Virus Scan Cusing Hard Drive Failure

[Mo]

Was wondering if anyone can provide any insights into the affects of
running frequent virus scans on a hard drive.

Our IT director at work has set all machines to run 4 scans a day.

Specifically, I'm curious as to whether you think that running 3-4
virus scans every day can have an impact on the life of a drive. Is
this common practice at most organizations? Could this be the cause of
a rash of hard drive failure in both laptops and desktops that we have
been experiencing?

 

[Rod Speed]

Was wondering if anyone can provide any insights into the
affects of running frequent virus scans on a hard drive.

Shouldnt have any effect if the systems are adequately designed.

Our IT director at work has set all machines to run 4 scans a day.

Tad mindless.

Specifically, I'm curious as to whether you think that running 3-4
virus scans every day can have an impact on the life of a drive.

It shouldnt.

Is this common practice at most organizations?
Nope.

Could this be the cause of a rash of hard drive failure in both
laptops and desktops that we have been experiencing?

More likely to be due to the users kicking those systems
when they perform so badly during the virus scans |-)

 

[Arno Wagner]

Was wondering if anyone can provide any insights into the affects of
running frequent virus scans on a hard drive.

Our IT director at work has set all machines to run 4 scans a day.

Specifically, I'm curious as to whether you think that running 3-4
virus scans every day can have an impact on the life of a drive. Is
this common practice at most organizations? Could this be the cause of
a rash of hard drive failure in both laptops and desktops that we have
been experiencing?

If the HDDas are used according to spec (most important: good
cooling), the wear and tear from using them is not significant
today. If they are badly cooled, they may be overheated 4 times
a day with this set-up. Since drives are very often inadequately
cooled and heat up under load, I would say the scanns are a
likely suspect.

Also 4 times a day is insane. If you have a security need that high,
use a differen OS, use good firewalls, educate users, etc.. The
4 scanns still leave a several hour window of opportunity and do
not really help. Virus scanns are not useful as real-time security
measure. Doing them more often does not help much more.

Arno

 

[mangler]

Thanks for the responses. Do you think it makes a difference that we
use Dell machines? Would you consider them properly cooled/designed?

 

[Mo]

Thanks for the responses. Do you think it makes a difference that we
use Dell machines? Would you consider them properly cooled/configured?

 

[Arno Wagner]

Thanks for the responses. Do you think it makes a difference that we
use Dell machines? Would you consider them properly cooled/designed?

I don't know how well they are cooled, but I think Dell
engineering sucks in general. These people are overconfident
and do not follow up when they make mistakes.

But that is just my opinion.

Arno

 

[J. Clarke]

Thanks for the responses. Do you think it makes a difference that we
use Dell machines? Would you consider them properly cooled/configured?

Only way to tell for sure is to monitor drive temperatures. Dell's cooling
ranges from excellent to marginal depending on model (and I am not familiar
with every Dell model so can't tell you which is the case for yours unless
it's by coincidence one that I have worked with). A downside is that even
on the machines that have adequate cooling that I have seen there is a
single point of failure--one big fan instead of several small ones--if it
goes then there is _no_ cooling other than natural convection.

 

[CWatters]

Was wondering if anyone can provide any insights into the affects of
running frequent virus scans on a hard drive.

Our IT director at work has set all machines to run 4 scans a day.

How long does each scan take? I mean how do you get any work done with all
that disc activity going on. One scan at night and realtime protection is
what you need.