Superfetch and the SSD

[whs]

I constantly hear that Superfetch should be turned off when you run the OS on an SSD. I totally fail to see the point.

RAM is still a lot faster than the fastest SSD and a good pack of cached stuff enhances performance. So why would anybody want to miss that opportunity.

The only argument I have seen is that people are afraid that the extra write operations would wear the SSD. I think this is phony. Measurements have shown that the SSDs will last a lot longer than you care to keep it.

Any other arguments??

 

[Sedril]

I leave my superfetch on.... I've had SSDs for over a year, and my first one is still at 100% life left... and I tend to format and reinstall alot cause I'm OCD about my computers.... I just recently upgraded my main system to two Vertex 3 120gb drives in a raid 0... I can't imagine using a HDD for a boot drive anymore... I make very few "tweaks" to my SSD"s

So, in short, I agree, the worry about writing too much is a bit overhyped, especially on the latest gen drives...

 

[Hopalong X]

WHS

Old habits die hard for some folks it appears. I leave Superfetch on per your tutorial.

 

[Wishmaster]

I constantly hear that Superfetch should be turned off when you run the OS on an SSD. I totally fail to see the point.

RAM is still a lot faster than the fastest SSD and a good pack of cached stuff enhances performance. So why would anybody want to miss that opportunity.

The only argument I have seen is that people are afraid that the extra write operations would wear the SSD. I think this is phony. Measurements have shown that the SSDs will last a lot longer than you care to keep it.

Any other arguments??

Agreed. I leave mine on as well.

 

[whs]

Sedril, even old drives seem to last. My nearly 4 year old first Intel SSD is still at 95%. And that is a Gen1 which is being used every day.

 

[Sedril]

It seems funny that some would purchase an SSD to help speed up their machines, and then turn around and disable every little thing they can, in a sense defeating most of the purpose of having the thing in the first place...

 

[whs]

It seems funny that some would purchase an SSD to help speed up their machines, and then turn around and disable every little thing they can, in a sense defeating most of the purpose of having the thing in the first place...

Yeah, in their desperation they browse the web for advice and pick up any nuisance. If they would get their brain to work, the results might be better.

 

[KazeNoKoe23]

I honestly believed that the extra writes associated with Superfetch DID wear down the SSD, so I disabled it.

Now that I know it's (probably) bunk, I'll go ahead and re-enable it.

 

[Wishmaster]

Have a look at my X25-V 40GB SSD.

Im not kidding when I say this drive has had a rough life. Lots of experimentation.

Its had weekly Consolodate Defrag passes ran on it, with Perfect Disc before SSD Optimize came along.
Its always has Pre-Fetch enabled.

Quite a few re-installs of windows, and System Image restores via Acronis.
In fact, at one point I think I was doing a system disc restore once a week for a while.
At one point, once a day for a week or so just because of various experiments gone awry.


At any count, even with all of that in over a year of service, you can see it didnt really harm it much. And I was certainly rough on it.



I mean, if it hadnt had like 50 systems restores done already, it would probably be at 100% still
The writes done from Superfetch surely will not have near that impact.
Well, maybe in 25years time.


BTW, the SMART DATA says that particular drive has 13,161 Power On Hours with 10.8TB Host Writes.

 

[whs]

Yeah, all the nums I have seen and measured myself are similar. Proves again that SSDs are robust.

 

[dmxdex2020]

I have superfetch disabled and i have had 2 BSODS. I am using an ssd. How do i show the logs? Need help on this.

 

[James7679]

dmxdex2020, http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html
Please create a new thread in Crashes and Debugging and follow these instructions.

 

[DeaconFrost]

It seems funny that some would purchase an SSD to help speed up their machines, and then turn around and disable every little thing they can, in a sense defeating most of the purpose of having the thing in the first place...

That's the same feeling I get when I read all the threads asking 'Now that I have my SSD...how do I move all of my important files off of it".

 

[whs]

I think that many people have not understood that a SSD is quite robust. In part that is the fault of the so called 'experts' on forums like the OCZ forum.

Maybe it was justified in the early years. But I own SSDs since 4 years and even my Gen1 Intels are still going strong - and very fast even without Trim.

 

[orlando1974]

Mine was set to "Manual" by Windows 7. I have a Crucial M4. Do I leave it as is?

 

[Layback Bear]

I'm not saying yes or no to superfetch. In Intels Tool Box under Help.
Superfetch*/Prefetch
In Microsoft Windows* 7 and Windows Vista*, Superfetch* tracks and copies your most frequently used applications to system memory to reduce load times. Superfetch is based on the similar Prefetch feature available in Windows XP. Superfetch/Prefetch is not needed on an Intel SSD and should be disabled for optimal performance
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have 12 gigs of ram that I use very little of and superfetch is off. I'm going to figure how to turn it on and give it a try.

 

[bigmck]

I just checked my Super-Fetch and it was not started. I started it and put it on Automatic. Is that what I want? Thanks,

 

[whs]

The Superfetch setting in Services should be 'Manual'.

 

[bigmck]

The Superfetch setting in Services should be 'Manual'.

Thanks very much