Patent ID: 7036147

Claim:
A method for accelerated scanning, comprising: (a) identifying a file access pattern associated with data; (b) reading the data based on the file access pattern; and (c) performing a virus scan on the data; wherein the data is read and scanned by executing a first thread of operation for reading the data and a second thread of operation for scanning the data; wherein the first thread of operation is executed in parallel with the second thread such that, while a first portion of the data is being scanned, a second portion of the data to be scanned is being read and cached, so that, when a scanner is available for scanning the second portion of the data, a delay associated with reading the second portion of the data is avoided; wherein if it is determined that the data does not have the associated file access pattern, the data is read and the virus scan is performed, after which it is determined whether the virus scan was slower than a predetermined amount; wherein the file access pattern is conditionally generated based on whether the virus scan was slower than the predetermined amount; wherein the file access pattern is not generated if the virus scan was slower than the predetermined amount in order to save space in a file access pattern database.