I also strongly suggest you run a anti-rootkit app. Rootkit is even more lethal than boot sector virus.
yeah boot sector virus. for my money the hard drive was fixed and some other stuff was done as well. no I didnt get had.I personally know the guy who worked on my machine.I know the owner of the place too.
back in the old days when only techies owned computers, you would get meaningful replies whenever you had a computer question. nowadays any clown and his grandma uses computers, hence 90% of the stuff you hear is total garbage. a software application cannot cause physical damage to a hdd, dummies! a complete low-level reformat of the hdd will wipe out everything including the virus and fix any software problem. if your format didn't resolve the issue, then you either had another problem or you merely did a quick format which only rewrites the partition information.
Well, you gop ripped off if you paid $170. I just got a brand new spanking 1 TB hard disk with an external enclosure for $109.
Of course a software application can cause physical damage to a hard drive. And what was the value of adding "dummies" to the post?
I Googled the topic... and it appears (or at least some believe), a virus might damage hardware in two ways. (1) Overspin the hard drive, then slam on the brakes, and (2) the virus gets into the BIOS and disables fans to cause overheating... Elephino.
If your business depends on this hard drive and you think it has been compromised, stop using it and replace it. When you have the time, you could make this hard drive a slave drive on a different computer and attempt to make it trustworthy again but perhaps it is something that should be a cost of doing business to never use it again. Kind of like not using a car that has been in an accident. ------------------- Every hard drive manufacturer has a web site. I think they all have some sort of utility you can download to test and format and low level format your hard drive.