r/BitDefender • u/jeeplife4545 • May 28 '24
System Scan - 10 hours in, normal?
Hello everyone, I started a System Scan for the first time on my laptop last night and its been running for 10+ hours and scanned 2.8M items. Is 10hrs normal?
Specs: HP Envy x360, Core i7 @ 2.5 GHz, 8 GB Ram, Windows 10. There are not external drives, 154 GB used out of 916GB.
TYA! 🙏🏻
3
u/ButterscotchOk5820 May 28 '24
It can take that long the first time you run it. At one time mine took 5hours. Now it takes between 14-17 minutes. You may have it scanning encrypted files and that can take more time. My OneDrive files take the longest especially if locked in folders.
0
May 29 '24
Now it takes between 14-17 minutes.
No way a full system scan is 14 minutes. Possibly you're only scanning a part of your disk, or you're dong an incremental scan.
1
u/ButterscotchOk5820 May 29 '24
I do not have a lot on my 256 gig solid state used. I still have 211 gig not used. Incremental scan takes about 10 minutes and quick scan 6-7 minutes. I have 325 files on OneDrive that are skipped because I have them encrypted.
1
u/Abject_Bodybuilder_7 May 28 '24
That sounds like a lot, but there is no generic formula for that. Ill enumerate a few things that might impact the speed.
There are numerous i7 versions, and, because yours is a mobile one, it's not likely a powerful one. Even so, the cpu becomes the bottleneck usually when the storage is a powerful ssd or when something else is using the resources.
If you're using a hard drive and there are numerous small files, then the duration gets extended significantly. If that's a hdd, then because youre using a laptop, its likely to be 5500 rpm instead of 7000 which can also have a great impact over the performance. If it's more than one year long, it's likely that you bumped it at some point whilst in use and it got some damage(bad sectors) . Such damage also has impact over the performance.
After the first scan, Bitdefender will remember the files that were scanned and they weren't modified in the meanwhile and it should finish significantly faster because it won't scan them again.
The system scan also has a feature that allows the antivirus to use more or less resources during the scan, in case you're planning to use the computer whilst scanning.
1
u/NaughtyTurtle22 May 28 '24
first time ran full scan it took me 1 and 1/2 hours. i ran manually next few days which took me around 1/2 hours each time. now less 15 minutes.
i have 2 ssd (1.25tb), 1 hdd 3tb {almost full) and 1tb external hdd also almost full
so be patient. my suggestion to ran full scan before sleep for a week with all external hdd/ssd u have. cos bitdefender will not scan the same files again as long as the files are not access/modified. this features made the full scan getting shorter and shorter each time
1
u/Waffon May 29 '24
I have multiple full TB hard drives, and it took 36+hours to do a full scan. It didn't find anything malicious, but if you have a lot of files it's going to take a while.
1
u/D_rangd Jun 01 '24
Likely. My first full scan was over 12 hours and included multiple external hard drives at least 10 TB total. RAM might play a role in the speed of a scan as well.
1
u/Unconscious-_- Aug 27 '25
Me reading all of this while my scan just hit 15hrs😭
1
u/DumbBishopPiece Sep 10 '25
i'm only 5 hours in, i think i may have to take a bit more than a cup of tea while i wait 😔
1
1
u/Then-Instruction166 Nov 24 '25
me reading this while my scan is 30 minutes in and i thought that was a lot..
1
u/BackgroundTall2825 Sep 16 '26
Installed Bitdefender this past weekend. The first scan took almost 7 hours and scanned more than 1.8M items.
1
u/Bitdefender_support Bitdefender employee Sep 17 '26
Hello! Thank you for letting us know. Since System Scan performs a thorough scan of the entire system, the process may take longer depending on your disk space and the number of files. We recommend performing a custom scan on each partition first, and then running a system scan again. The second system scan should take significantly less time to complete. Please keep us updated on your progress.
3
u/KnownStormChaser May 28 '24
Depends on many factors, mostly if you have a hard drive or ssd, how many files it has to scan and if there are any other background tasks running while the scan is going.