While it is possible for a virus to persist after a reformat, it is not very common. You should be ok just deleting all the partitions on the SSD and recreating them.
And you are right, it is pretty hard to "zero out" an SSD because of the their wear-leveling algorithms. But I think that's only an issue for privacy/secrecy concerns, not for getting rid of infections. --- Brian On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Winterlight <[email protected]>wrote: > > Yeah, that was my plan. My OS is on a 75GB SSD. Is it necessarily to wipe > the SSD.. can you even do that with a SSD? Or will a copy over of the image > file and MBR be enough? > > > > At 07:12 AM 5/19/2011, you wrote: > >> Make a current backup, restore from last month's backup image and bring >> over >> any files that have been created/updated since then from the backup. I >> never >> trust a machine after in infection has been detected. While I will >> sometimes >> try to clean up a system, it's largely an academic exercise as I'll >> eventually reinstall or go back to a known-good backup anyway. >> >> > -----Original Message----- >> > From: [email protected] [mailto:hardware- >> > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Winterlight >> > Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 1:58 AM >> > To: [email protected] >> > Subject: [H] TrojanDownloader:Win32.Mesmer.A >> > >> > Somewhere in the last 24 hours I picked up the rootkit virus >> > TrojanDownloader:Win32.Mesmer.A . Just about every time I try to use >> > a link I get redirected somewhere else. I am running Security >> > Essentials and a scan did find and eliminate it but of course when I >> > rebooted it was back. I know rootkit viruses are difficult or >> > impossible to get rid of. >> > >> > If I restore a clean Acronis image file of my OS partition, from >> > last month would that do it? Or should I spend the time trying to >> > kill it and if so what is the best way.. anybody have experience with >> this? >> > >> > Thanks. >> > >
