A "newsletter" (a.k.a. advertisement for new toys) received this morning had the astonishing technical advice:

"How to scan an external hard drive for viruses."

I had sort of "forgotten' that with some AV programs you have to set things up to do that, since my AV defaults to do it all on schedule.

My default setting is to include all network drives in the regular "full system scan" so that anything on my local network that my computer can access is scanned. My computer scans all drives connected to it, and everything on her computer that's shared for my computer to access. Her computer scans all drives connected to it, and everything on my computer that's shared for her computer to access. Both computers scan everything on the laptop - if it's turned on. Schedules are staggered. All full system scans are completely in background, so the only thing seen is a little flag that says the AV is "working in background" that sneaks up for about ten seconds when the computer in use starts a sheduled scan and then slides out of sight.

IFF you use a simpler (less integrated) AV, you might have to manually run scans of "externals and connected" storage, or you may need to do some setup to make sure that the AV checks everything you want it to.

Many AV programs allow a variety of kinds of scans. A "full scan" may take quite a while, and may or may not be able to run as a background process so that you can continue what you're doing while it runs. Most AV programs also can run a "quick scan" that checks only "most vulnerable" folders and file types.

When you run a manual scan, depending on your AV setup you probably can choose more than one kind of scan and scan one or several drives. Clicking a different button could give you a big difference in how many things get scanned.

Once we get an AV installed, most of us probably don't pay enough attention to it to even make a good guess about how many buttons it's got - until it screams at us. If they work like they should, they can be really boring; but taking a look inside occasionally is a good idea, since sometimes the buttons get moved (especially if you get auto updates).

John