SuperFetch. Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone...

[mechBgon]

Cliffs: if you install a Windows image from an SSD onto a HDD, make sure to enable SuperFetch.


I stuck an SSD in my Win7 desktop system at work. Then I decided "bah, I'd rather have this SSD in my system at home, what was I thinking?"

So I reimaged the mechanical HDD back into the work box, using the image from the SSD. There, that was easy. I put the SSD into my home system where I see more benefits.

However, the work system was launching programs slower than when it had that same HDD before. It finally occured to me that Windows might still be treating the HDD like an SSD. Sure enough, the SuperFetch service was disabled. I set it back to Automatic start, and for good measure I re-ran MagicAndre1981's boot-optomization routine. Muuuuuuuch better 🙂

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Good tip to know. Before clicking on this link, I knew that this post was going to be about normal HDD, and indeed it was. 😀

 

[SynthDude2001]

Can't believe I never thought of this. Had to sell my SSD a few months back for some extra cash, noticed the computer being pretty slow afterwards but I assumed it was just because I'd been used to the SSD.

That's what I get for being too lazy to do a full reinstall 😛

 

[Magic Carpet]

Question: Wouldn't a modern defrag soft partially take care of this? The disk layout.

 

[Nothinman]

Question: Wouldn't a modern defrag soft partially take care of this? The disk layout.

It shouldn't unless MS/Diskeeper were stupid and let data from defragged files trash the filesystem cache.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Thinking of PerfectDisk, I can recall an option for this.

 

[Nothinman]

Thinking of PerfectDisk, I can recall an option for this.

An option for killing your filesystem cache and filling it with worthless junk that's read during a defrag? That actually makes sense since defrag software is pretty much snakeoil anyway.

 

[SandEagle]

sure its a good idea to run superfetch with an SSD? i thought manufacturers and many tech sites mentioned to turn off superfetch and defrag with an SSD? that's how i have it set up.

EDIT: reading fail. you went SSD > HDD. I thought it was the other way around. nvm

 

[DirkGently1]

This has nothing to do with 'Windows treating a HDD as an SSD'. If you had SF off when you made the image, then of course it will be off when you then install the image to the HDD.

Windows doesn't automatically disable SF when you install an SSD so it had to be done manually, or through a tool like Intels Toolbox in the first place. Were you under the assumption that Windows took care of this 'tweak' by itself by any chance?

 

[ViRGE]

Windows doesn't automatically disable SF when you install an SSD so it had to be done manually, or through a tool like Intels Toolbox in the first place. Were you under the assumption that Windows took care of this 'tweak' by itself by any chance?

In a sane world that would certainly be the best way to do it. There's no penalty for enabling it (or disabling it) after the fact, so why only attempt to set it during the install?

 

[mechBgon]

This has nothing to do with 'Windows treating a HDD as an SSD'. If you had SF off when you made the image, then of course it will be off when you then install the image to the HDD.

Windows doesn't automatically disable SF when you install an SSD so it had to be done manually, or through a tool like Intels Toolbox in the first place. Were you under the assumption that Windows took care of this 'tweak' by itself by any chance?

According to Microsoft, Win7 does automagically disable SuperFetch when the boot drive is an SSD and performance is acceptable. Their summary is here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Be default, Windows 7 will disable Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance. These technologies were all designed to improve performance on traditional HDDs, where random read performance could easily be a major bottleneck.