Windows Defender scanning USB flash drive in the background

Hi guys,

Whenever I stick my USB flashdrive in my notebook, for some reason it will not paste my files there. The progress bar just says 0% when copying from my Documents folder and pasting to the USB stick. But sometimes. Especially when I leave the USB stick in for several minutes. And these are not huge files.

My assumption is, that its got to do with Windows Defender taking over the USB contents and scanning it and when its scanning the contents of it, it will prevent writing to the USB flash drive. Now, not saying that this is true, but I do have a strong feeling. And sometimes, it will have a delay to safely remove the USB flash drive as well.

So my question is, is there anything that I can do to prevent this from happening?

The scanning of removable drives is DISABLED or NOT CONFIGURED in Group Policy, so I have not even touched that.

How can I prevent the scanning thats happening automatically in the background without actually disabling Windows Defender?

What I can perhaps do, is adding the USB drive to the Exclusion list.
For example, adding D:\

Or maybe its scanning the Documents folder?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

Open the USB drive in File Explorer > right-click on a Folder on the drive and choose properties > Security > click on your
user name, and check if you have read and write access rights.

You need to have write access rights to save/paste anything to the drive!
Is the PC your private or work machine?

Always use File Explorer for working with drives and folders.

This is my personal machine. Like I said before, this happens from time to time. Not always.
My USB has me full access. No restrictions. And this happens when I leave the USB plugged in for more than 5 minutes. On shorter periods of time, this is less likely to occur.


My strong feeling is, that Windows Defender is somehow scanning the directories and will not allow copying and pasting.

So how can I disable this without actually turning off real time protection?