Still scanning after 24 hours ?

[aja 0]

Hi all

 

I'm a newbie to ESET, although not to similar software on PCs.  I downloaded a trial version of Cyber Security to my MacBook Air a few days ago and it took 2-3 hours to scan my hard disk (85 Gb used on a 120Gb drive)

 

Yesterday I connected my external drive to run a backup, and Cyber Security asked if I wanted to scan that too.  I said yes ... and 24 hours later its still running??

 

The external drive is 500Gb, but with only 145Gb of data on it.  I'm using Time Machine for the backups so I know it will have multiple copies of my data but it still seems odd.

 

The other odd thing is that the 'progress bar' showed about 75% progress within the first few hours, but 24 hours later it still not progressed very far (note to ESET - a reported percentage would help).  The file names it is scanning are changing, so its not frozen, but I'm wondering if its in some kind of loop?

 

I'm running Yosemite 10.10.2, and Cyber Security is up to date - version 11127 (20150205) of the virus database.

 

Any thoughts out there?

 

Thanks, Alan

[Marcos 5,074]

Perhaps you have a lot of large archives with many files inside which takes time to unpack and scan each file. The reason why the progress bar moves slower or seems to stuck at times is caused by various number of files in particular folders. Try running a scan with scanning of archives disabled.

[planet 232]

Hi Alan,

 

The 'quick answer' recommendation is to not scan your Time Machine drive, and to click 'No action' when you connect it to your Mac.

 

Time Machine uses a complex file structure for backing up not like the usual one your Mac usually uses. This is why it is never recommended to delete any files manually on the drive (without entering Time Machine) or allow third-parties to modify anything on the drive. When it comes to scanning, it will be having a difficult and unnecessary repetitive experience trying to scan from start to finish. It is recommended to exclude your Time Machine drive from Cyber Security. ESET has a KB Article explaining how to do this: "Exclude Apple Time Machine backups from scanning in ESET Cyber Security or ESET Cyber Security Pro".

 

If you would still like to scan your Time Machine backup, expect a scan to take a very very long time (regardless of file size). Do not allow Cyber Security to move any files to quarantine if a detection is found (as it may affect the success rate of a system restore in the future) - you will need to browse your Time Machine drive from the Time Machine menubar (connect your drive and click 'Enter Time Machine'), search or browse for the file in the Finder window that appears, right click on the file or folder and select 'Remove or Delete from Backup' instead of deleting it the traditional way. Or, consider erasing your Time Machine drive and starting a fresh one again if you don't need older backups and you are concerned about infection (But if you already did a scan of your Mac and found nothing, then you should be okay).

 

Hope you're enjoying the trial. 

Edited February 6, 2015 by planet

[femtobeam 0]

Hi Planet,

 

I just installed version 6.1.12.0 of ESET Pro on my brand new iMac 5K this afternoon, after creating a backup on a new Seagate Backup Plus Drive with Time Machine a few hours earlier. (It took about 10 minutes.)

ESET Pro found one Trojan email on the computer scan, set to recommended settings, so it automatically "fixed" it.  I then decided to scan the backup, thinking it would also be there. After the entire afternoon, ESET Pro is only 3/4 done on the scan and it has found over 40 Trojans in the SPAM Folder of my Gmail!!!

 

Q. Why would it find only 1 on the iMac and 40 on the backup from the iMac?

Q. It has quarantined them already. Will this affect a future backup?

Q. How do I stop email spam boxes from being backed up?

Q. Should I do a deeper scan of the iMac after this?

Q. Are there any settings that you would recommend? Advice about this important first set up?

 

Thank you in advance,

 

femtobeam

[planet 232]

I just installed version 6.1.12.0 of ESET Pro on my brand new iMac 5K this afternoon, after creating a backup on a new Seagate Backup Plus Drive with Time Machine a few hours earlier. (It took about 10 minutes.)

ESET Pro found one Trojan email on the computer scan, set to recommended settings, so it automatically "fixed" it.  I then decided to scan the backup, thinking it would also be there. After the entire afternoon, ESET Pro is only 3/4 done on the scan and it has found over 40 Trojans in the SPAM Folder of my Gmail!!!

 

Hi femtobeam, I didn't see this post highlighted for some reason so I'm sorry for the lateness.

 

 

Q. Why would it find only 1 on the iMac and 40 on the backup from the iMac?

 

Time Machine is a pretty interesting thing as I mentioned in my earlier post, for example it can create multiple 'ghost copies' of one file instead of replicating actual files, but is actually only the one (explains why future backups will only take seconds, but it's able to somehow immediately create another 'full copy' of your Mac in another folder on your drive. So in other words, this is expected and is why I mentioned in my earlier post not to scan the Time Machine drive as ESET would have scanned 3/4 of the files on drive 40 times, which is unnecessary.

 

 

Q. It has quarantined them already. Will this affect a future backup?

 

Possibly both the current backup and future backups (especially if you try to do a full restore), due to the complexity of Time Machine. It may be best to reformat the Seagate drive and perform a fresh Time Machine backup once your Mac is clean. Delete the files from Quarantine if you don't need them as well.

 

 

Q. How do I stop email spam boxes from being backed up?

 

Pressing 'Options' in Time Machine's Preferences allow you to specify exclusions - in this case you can browse to your user folder, then Library > Mail > V3 (if El Capitan, otherwise V2), select a folder (each one is for a different account), and select Junk.mbox to exclude it (up to you what you want to exclude, you could exclude the whole Mail folder if you only use IMAP for example as everything is already synced with Gmail anyway).

 

 

Q. Should I do a deeper scan of the iMac after this?

 

It wouldn't hurt to perform an "In-depth Scan" from the Scan section of ECSP, either with the Seagate drive unplugged and/or with the exclusion set in ECSP.

 

 

Q. Are there any settings that you would recommend? Advice about this important first set up?

 

Follow the KB link in my earlier post and create the exclusions for Time Machine and your Seagate drive, otherwise you should be okay.   Hopefully in the future ECSP will automatically play nice with Time Machine drives, but setting an exclusion is ideal for now.

Edited November 15, 2015 by planet