Safe to turn off antivirus if drive previously scanned?
Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2023 8:15 pm
Is it safe to turn off antivirus when the drives were previously scanned by antivirus program?
i.e. When Duplicate Cleaner is performing MD5 (or binary) calculations on the contents of a file, is the file being opened in a way that a virus in it could be run? My impression is that anti-virus scanners don't "open" every file but Duplicate Cleaner could (or will) "open" many more of them. Does this create a risk if no anti-virus software is running during the Duplicate Cleaner operation?
Windows Defender significantly slows down file transfers by Teracopy and Syncovery. I assume the same for Duplicate Cleaner but have not tested it yet.
Why: Antivirus significantly slows down the copying of files. (by 3x)
Copying a 230GB folder from nvme Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB to nvme Lexar NM790 4TB:
260GB 268,000 files 14,000 folders
Windows Explorer: 8 minutes
Syncovery with Windows Defender active: 18 minutes
Syncovery with Windows Defender inactive: 6 minutes
Testing a smaller folder with Explorer vs Teracopy (with verification turned off) gave an even bigger difference between the methods.
My plan: Overnight, I perform an hours-long virus scan of all drives. In the morning, I turn off the internet and antivirus so that I can work on deduplcating and consolidating the drives without being slowed down by the antivirus.
(Note: Between each test I delete thed Syncovery profile so that no data is kept. The 230GB folder is synced to an empty one. When AV is active, it uses a lot of CPU and disk activity as seen in Performance Monitor.)
i.e. When Duplicate Cleaner is performing MD5 (or binary) calculations on the contents of a file, is the file being opened in a way that a virus in it could be run? My impression is that anti-virus scanners don't "open" every file but Duplicate Cleaner could (or will) "open" many more of them. Does this create a risk if no anti-virus software is running during the Duplicate Cleaner operation?
Windows Defender significantly slows down file transfers by Teracopy and Syncovery. I assume the same for Duplicate Cleaner but have not tested it yet.
Why: Antivirus significantly slows down the copying of files. (by 3x)
Copying a 230GB folder from nvme Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB to nvme Lexar NM790 4TB:
260GB 268,000 files 14,000 folders
Windows Explorer: 8 minutes
Syncovery with Windows Defender active: 18 minutes
Syncovery with Windows Defender inactive: 6 minutes
Testing a smaller folder with Explorer vs Teracopy (with verification turned off) gave an even bigger difference between the methods.
My plan: Overnight, I perform an hours-long virus scan of all drives. In the morning, I turn off the internet and antivirus so that I can work on deduplcating and consolidating the drives without being slowed down by the antivirus.
(Note: Between each test I delete thed Syncovery profile so that no data is kept. The 230GB folder is synced to an empty one. When AV is active, it uses a lot of CPU and disk activity as seen in Performance Monitor.)