Hello, this is my first post here, and its a negative one!

I have been using a Packard Bell Store & Share 3500 400gb external HDD to backup my important documents and music, etc on before I restore my PC to factory settings.

It's been fine for well over a week now (still in the process of backing up), but I've just gone to view the contents of the drive today and I noticed a folder named '8fed02fba513b863611026040f70e4da' appear with the other folders on the HDD. Inside there are 3 files:

- $shtdwn$.req
- mrt.exe._p
- mrtstub.exe

Before anything else, I searched the net to find details on this and found it was malware and instructed to delete immediately. And so I did (Just this folder).

But I've noticed that all the other fodlers that I've created are now all empty on the HDD! I first assumed it had wiped the drive, but after checking the HDD properties, there still seems to be about 130gb of stuff on there...

The drive has been fine the past week.

I'm panicking at the moment and don't know what to do here at all! I have a lot of important stuff on there, and require help urgently!

I hope perhaps one of you can help me resolve this?

Thankyou

Dale

Hello WaxMechaniK,

I'm affraid you have been missinformed. That folder and files were created by Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. For more info look here.

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool helps remove specific, prevalent malicious software from computers that are running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2000

I believe your problem stems from something else


LC