MHJ

Thanks - one of my questions was about the backup. Can I safely connect an external drive to my laptop to back up my files or will the external drive also become infected?

Hello everyone, I got my laptop infected with Sirefef.gen!c and ran Malwarebytes, which was able to remove a couple maliscious objects. After doing this, my browser started functioning correctly (did not any more redirect to random pages). However, when running Malwarebytes again, I still find a Rootkit.0.Access infection. I read that there might be some risk of data loss if I don't back up my files before trying to remove this virus. Is this concern valid? Because of this, I would like to back up my files before I start doing any more virus removal work. However, I'm concerned that the virus will also get transferred to my external hard drive. Is there any way to prevent this from happening? Any other advice about what I should do (yes, I disconnected my infected laptop from the internet and am typing this from an uninfected laptop). Thanks in advance!