Need to deal with a tonne of malware

Ok, so, I am in need of other people's thinking here. My problem is thus :- my company has a project office in Nigeria, and one of my colleagues has brought home an external HDD with copies of all their data (mostly word files I believe, but god knows what other crap could be lurking). He apparently believes it will be full of viruses and I'm inclined to agree - the office it comes from is a shambles. Now, I don't have to hand a spare laptop with a Linux distro installed, so I'm wondering what the best way of examining and possibly cleaning any data is whilst keeping a copy of it? Say I boot XYZ linux distro via a live CD and then plug in the external HDD - I can easily examine the data, but how should I deal with the files themselves? I was thinking I could use a linux live CD to copy the files to a directory in my Windows install and then encrypt said directory, load up a virtual machine, decrypt the files in the VM and scan them for malware that way? Anyone got a killer idea? Cheers all.

 

USB vaccination and multiple scanners?