Exclusions Not Working For External Drives In General

The problem was already signaled a few years ago in a previous version and still exists with Antivirus Plus 2014 and 2015.

I want Bitdefender to avoid putting ANY file from an external drive in quarantine. I should not even have to mention why, but to pre-empt the issue, here is the main reason: I do not want Bitdefender to delete legitimate, false positive files from my friends' USB drives when we share files, and I myself keep on external drives some useful backup programs that keep being quarantined against my will.

On my computer's internal drive, it is not a problem: I excluded my whole Installation Files Folder, and Bitdefender leaves it alone.

On external drives, however, only specific file exclusions work. I tried excluding preventively all external drive letters ever used (both for On-access and On-demand), and also the specific folders where the files are, but to no avail.

The only thing that works is to exclude the specific files that Bitdefender keeps putting in quarantine. It is possible to do so for my own backup files, but still, it might be time consuming to restore quarantined files and exclude them one by one, drive letter by drive letter. But most importantly, it is not an option for my friends' external drives: I do not know which specific files might potentially be quarantined, and if they are quarantined, the time we have for file exchange (usually done in a hurry before one departs) is often too limited to make restoration and further exclusion an acceptable option.

So, to avoid messing with other people's files, I have to preventively deactivate security options from Bitdefender, which is paradoxical: the mix of paranoia and deep-down simplicity of the antivirus forces me to go through a lot of fuss to avoid ad hoc problems, at the price of a lower security protection in general.

Exclusions apart, Bitdefender must add a SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD and EFFECTIVE option to avoid automatically quarantining files from USB drives without first asking the user. Is there an option, anywhere, that can force Bitdefender to ASK what to to with ALL suspicious files not specifically excluded?

I find it annoying to have to choose between letting the antivirus quarantine any file it finds suspicious, or deactivating otherwise useful security options altogether. I want to keep Active Virus Control on, but the most sensible option would be to ask for a confirmation if I so require – an option other antiviruses normally offer.

I chose Bitdefender for its reported effectiveness, but the actual complexity entailed by its overall simplistic approach will refrain me from buying it again... unless an option is offered, right from the start, to confirm with a simple pop-up what should be done upon detection of a suspicious file, instead of forcing me to go look through events, cancelling unwanted automatic actions taken, and then adding an exclusion fast enough to avoid a new unwanted action...