A problem for ALL of us..

[wjibby]

The size of hard drives is getting bigger and bigger and the time to scan them is getting longer and longer.

First, what are your suggestions to scan only directories to minimize scan time.  Those directories that would hold viruses and catch 90% or more of any virus ?

I have 300-500gig drives and it takes at least 1/2 day per drive to scan.  I am using ATA133 drives at present.

How can we do this faster ?

Regards
William Jibby

[essexboy]

At the bare mimum all user documents, Windows, programme files and root

[DavidR]

You don't say what scan sensitivity you are using or if archives are selected ?

Standard sensitivity without Archives provides a good compromise between speed and protection. See image, extract of avast help file.

If you have a lot of media files that may not be considered a threat you could exclude (Program Settings, Exclusions) that folder by the file type contained in it, so if something other than a media file is in there (possible malware insertion) that would be scanned. Example c:\media\*.mp3, etc.

[Lisandro]

For sure a thorough scanning is not necessary more than once a month, for instance.
I bet on the same folders of essexboy and just add the ashQuick.exe entry to scan any downloaded file.