HDD Infected by Covid-19 in China

A publication from a Chinese scientific journal, Zhnggu Kahxu Zizh wrote that medical scientists has discovered on March 15, 2022 that a 1TB HDD has been contaminated by Covid-19 in Wuhu, China, exactly where the virus first appeared in the world.

How it happens?

According to the publication, magnetic particles were strangely affected by a group of related viruses transmitted to a disk platter and consequantly the entire HDD was not able to read and write data anymore.

More than that, the report said that a contaminated HDD could transmit the virus to another one, especially in RAID configurations, at a speed depending on your Ethernet connexion.

It is researching the origin o the contamination and currently working on a method to avoid this catastrophic effect.

From now on, it’s asking owners of HDDs not to use anymore magnetic disk drives around the world, to migrate ASAP their data on another media, for example SSDs, not affected by this virus.

In the publication, the searchers didn’t say which specific model was infected, what do you have to do to eliminate a contaminated drive, to throw or to destroy it.

Currently around 260 million HDDs are sold per year and the situation could deeply affect end users, but also the 3 HDD manufacurers Seagate, WD and Toshiba.