eScan folder was taking up 20.0 GB.

I was running out of space on my SSD (it is only 128 GB so space is at a premium for me; originally I had a 500 GB HDD so I would not have noticed the space usage) and I noticed that the eScan folder was taking up 20.0 GB which had hundreds of files in it. The full path for the folder is root\ProgramData\ESET\ESET Smart Security\Logs\eScan and has files named ndl#####.dat which I noticed appears when I am doing an in-depth scan.

I only found out about this folder because for some reason I was getting an error when trying to update to version 5.2.9.1 saying it could not complete/install the update. I found the folder when I was looking through everything before uninstalling and reinstalling Smart Security to make sure the uninstall removed everything (it did including the eScan folder) so I could do a clean install (which worked perfectly).

The other thing of note is that in my settings for Log Files [Advanced setup -> Tools -> Log Files] I did not have it set to "delete records automatically" (now I do and it is set to delete records older than 2 days). The minimum logging verbosity was set to diagnostic. Also for the ThreatSense engine parameter setup I had it set to "log all objects" and "Enable Smart optimization" for all scans (real-time and on-demand).

My question is does Smart Security have a setting to manage the size of the eScan folder (which I most likely inadvertently turned off) or do I need to clean it manually (and if so how)?

 

I don't think there's a need to manage the size of the log folder. Typical logs in the escan folder are a few kB in size. I assume you must have had logging of all files enabled. Also enabling diagnostic logging will enormously increase the size of the log dat files and may affect system performance as well. We do not recommend enabling diagnostic logging unless you're troubleshooting an issue.