Hello, I recently purchased a Macbook Pro and formatted a new LaCie Rugged external hard drive with the computer. I then set up a time machine backup to use this external hard drive. After Time Machine finished backing up my computer, I opened the drive and saw two items. One was backups.backupdb which contained the backup and the other was a file titled autorun.inf. I googled this file and almost every result said it was a virus. Is it in fact a virus? Is this file supposed to be on my external hard drive after setting it up for the first time and performing a time machine backup?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What is autorun.inf on LaCie External Hard Drive?
- Thread starter gtr457
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It's not a virus. There are no viruses in the wild that can infect macOS. The autorun.inf file is for starting whatever software that was included with the LaCie. And it's for Windows only. You can erase that file and anything else that was on the LaCie before using it for your Time Machine backup. What I don't understand is you stated that you formatted the LaCie. The format from NTFS to HFS+ should have wiped out that file and anything else on the drive. Are you sure you formatted the drive?
Thank you for your reply
When I connected the drive, fresh out of the box, to my MacBook Pro for the first time, I used the LaCie setup assistant to format the drive to have two separate partitions - one that is compatible with MacOS only and one that is compatible with both MacOS and Windows. After doing so, two separate folders appeared on my desktop, one for each partition, and both contained the autorun.inf file
When I connected the drive, fresh out of the box, to my MacBook Pro for the first time, I used the LaCie setup assistant to format the drive to have two separate partitions - one that is compatible with MacOS only and one that is compatible with both MacOS and Windows. After doing so, two separate folders appeared on my desktop, one for each partition, and both contained the autorun.inf file
autorun.inf files are described here.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc144206(v=vs.85).aspx
most importantly, it's a textfile, so you should be able to read it with anything that reads ascii. (e.g Atom...)
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc144206(v=vs.85).aspx
most importantly, it's a textfile, so you should be able to read it with anything that reads ascii. (e.g Atom...)