Is it possible to infect a computer with viruses if you connect a hard drive via USB SATA / IDE?

Question

Malware

Is it possible to infect my new computer with viruses if I connect a hard drive from an old laptop (it had viruses) via USB SATA / IDE? Thank you!

Answer 1

Can. If you do not run anything, then it depends on the version of Windows and the updates on it.
7+ seems to have learned not to run anything in the DLL in order to load icons from there, and not to do autorun for anything other than CD.
In general, I advise for such screws an updated 7+ and a two-panel commander, and not Explorer. You never know what kind of exploit will come across to infect a computer through Explorer, but so far this is not written for commanders - and there are fewer ways of such infection.
UPD. And the executable is harder to mistake for a directory on a two-pane commander.
UPD2. After that, use the same command to shake up the copied directories to make sure that there are legitimate files, and not executable ones. After that, you can even use the Explorer - the probability of getting infected is negligible. If there are "left" documents (DOC, PDF, and other things that are often exploited), I advise you to run the copied on a program like CureIt.