Windows 7 tweaks for SSD's

What do you need to conserve RAM for though? Isn't loading an app from RAM still much faster than loading it from the SSD? Or is the difference so negligible that using either instead of an HDD would be transparent to the user? I'm mostly curious about that and the page file, everyone and their mom seems to suggest disabling the page file but that FAQ says the contrary, I would've thought that simply putting it on a 2dary HDD was enough but...
 
Superfetch loads into disk cache section of ram, which is still considered "available" memory to the OS. So superfetch does NOT consume ram in the sense that it is taking it away from anything else. Why have 8GB of ram with 6GB not doing anything but wasting electricity? Might as well put it all to use, and memory is several orders of magnitude faster than even the fastest SSD.

Personally I roll with pagefile on (and ON the SSD), hibernate off, indexing off, superfetch on, defrag off, with Windows 7.
 
Well, that's exactly the way I understood it... Superfetch just reads from the HDD (or SSD) and loads stuff into RAM, which can be discarded immediately if it's ever needed for something else... And it's still faster to access than an SSD, but Win7 disables it by default for SSDs, hence my confusion.
 
Are you sure it does?

EDIT: Yeah it looks like it does according to that article. I usually tend to agree with stuff on MSDN posts as those guys usually know what they are talking about. Seems like they are implying that Superfetch doesnt net you any reasonable gains on an SSD NOR does it make things worse.

I need to make sure it is enabled on my box at home. I will do some tests with Superfetch OFF, by loading up a big app (Visual studio or something) off a fresh boot (load from disk, NOT cache) and then closing it and re-opening it (which will load it from disk cache now) and see if it's faster.
 
Well, I suppose they might've changed this... I'd have to load Win7 and check (not running it as my primary OS yet), but that's what the FAQ on the MSDN blog I linked says. Here's some excerpts:


" Will Superfetch be disabled on SSDs?

Yes, for most systems with SSDs.

If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn’t have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadDrive will all be disabled.

Initially, we had configured all of these features to be off on all SSDs, but we encountered sizable performance regressions on some systems. In root causing those regressions, we found that some first generation SSDs had severe enough random write and flush problems that ultimately lead to disk reads being blocked for long periods of time. With Superfetch and other prefetching re-enabled, performance on key scenarios was markedly improved. "


and...


" Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

* Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
* Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
* Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

Are there any concerns regarding the Hibernate file and SSDs?

No, hiberfile.sys is written to and read from sequentially and in large chunks, and thus can be placed on either HDDs or SSDs. "
 
Oh and it says at the end: Published Tuesday, May 05, 2009 12:00 AM by e7blog
 
SSDs have Very low access times, so superfetch is not needed nor is prefetchers or defrag

Superfetch are for HDDs to get the data into ram so its ready for you so it opens faster with SSDs the access times are very low so the program is no faster if it is loaded from the SSD or from ram, superfetch can slow an HDD down if its done at times when the HDD is accessing the an file as well (i turned it off on my dads laptop as it was recking the read performance of his disk when he was doing video editing or burning an video)

Prefetchers are not needed on SSDs as it was ment for programs to get bit of the program into ram on HDDs it did help an little on SSDs it can read the whole program in the same time it takes an HDD to just try and open it

defrag will just wear the SSD out and not do any thing (SSD are fragmented by design to hit as meany cells as it can)

do not use CCleaner on an SSD mroe so the Free space option, as its been noobing speeds of some SSDs to lower then what HDDs go at some times

i have got an corsair S128 in my pc now and its far faster at loading any thing up then my HDD was, every thing just happens when you use an SSD does not need to be Uberfast just have cache on it thats all to keep the Write delays at bay, alot of users get Hooked onto the High Data rate if SSDs its not that important unless you need to mess with 4GB files daily
 
I can get ~200MB a sec SEQUENTIAL reads (best case) out of my SSD. I can easily get over 3,000MB a sec 100% RANDOM reads (worst case) to system memory. Superfetch still helps.
 
I have it turned off on windows vista. On a fresh boot soon as I launch excel it instantly opens. Even if superfetch was active I wouldn't notice it helping. If anything I would notice it slowing my SSD down while it scans the drive.
 
Yeah, I'm guessing that if anything, that's probably the sole reason they'd have to disable it on SSDs... Scanning thru the SSD to add things to the Superfetch cache space on RAM would slow down other operations, but shouldn't the OS just be smart enough to do that during idle periods?
 
I just bought an Intel 160GB G2 SSD yesterday, have windows 7 x64 fresh install. Superfetch was not disabled by default or the disk defragmenter, or indexing.

So I turned all 3 off including the prefetchers.

Drive was updated to the newest Firmware before I did the OS install.

I'm am curious though do they mean windows knows not to run these programs on the SSD and just left them enabled?

Cause all statements point to not needing to disable these when on win 7.

*Update* Shit I didn't notice this thread was so old my bad!
 
No harm intended and you happen to be relevant , so it's all good ;)

The only one I would worry about making sure is disabled would be defrag. There's no harm from leaving superfetch or indexing on, though those might take more resources.
 
Neb said:
No harm intended and you happen to be relevant , so it's all good ;)

The only one I would worry about making sure is disabled would be defrag. There's no harm from leaving superfetch or indexing on, though those might take more resources.
Click to expand...

For me, in Windows 7 the Windows Defragmenter doesn't even let me select the SSDs to defragment...which is a nice touch.
 
Nope. Can't defrag if the defragger wont start. Not that I'm concerned, it was more of an observation than anything else. I simply found it odd. (Had I not had an HDD I could understand, but meh.)
 
Start>(Type in search bar)Services(Select result.)>find superfetch. Do what you like with it there. (Right click>properties and choose Auto/Manual/disable.)
 
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