Windows 10: Disable Prefetch & Superfetch

if i don't like anything its done I just untick it and hit apply again, it has always gone back to the old setting

 

RAMDisk is particularly useful, if someone has concerns about SSD's lifetime. It can be used for prefetch files as well.

 

Hi,

They sure are fast and if you have RAM to spare, why not ?
But the days SSDs wore out pretty fast are long gone and most are pretty fast, especially the NVMe ones nowadays.

Cheers, *Wink

 

But RAM disks lose everything when you power off. Not really good candidates for caches.

 

The RAM disk programs out there today, have settings, where a copy of the disk contents will be written to your hard drive(and usually drive of choice) after a certain amount of time(i.e. 10 min., 30 min. and so on) plus an option of have the contents written at system shut down.

I have played with one before and found it Kludgy, as it slowed boot and shutdown immensely(while waiting for contents to be written and read at shutdown & boot).

 

Using a RAM disk just decreases RAM available for use, increasing paging unless user has plenty of RAM. When will people stop perpetuating stuff about writing life issues with SSDS. Things have moved on.

 

I've got plenty of RAM, do I really need to use RamDisk, of course it's even faster than Samsung 960 Pro but is there any noticeable difference in using them? And what's the best RAMDisk App? *Smile

 

Some programs still insist on using disk based cache (or temporary work space) so a RAMdisk just fools it by using RAM instead.

 

We are goung away from point of using it for prefetch which is pointless as you need the prefetch in permanent storage anyway to get it on RAMDISK.

I cannot remember any program that used disk caching for a long time. Even if they did, I seriously doubt you would detect any real gain if you used an ssd as such programs were designed in days of spinners.

 

A RAMDisk was a useful thing back in DOS days but are now largely obsolete. Modern operating systems have a sophisticated caching system that provides most of the benefits with fewer disadvantages. The cache is transparent to applications and all that access a disk will benefit. For practical purposes the system cache is a super RAMDisk. It's size is dynamically adjusted according to usage and RAM availability. What files are in the cache and how long they remain there is dynamically adjusted according to the situation. And the caching is more granular, containing the portions of files that are being used while a RAMDisk must contain entire files.

A RAMDisk is usually a poor use of memory. It ties up substantial portions of memory that can usually be managed more efficiently by the OS. If you really understand your workload you may be able to do better. But the odds are against it. You may enhance some aspect of performance but overall performance will usually suffer.

In a modern OS almost all of RAM is essentially used as a form of cache. This goes far beyond the system cache. This memory isn't normally considered a cache but in a very real sense that is how it is used.

 

The best use of a RAMDisk is when you are multi-booting a 32 bit OS & a 64 Bit OS.

My previous setup was triple boot (XP, W7 & LM).
XP couldn't use the 8 GB of RAM that was installed, so I setup a 4 GB RAMDisk.
After that XP ran very smoothly.

The fact that all of the garbage in the Temp folders and caches was purged on shutdown was a bonus.

 

Hi,

If you know what you're doing a RAM disk can be useful for sure. RAM cerainly is still much faster than any traditional non-volatile storage media.

Cheers, *Wink

 

I'm with Cliff S ... and many others here ... and many more at MS. Leave this stuff alone.

MS develops OS after OS after OS, refining it over the decades. Leave it alone.

But then comes Joe Computer Homeboy.
Joe Computer Homeboy knows better.
Ugh!
Must disable prefetch.
Must disable superfetch.
Must regap spark plugs.
Must remove catalytic converter.
Ugh!

 

When I try to disable services I always end up with a sluggish performance and I end up setting everything as default. So if you can, leave everything as default *Smile

 

I disabled prefetch, defender, cortana, windows update services, various services, installed several "anti-spyware apps", removed MS Store and UWP apps, disabled a lot of ports in firewall, disabled Edge, set pagefile to a fixed size etc.

My PC runs 2% faster now and I have save 2GB on my 2TB drive but chrome keeps crashing - what's wrong *Confused*Wink.