Still Disable Prefetch/SuperFetch for SSD in Windows7?

[Mango1970]

AS the title states must we or should we disable prefetch or Superfetch etc., even in Windows 7 while using an SSD? The OCZ forums has this a tip or tweak for 'older" SSD drives like mine (OCZ Core series) under Vista. I have disabled indexing, search and Win7 has disabled by itself the auto defrag - so this is my last issue or concern.

thanks

 

[alcoholbob]

It's up to you.

Those "tweaks" were primarily designed to work around the JMicron flaws. The idea was to remove as much background work as possible to limit saturation of the JMicron controller chip.

Anand mentions them in his SSD anthology as more or less futile attempts prevent stuttering. I'm also not entirely convinced this has much overall effect on JMicron chipset performance. If you go to the G.skill forums their techs also downplay any effect of the OCZ-touted tweaks.

It's not like an SSD is so stratospherically faster that these things won't improve performance.

 

[Old Hippie]

I did with my Titan and still do with my Intel but it wouldn't matter what drive I'm using.

I use the services manager and turn many of those added features/services to manual/forget-about-it shortly after the install.

 

[Lorne]

There dissabled in Win7 as they serve no perpose for SSD drives other then to decrease life expectancy, It should be enabled on spindle drives.
Its part of the new drivers in Win7.

 

[imported_TimBob]

Originally posted by: Lorne
There dissabled in Win7 as they serve no perpose for SSD drives other then to decrease life expectancy, It should be enabled on spindle drives.
Its part of the new drivers in Win7.

I'm running windows 7 RC1 and it did not automatically disable superfetch for my x25-m.

 

[chrisf6969]

What about PageFile ? Do you disable that too?

 

[Old Hippie]

Have you played with the little SSD Tweaker Tool?

This link is the latest update.

 

[alcoholbob]

As far as I can tell, all that program does is tell you to do these things yourself in the Control Panel, except half the time it gives erroneous instructions, and you are better off simply typing in the search field in the control panel to get the correct procedure.

 

[alcoholbob]

Originally posted by: chrisf6969
What about PageFile ? Do you disable that too?

Pagefile is primarily random reads and sequential writes. It should have completely neglible effect performance wise on SSDs (including JMicron drives).

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: Astrallite
As far as I can tell, all that program does is tell you to do these things yourself in the Control Panel, except half the time it gives erroneous instructions, and you are better off simply typing in the search field in the control panel to get the correct procedure.

Worked(s) OK for me.

 

[BoboKatt]

Went ahead and did all the tweaks on my Win7 anyhow. Running good thus far either way, even before I applied them -- guess it might be helpful down the line. Kinda hard to determine with a fresh install.

 

[Drizzt321]

Originally posted by: Lorne
There dissabled in Win7 as they serve no perpose for SSD drives other then to decrease life expectancy, It should be enabled on spindle drives.
Its part of the new drivers in Win7.

How does Prefetch/SuperFetch decrease SSD life expectancy? To the best of my recollection those read data into memory, and perform NO writes to the disk. Last I heard, reading from flash memory didn't decrease its life expectancy.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Drizzt321

Originally posted by: Lorne
There dissabled in Win7 as they serve no perpose for SSD drives other then to decrease life expectancy, It should be enabled on spindle drives.
Its part of the new drivers in Win7.

How does Prefetch/SuperFetch decrease SSD life expectancy? To the best of my recollection those read data into memory, and perform NO writes to the disk. Last I heard, reading from flash memory didn't decrease its life expectancy.

+1

the reason you were supposed to disable them on jmicron chips is because it furthered taxes an already slow drive

 

[Drizzt321]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Drizzt321

Originally posted by: Lorne
There dissabled in Win7 as they serve no perpose for SSD drives other then to decrease life expectancy, It should be enabled on spindle drives.
Its part of the new drivers in Win7.

How does Prefetch/SuperFetch decrease SSD life expectancy? To the best of my recollection those read data into memory, and perform NO writes to the disk. Last I heard, reading from flash memory didn't decrease its life expectancy.

+1

the reason you were supposed to disable them on jmicron chips is because it furthered taxes an already slow drive

That I can completely understand. Don't know if it actually amounts to any real-world improvements though. I think there was someone above in the thread said that it doesn't really seem to have much affect. I'll reserve judgment until I run some tests. Anyone want to buy me a drive so I can run some benchmarks!

 

[taltamir]

I imagine it wouldn't make much of a difference. if anything I would think superfetch would help since its faster to read off of ram than it is off of a HDD.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Drizzt321

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Drizzt321

Originally posted by: Lorne
There dissabled in Win7 as they serve no perpose for SSD drives other then to decrease life expectancy, It should be enabled on spindle drives.
Its part of the new drivers in Win7.

How does Prefetch/SuperFetch decrease SSD life expectancy? To the best of my recollection those read data into memory, and perform NO writes to the disk. Last I heard, reading from flash memory didn't decrease its life expectancy.

+1

the reason you were supposed to disable them on jmicron chips is because it furthered taxes an already slow drive

That I can completely understand. Don't know if it actually amounts to any real-world improvements though. I think there was someone above in the thread said that it doesn't really seem to have much affect. I'll reserve judgment until I run some tests. Anyone want to buy me a drive so I can run some benchmarks!

The windows 7 team is actually recommending (or defaulting IIRC) that you enable them on the slower Jmicron drives. Based on my experience with my Titan, Superfetch makes it significantly smoother after it has had time to finish filling RAM. It is more sluggish for the first 5 minutes or so after booting, however.

 

[Forumpanda]

Seems strange to me, I would think that the windows prefetch thing supposed to let all other disk request have priority over it?
Otherwise it would seem to me that it would have a worse performance impact on spindle drives as well.

I am sure that I am uninformed as to how it works though

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Forumpanda
Seems strange to me, I would think that the windows prefetch thing supposed to let all other disk request have priority over it?
Otherwise it would seem to me that it would have a worse performance impact on spindle drives as well.

I am sure that I am uninformed as to how it works though

that is how it is SUPPOSED to work... AFAIK it does work as advertised and improve performance no matter the drive type.