Does avast get invoked for some/all files a defragger is working on? My defragger seems slower after I installed avast 4.7 (used AVG before). According to my defragger website AV interference during a defrag could cause a slow defrag. Using PerfectDisk and avast on Vista Ultimate x32.
Does avast change the last access date when it is doing it’s thing on files? This would affect my defragger’s effectiveness in ordering my drives by last access dates. I read somewhere that MS has set a standard that AV software should not change the LA date if just scanning a file.
Defraggers usually operate at a very low level so I wouldn’t have thought so AV would get involved, easy to test, check the scanned count: in the Standard Shield before and after your defrag. I don’t see any problem with any of the defrag tools I use.
avast doesn’t change file properties such as the last accessed, easy to test, scan a test folder and check the file properties afterwards.
avast will be involved in defragmentation is the application uses a new configuration file, open another executable, generate a log (if you have avast Standard Shield level at High) for instance.
Like David said, it should act at low level.
By the way, do you have any experience with PerfectDisk and avast on Vista Ultimate x32 running PerfectDisk off-line? I’ve tested O&O Defrag at boot time (off-line) once in a computer of a friend of mine… what a nightmare! Vista does not like any system file or needed to boot to be managed before booting. Vendors aren’t being explicit on that and user could have trouble.
Oh, like David already said, avast does not change file properties.
PerfectDisk’s offline defragger works fine on my system.
I did some manual avast scans of folders that had files that weren’t accessed in a while and after the scan the last accessed date became the current date. I only scan certain extensions and these were the ones that got their LAD updated. This is NOT good as far as defragging based on LAD.
As far as it being low level that isn’t really the case. All defraggers and disk imagers for that matter use standard MS API’s to do their thing. As I said MS states that the LAD should not be updated by AV programs since it isn’t an access in the conventional sense. This might also be true for firewalls, malware scanners and the like. All it does is make defragging based on Last Accessed Date meaningless.
I really would like to hear from avast themselves on the two matters I brought up.
Does avast inspect every file that the defragger is working on.
Does an avast scan, realtime or manual, update the LAD. Seems it does in my case.
Maybe you’re right and the programmers should take a look on this or, at least, drop some light over this issue. Maybe it’s impossible to change this as avast is ‘handling’ (accessing) the file to scan, without accessing, no scanning… but I agree, it isn’t an access in the conventional sense.
I’m only using XP Pro and the explorer values have Date Modified and Date Created in the column values so I don’t have a last accessed value that I can check.
I too would like to hear what the definitive answer is, though I was in the belief that it would have been changes by the file system rather than the application accessing the file.
I just did a test with Power Defragmenter that is a GUI interface for contig.exe sysinternals.com (now with MS) and I ran a defrag on a folder with 1200+ files and sub folders and avast Standard Shield detailed view, showed the same Scanned count before and after the defrag.
Very many of us follow the advice (also provided by Microsoft) to improve NTFS performance by turning off the “last update” option in NTFS. This is my normal situation.
However, in the interest of research and validating the report for myself I just turned it back on on my system (and rebooted).
I then performed some scans by avast (using the on demand scanner and ashquick.exe).
My finding is that avast scanning does not update the last accessed date.
Unfortunately explorer itself does update the last accessed date for certain files when the folder is displayed - especially for instance to obtain the icon to display from within exe files, shortcuts etc.
Many of us know that most imaging software - fully cognizant of the first point I made above - does not rely at all on “last accessed” date at all. I suppose there may be some defragmentation software that does but certainly not the one I use regularly or those I have tried out recently.