All decent AV programs today update databases at least once a day.
IIRC AVAST! updates every 4 hours if you are  broadband user.

Toomas




----- Original Message -----
From: "David Gillett" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>

> On 23 Dec 2005 at 12:18, Sybilgal wrote:
>
>> Can anyone tell me if scanning your system daily does any harm to the HD?
>> Is there a frequency limit that one should have?
>
>
>  Does your antivirus do "real-time protection"?  (This means that every
> time anything writes a file to your drive, the A/V scans it.)
>
>  If it does, then there's no point in scanning more often than your virus
> definitions get updated -- every scan will be seeing files that have already
> been scanned, and without new definitions the things that will be found
> can't change.
>
>  But I *do* recommend checking for updates daily....
>
>  The additional "wear" on your drive is negligible -- sectors in your
> swapfile will get read and rewritten far more often than anything a daily
> scan will do.
>
> David Gillett
>
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