , H.264 , MPEG-1 , MPEG-2 , MPEG-4
Those are the video file formats on that specific ones. They have newer nicer ones that do quite a bit more, have Web TV junk to stream through it. Some have 1080p support via HDMI, some don't, which affects the price.

I'd probably recommend a thumb drive with small avi file and plug it in, see if it even recognizes that file format. if it doesn't you'll have to convert it to a supported one.

Another question would be is what specific model you have. Not all usb models support video, some are just photos and music. Is your usb on the side or on the back with the other inputs? Generally, the back usb ports are for service updates only whereas the side ones are generally for media and/or servicing. If you toss us a model number we can give you a little more details, as for now I just kind of have to do a spread shot of different issues. Hope it helps.

Can you use a portable hd with the acer tablet?

james

And put movies on it off the hard drive and watch them on the tablet?

Answer
If you're talking about the Acer Iconia Tab, according to the CNet review linked below, the Iconia has a full-size USB port. So yes, you can use USB external hard drives with it. You'll need to make sure you get a media player application that supports the formats of video you want to play, but there are several versatile players on the Android market.

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