Windows 10: Disable Prefetch & Superfetch

It can be. Since January 2010, I've reinstalled W7 twice:

• The Calculator and Network Manager somehow got "borked" (2012)
• I got a new HDD and I decided that I might as well perform a clean install (2013)

The 2012 reinstall still runs properly when I plug in the old HDD (replaced in 2013).
The dual boot XP install (created in January 2010) also still runs correctly.

I had to re-image my W7 PC last month, after I discovered that I had accidentally installed a "Get W10" update.
After I uninstalled it, I noticed that various system windows were screwed up.
Note:
I don't consider re-imaging as reinstalling.
So I'm still on my 2013 install, from a certain point of view.

As for XP, after I started using FF instead of IE6 in 2006, I didn't have to reinstall it, until I created the dual boot setup with W7 in 2010.

 

Well now I just have 2 SSDs on my PC:
Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB as main drive
Samsung SM863 1 TB as archive drive
Both very high performance SSDs and I must disable both Prefetch and Super Fetch, I believe!
I don't have and won't use any HDD in the future and am very interested in a reason to keep those services alive!
Decrease SSD lifetime or PC speed?! *Smile

 

BTW, this is Prefetch folder:
C:\Windows\Prefetch
Anyone knows where's Super Fetch folder?

 

Where do you get silly idea that disabling these is a good idea?

Modern SSDs have a much higher resilience to write cycles and turning these off will have no impact on SSD life that you would be able to measure.

Given your other posts about stopping services, it seems to me you are reading stuff on internet telling you to do such things. Well here is the thing - most of the advice is either years out of date, bullshit or just plain wrong, as it is for older less optimised OSs. Windows 10 is well optimised out of the box.

If you do not understand what things like superfetch, services etc. do, then do not touch them!

You are more likely to break things in attempt to optimise things like a bull in a china shop which will give you limited benefit if any at all.

If there is one piece of advice you SHOULD listen to is "Learn how to make image backups", then you can experiment safely knowing you can revert.

 

To the OP. I also have an ssd and I have noticed A STRONG DECREASE IN PERFORMANCE when Prefetch/Superfetch are disabled.

Leave them as they are. W10 is built with SSD support in mind. You can do any other things if available to increase life spam of ssds:
Move temporary files to an hd. Move or disable web browsers caches. set %TEMP% and %TMP% variables to another drive (I have mine pointing to an HD). Etc.

EDIT: If you are unsure about default configuration, issue an WINSAT -FORMAL -RESTART command to reset configuration.

 

Nooo - even you are falling into trap of moving temporary files to a hard drive. This is so unecessary with modern SSDs. The worst thing to move is the pagefile.

 

Prefetch and Superfetch are there to increase performance. As for Samsung 960 Pro, make sure you install newest, v2.3 driver. Prefetch folder is self cleaning in W10 and it will not grow indefinitely. Even after many months, mine is still 1.6MB. Not much writing even for oldest SSDs.

 

Disabling Prefetch & SuperFetch will actually slow your boot time down specially if you have Fast Startup turned on in Power options, and it will also negatively effect the new feature, where if you do not close a program before shutting down/restarting Windows at boot/reboot it will open those programs you had open before hand.

 

Sorry I'm a Windows Platform Developer / ISV since 2002, and I will test these settings later to check their effect on my high end development PC.
Maybe I am writing a commercial application though for an organization and I have to do such things *Smile

Thanks for your note, I will perform some full tests later.
SSD is so common, we have cheap low performance SSDs and enterprise grade data center SSDs as well like my Samsung SM863 1 TB which has a huge lifetime, much more than me even, and Samsung 960 Pro which is one of the fastest ones on the market now.
Maybe a Sata II or III SSD really needs Superfetch or Prefetcher, but I'm not sure if Samsung 960 Pro with a high config PC without any Sata drive configuration need it, but I will do some benchmarks before and after disabling it, will post back the results, thanks ev1 *Smile

 

Heh. The pagefile is on the ssd. Web browsers caches are on the hd. My system is performing fine otherwise.

 

I would not even bother with web caches personally.

 

Disable pagefile/superfetch and setup RAMDisk for high disk usage apps, like for a browser cache.

[youtube]j4wJlg53hlQ[/youtube]

AMD Radeon(TM) RAMDisk gives 4GB for free.

 

You should only disable superfetch if your system's RAM is 8GB. It only makes sense at 4GB.

If I am right, superfetch caches applications which you use in order. (eg. When you start up your PC, log on to an account the first thing you open is firefox, next a game, etc..)

 

I think you mixed it up with Virtual Memory, amount of RAM has nothing to do with superfetch/prefetch.

 

Ramdisks are really not needed these days with Windows 10 compressed memory, particularly with SSDs.