How do I get external drives and time machine drive to b not scanned when doing a deep scan. I don’t have either check box marked but they still get scanned.
See if this answers your question:
https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/Mac-Security-malware-scan/
Even though I don’t have external disks or time machine checked in edit custom scan windows it still scans them. So why would this happen?
First, if your Avast is acting like mine does, youll find that it isnt scanning the time machine files on your external drive, its scanning a hidden volume on your macs internal drive. Apparently Mac 12.3 Monterey keeps a cop of the timemachine back ups on its own hard drive in a hidden volume. I found this out when Avast found infected files because it gives the path of the infection. That path is /volumes/.timemachine/ (long obnoxious number) /2022-3-3-101022backup/2022-3-3-101022backup/data/user/mac/library/ etc, etc, etc.
So /volumes/.timemachine/ is on the main disk. .timemachine is a hidden file because of the dot prefix.
Now, why unchecking the scan time machine setting doesnt exclude this hidden time machine partition, I have no idea, but it doesnt exclude it at all and since its scanning these hidden files, deep system scans for me, take hours.
Thanks for this information as that is great to know. Unfortunately I don’t thing that is what is happening for me. I can watch my external hard drive flashing constantly day and night for a couple of days. I think I found the .timemachine but its says there are 0 bites for 490 items and hasn’t ever been modified.
I added it to the exceptions list so will see what happens next time I run.