How do I stop BD scanning USB-drives at every startup of my computer

J Lindstrom · 2025-07-14T03:48:40+00:00

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I have 23 USB-disks connected to my computer and I need them all for my work. I just switched to BitDefender from another AV-solution and I get annoyed on BD who scanning all my USB-drives at every startup of my computer! How do I stop this scanning of disks that have not been changed since my last session on the computer, I need BD to scan disks/files that have been changed but skip them who are not!

It is annoying to have all the disks are slower and makes a lot of noise for 30 to 60 minutes every time I start my computer in the morning or doing a restart of my computer after an uppdate of Windows or other reasons.

How can I disable this and still be safe with BD still doing a good job?

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Alexandru_BD

Hello @J Lindstrom,

Go to Protection → Antivirus → Settings and disable "Scan flash drives", as shown in the screenshot below:

Under advanced settings, you also have the option to scan only new and modified files, and this may also be useful in your setup:

I hope this helps.

Regards

J Lindstrom

Thank you for your suggestions, I'll try that

J Lindstrom

Today I started with "de-select" the setting shown in the picture below, I found it before I got your suggestions, it did not work!

So today before I close my computer, I am trying your suggestion number 2, and I will see if it helps! I don't want to use your suggestion number 1 because I want my USB drives to be scanned if anything is changed on them.

I'm sorry I can only try the solutions once a day because I have my computer running all day.

Once again thank you for your answer and I hope 2 works, or else I may have to choose another program. I saw in earlier posts that this excessive disk usage is not good for the disks!

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

Maybe a more convenient way would be to set 'Scan flash drives' on 'Ask everytime'. This way, the scan won't start automatically and if you plug in any USB and you are not 100% sure of its contents or safety, or if you are aware that it has been modified somehow, you will be asked if you wish to scan it. But I'm unsure how this would work in your use case, since you've mentioned that you have many USBs plugged in. Perhaps you can test with this option and see how it goes.
As for the early boot scan, I think this may cause temporary slowdowns for the device during startup, depending also on the level of device performance and setup. This scan runs before or during the operating system’s early stages of loading, often before many third-party apps or services start. The goal is to detect and remove deeply embedded malware that may be difficult to eliminate once the OS is fully loaded. I think some form of temporary slowdown may be expected, because this assumes some high resource consumption at startup. Basically, the antivirus engine may use CPU, and memory heavily during boot, competing with the OS and startup programs. This is especially noticeable if the security solution delays or monitors the loading of services and drivers to scan them, as this can extend boot time. Keep in mind that systems with HDDs usually experience more noticeable slowdowns due to slower read/write speeds. SSDs handle this better but can still see delays.

Regards

J Lindstrom

Thank you so much for all your suggestions!

It did work with enabling number 2 in my last answer, no excessive scanning now!

Great to get a quick answer here, I'm grateful.

Best Regards
J Lindstrom👍️

Alexandru_BD

You are most welcome and thank you for your feedback. Glad to hear I could help. 🤝