My buddy Denny sent this information to me concerning Maxtor Basic hard disks that may have a virus already installed on the disk at purchase. Seems that a sub-contractor in China is to blame for the virus and Seagate had stopped production when the virus was spotted on the drives. They also stated:

If you have purchased a Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product since August 2007 the product may be infected with a virus. Kaspersky Lab, a maker of anti-virus software, has alerted Seagate to the existence of a virus found on at least one Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product. Seagate has traced this issue to a small number of units produced by a Maxtor sub-contract manufacturer located in China. Seagate quickly put a stop ship to units leaving the facility as soon as the company learned of the probable infection. All units now leaving the facility in question have been cleared of the virus and units in inventory are being reworked before being released for sale. However, some affected units may have been sold to the public before the problem was detected. Seagate apologizes for the inconvenience that has been caused as a result of this incident.

To determine if the Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive you have may be infected, or if you have any questions about this virus, please call Seagate customer support. Please have the serial number of your Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive ready when you call. See link at the bottom of this page for a list of Seagate customer support phone numbers.

The effects of this virus are minimal. According to Kaspersky, the virus is the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah, a molar virus that searches for passwords to online games and sends them to a server located in China. It also deletes other molar viruses and can disable virus detection software. All of the known games affected are Chinese with the exception of World of Warcraft. The following games are affected.

I don’t recall this every happening before where a hard disk was already infected from the factory. Seems that China is trying to kill our kids with lead based toys, our animals with bad dog food and now our technology. Just my 2 cents.

Comments welcome.

Seagate web site is here for more information.

Tags: seagate, maxtor, hard disks, virus, infection, factory.