Author Topic: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?  (Read 18135 times)

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akama1

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why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« on: January 26, 2012, 03:58:36 AM »
guys im just asking that why does avast take up sooo much hard drive space and is gradually increasing? when i first installed it... it was 169 mb and now its 250mb and that was a few months ago :/

ady4um

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2012, 04:53:22 AM »
The space varies every day, according to the definitions. The old ones are cleaned up too, automatically. It's normal. Test it again in a couple of days (or a week).

Online DavidR

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2012, 12:27:57 PM »
Just check your Defs folder, generally you will have the latest VPS version plus the previous one, these contain the full uncompressed (speeds access/scanning) virus definitions database, this is currently approx 70MB, so two of those would be 140MB.

On occasion you may see 3 versions there, but that should be cleaned out by the avast housekeeping.

In the greater scheme of things the whole avast folder is only 250MB (on mine also) a drop in the ocean with the mega-gigabyte drives. So if yours is 250MB then it looks like you have just two VPS sub-folders in the defs folder.
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Dch48

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2012, 09:14:50 PM »
Mine is 196mb with only one defs folder of 75.4. Every time I have checked, there has only been the active defs folder and no previous ones.

Offline RejZoR

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2012, 09:22:28 PM »
Seriously, who cares these days? I was bothering about size when my HDD was 4GB in size more than a decade ago. These days, i didn't bother even when i had just a 128GB SSD in my computer. And with 2TB HDD, i don't care at all.
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Online DavidR

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2012, 10:04:19 PM »
When I got my first system that had a hard drive, that HDD was a massive 512MB, yes 512MB and basically the though was I would never fill it. Now that was a very long time ago, now my phone has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space ;D
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Tgell

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2012, 12:59:06 AM »
Seriously, who cares these days? I was bothering about size when my HDD was 4GB in size more than a decade ago. These days, i didn't bother even when i had just a 128GB SSD in my computer. And with 2TB HDD, i don't care at all.

I remember when hard drives were 10MB and everybody said how in world are we going to fill those up. ;D  But then I remembered you could fit a spreadsheet program on a floppy disk. The spreadsheet program was Microsoft Multiplan and it fit on a 5 1/4 floppy.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2012, 01:06:12 AM by Tgell »

Offline Rednose

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2012, 01:17:32 PM »
I remember I had only 8 KB of RAM and a build-in cassette recorder ;D

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Dch48

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #8 on: January 27, 2012, 07:18:23 PM »
My first system that even had a hard drive had one that was 8.4gb and I never filled more than half of it. My older laptop had 80gb and I filled about 70%. This one has 640gb and I'll never come close to filling it. I have World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Skyrim, and DiRT3 all installed and still haven't hit the 100gb mark.

HDW38

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #9 on: January 27, 2012, 07:38:27 PM »
On occasion you may see 3 versions there, but that should be cleaned out by the avast housekeeping.
Hi!
I just controlled it and saw only 1 version. But what's on, if you have more than 3? Is it possible to delete the older one(s)?
HDW38

ady4um

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #10 on: January 27, 2012, 08:13:36 PM »
@HDW38,

It is not necessary to manually clean anything. Avast takes care of it.

There are some rare cases where avast leaves some temporal files, but that's not about the definitions (which is what this topic is about).

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #11 on: January 27, 2012, 08:31:16 PM »
On occasion you may see 3 versions there, but that should be cleaned out by the avast housekeeping.
Hi!
I just controlled it and saw only 1 version. But what's on, if you have more than 3? Is it possible to delete the older one(s)?
HDW38

To start with there is little point in chasing smoke, as in what if you have. Those are bridges that are crossed when you come to them. Ore you will give yourself ulcers.

I have never seen more than three and as has been said avast does its own clean-up, trying to do anything manually is likely to fall foul of the avast self-defence module.
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HDW38

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #12 on: January 27, 2012, 08:33:42 PM »
It is not necessary to manually clean anything. Avast takes care of it.

There are some rare cases where avast leaves some temporal files, but that's not about the definitions (which is what this topic is about).
Hi!
I knew. But I had to ask this question!
Best regards.
HDW38
« Last Edit: February 04, 2012, 08:53:01 PM by HDW38 »

Offline Chris Thomas

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #13 on: January 27, 2012, 09:38:26 PM »
Gosh, reminds me of days when I played DOOM lol

kcs

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Re: why does avast take up so much harddrive space?
« Reply #14 on: February 03, 2012, 10:25:29 PM »
Wolf 3d was my pain and i started in the commodore 64 and datasette days