how to force scan USB drives when plugged into pc

Hi Jerry Orlando.

Thanks for your post in Microsoft Community.

In your description, you want to force a scan of the USB drive when it is plugged in.

I do understand your concern about the security of USB drive devices and your desire to improve the security of your computer.

Currently, Windows Security does not have such a feature, it can simply open Windows Security after you plug in your USB drive, and then in Virus and Threat Protection, scan your USB drive through the Custom Scan in the Scanning Options.

Of course, some third-party security software can provide this type of protection. On my old computer, one of the security programs I used to use would automatically run a security scan on a USB drive once the system detected that it was inserted.

You can try some of your trusted, or reputable third party security software to help you with this feature.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Best regards,

Zev - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Thank you for the clear information.

Unfortunately, when I select "Custom Scan", and select "D:" drive, return to Scan Options, press Scan Now - nothing happens.

Trying to select a folder defined on the USB drive, same result.

The USB is BitLocker protected and is not locked at time of scan. Not sure this should make a difference.

Please provide guidance.

Jim

Thank you for your response.

The way the Microsoft Real-Time scanning function works is that the moment you browse into a new folder such as a USB drive, it immediately scans at least the base folder of that drive, so having a manual selection to do this is simply redundant.

As for scanning the entire drive, as already mentioned that's done using the Custom scan selection in Microsoft Defender, which if the drive is large really doesn't take significantly more time, so Microsoft's developers simply saw no reason for the legacy manual scan selection in the context menu that older security apps often used when manual scanning was actually a requirement.

We learned this about a decade ago when the Windows 8 version of Defender was initially created and due to the increased speed of scanning allowed by the newer SSE2 Instruction set that Windows 8 required, which meant that the Defender Real-Time scanning could quickly scan files in the background as the user browsed into a new folder or even just as (actually moments before) they opened the file itself to execute it, during which time the file itself is locked.

Since Microsoft's developers were trying to simplify the use of Windows for their customers and really didn't want them to think about things like manual scanning, they specifically designed Windows 8 to take advantage of these faster SSE2 instructions along with the generally faster processor clock speeds that these Intel Pentium 4 processors produced since 2001 and AMD processors since 2003 had also added.

Manual scanning is really a holdover from the past, so unless you truly need to manually scan dozens of individual USB drives one after the other for some reason, there's likely no reason you need to use anything other than the Custom scan option for the occasional manual scan of a drive you've used in another device.

Rob

Thank you for your reply.