virus on external hdd?

i have an external hard drive that i want to use to scan infected computers with. is there a chance that a virus could be on a computer that could, upon detection of my hard drive, infect it. i want to be able to plug my external hdd back into my home computer without worrying if it's going to one day infect my computer.

if there is a threat is there a protection that i could put in between the two?

take into consideration that i would not be loading ANY files from other people's computers onto my external HDD under any circumstance.

any help or advice would be appreciated.

 

Welcome to Wilders mickhayafe.

Those small USB key disk drives have a write protect switch, but I don't think External USB Hard Drives have such a write protect option.
This is critical because a malicious OS (one that has been compromised) can actively infect other drives that it has control over.
The only way to be sure in such a case would be if you can boot the computer from the USB drive. The USB HD would then have to have an OS. You would set the boot from USB in the BIOS. If you forget to set the boot from USB option, and your computer boots from the compromised HD, the USB drive could get infected.
A better option would be to make a bootable CD-R or DVD-R with your scanning tools. They cannot be overwritten by a malicious OS.
Also a good choice would be to take the "infected" home HD and Slave it off of a clean system. Since the computer boots from the clean HD, you will be able to scan the HD with all your tools.

 

thanks for the reply, i think i'm going to go with the bootable cd, i got nero 6.0 and it's in the mail.

mike