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Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: REDACTED on January 29, 2016, 06:12:16 PM

Title: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: REDACTED on January 29, 2016, 06:12:16 PM
Is there a way to scan my 3 drives at once in a full scan instead of scan one after other taking so much time to finish? If each take 1 hour to scan then it take 3 hours to finish, if i can scan all at same time then it will be done in 1 hour only.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: Eddy on January 29, 2016, 06:14:25 PM
You are thinking wrong.
Even if it was possible to scan 3 drives at the same time, the time it takes will still be 3 hours (as in your example) because the amount of data that has to be scanned is still the same.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: REDACTED on January 29, 2016, 07:19:01 PM
I think your thinking wrong, when i say drive i mean separate physical disks and not partitions of same physical disk. If each disk has 1GB total data and can perform 50MB/s read, each disk will finish job in 20 seconds. If both scan at same time it will take a total of 20 seconds to finish all, but since outadated modern AV's only scan 1 disk per time it take 40 seconds to finish.

If someone know about some AV out there which perform multiple drives scan at once, i'll appreciate that.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: Eddy on January 29, 2016, 07:29:48 PM
No, I'm not wrong.
It is not about the amount of drives that need to be scanned, but the amount of data.

There is no av in the world that will scan multiple drives at the same time.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: REDACTED on January 29, 2016, 07:40:09 PM
So no AV can perform multithreading is that the case cant perform multiple drives?
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: Eddy on January 29, 2016, 07:57:01 PM
mutithreading or not has nothing to do with the time it takes to scan all drives.
It is still the same amount of data the system has to scan.

1 x a whole package = 3 x 1/3 package
Time it takes stays the same.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: DavidR on January 29, 2016, 07:59:34 PM
So no AV can perform multithreading is that the case cant perform multiple drives?

Some time ago it was possible to run multiple scans - how effective this might be is debatable - as this was optimised for the multi-core (multi-thread) Intel chips.

You could setup three custom scans, one for each drive and schedule them to run at the same time.

You would have to take care when creating these as there wouldn't be any defaults like the Full System Scan - so you don't want to increase the sensitivity or files that it might scan or you could be adding to the scan.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: DavidR on January 29, 2016, 08:00:57 PM
mutithreading or not has nothing to do with the time it takes to scan all drives.
It is still the same amount of data the system has to scan.

1 x a whole package = 3 x 1/3 package
Time it takes stays the same.

Not following your logic here - 1 job 1 workman 3 days - 1 job 3 workmen 1 day.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: Eddy on January 29, 2016, 08:10:22 PM
It is real easy.
The system can handle only a certain amount of data per time period and that defines the time it will take to scan everything.
Feeding a person from 3 different plates will not make the person eat faster and empty the plates faster.
Title: Re: Full scan in multiple drives simultaneously
Post by: DavidR on January 29, 2016, 08:16:29 PM
If said person had three mouths and was optimised to use all three at once, he would finish three times as quick. The proof of this pudding will be in the eating (burp).

This was what avast did a very long time ago in optimizing avast to use Intel multi-core CPUs. Why else would avast allow you to start multiple scans at once.

Yes there are likely to be bottlenecks at times, but it should reduce the overall time.