Question re virus scan results

[Duer 157099]

I have several hard drives and several partitions on each drive.

Sometimes when I do a virus scan, I'll get hits, but they are never on my c: drive or the main drives that I use (eg, programs).

Typically the hits are on drives/partitions where old files are kept. And, that have been scanned hundreds of times.

I have figured that when new hits are found on a drive that I'm not actively using, that it's just a false positive as a result of newer definitions and stronger heuristics. Even so, I delete them because they are typically so old that I'll never use them again anyway (eg, drivers etc). But a few weeks later, I'll get more hits, again in old directories.

Am I right in this assumption, or am I being naive? Would a new infection go embed itself on a distant, inactive (but available) partition, inside of an old file? Since I don't really know how viruses work, maybe this is impossible, but otoh, maybe it's exactly how they work?

Does anyone know?

[EvolveOrConvolve]

1. When a specific file is marked as infected

Google the filename and see if there's anything specifically going on with that file. Otherwise, you can probably put the file into quarantine.