McAfee's scan.dat files clogging up the hard disk

I just noticed that one of the computers i use at work is almost out of disk space. This has happened before and i resolved the issue by deleting some temp binaries and doing an extensive defrag.

This time however, i decided to do a search for the largest files on the disk (>= 50Mb) and discovered about 150 zip files which each contained a ~60Mb file called "scan.dat". These files are in what looks like one of McAfee's directories: "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Network Associates\Common Framework\Current\VSCANDAT1000\DAT\0000".

The files in total are over 9Gb! Are they all needed by McAfee or any other program, or can i safely delete them? I suspect they are the result of anti-virus definition updates and scans but i'm not sure if i need all of them or just the latest. Or if they are simply scan logs i probably don't need them at all.

Has anyone else had this problem or have any advice for me? Considering the files eat up a significant amount of disk space i would imagine other people have had this problem too.

 

Anyone have any ideas? I don't want to delete those files if i don't know what they are, but i am running out of disk space and if these files are increasing in number (i.e. every time the AV does a scan) then i will soon run out of disk space completely.

 

Hi guys. I found the answer here, not surprisingly on McAfee's support forum. I can safely delete all but the last file.