Vista x64 4gb users, turn off Superfetch!

I have 8GB and SuperFetch on and the only time I hear my hard drive is when I use WinRAR or write files to/from the disk.

 

Yes, I have 32bit, and 3GB. Superfetch is pretty much useless.

 

I have 2 Gb and vista 32 and since I have not noticed slowdowns, I'd say it doesn't hurt either.

 

Running vista 32 with 2 gigs of ram. I have superfetch, Indexing, and system restore all turned off. Vista is now running as fast as XP on my system.

 

I went from my 1GB DDR1 RAM desktop to my 4GB DDR2 RAM laptop. So I dunno how 2GB would perform. I'd say I've seen two extremes, not that Vista does not work on 1GB, just a bit slower though.... So Eleron, I'd suggest you to try 64-bit, you'll love it Oh, and it couldn't hurt getting 4GB of RAM

 

Ive been making observations on disabling Superfetch. I am only speaking for people that have x64 4gb.

No noticable performance hit so far, that might be because i have a fast setup. And i see no harm in doing so. Disabling is will just return it back to XP style ram management . I mean how bad could XP be with the RAM?

I did turn ON the Superfetch service today and instantly watched my HD go nuts for 2mins+. For some reason my external HD was being utilized aswell for 20 seconds or so.

But anyway I was also keeping an eye on my physical memory usage and found the following:



I watched my memory go down to 21mb while my HD was being thrashed. Superfetch loaded over 2.3gb of crap into my RAM.

Is it really neccessary to put that much in there? I mean the HD gets thrashed everytime Superfetch needs to re-populate the RAM. Superfetch doesnt only do it at boot-up. It will repopulate it everytime the RAM is free'd up.

This may be beneficial for people with 2gb because the superfetch cache is minimal. But for 4gb users, that large RAM space needs to filled up at the expense of the HD. The less hd use the better, less heat, less power consumption.

Disabling Superfetch will only load up what you really need instead of loading up 2gb of crap that you dont need. Again, i havent seen a performance loss.

My notebook is more peaceful with Superfetch off so i think ill keep it off. I say it like how i see it. If it works for you, then it works, regardless of theory. Easy as that.

If it doesnt, then turn it back on.

 

Where does this notion that "your hard drive will wear out" come from? This is absolutely not an issue. Drives mostly fail because either the bearings wear out (bearings wear out from spinning, which the drive is always doing) or the heads crash into the platter as a result of a shock (ie. when dropped). Simply using the drive does absolutely nothing to "wear it out".

I bet anyone who's doing this tweak to save their hard drives is also probably running some sort of defrag program on a weekly basis. Which one do you think uses the drive more?

No, it doesn't. No more than using it for anything else reduces the lifespan.

Yes!! Thank you!

Your quad-core is completely irrelevant here. Program startup time is slowed down by loading things off the disk, not your CPU. Disk is by far the slowest thing in a system. Superfetch would actually help you MORE because your superfast awesome CPU won't be spending so much time waiting for the disk.

The more RAM you have the MORE USEFUL superfetch becomes. Your statement shows a misunderstanding of what superfetch is and why it helps performance. Maybe you're thinking of readyboost?

Actually yes, XP had huge memory usage problems. When copying large files, eventually every other program would stop responding as all memory was sucked up by the copy. Or when the system was idle and started a virus scan or a defrag, when you got back the system was so slow you had to wait 10 minutes (literally) for all of your work to get reloaded off the pagefile back into RAM.

As for using all your RAM, THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT IT TO DO! RAM is fast and expensive, so you always want it full if it can be. If it's got cached data in it then it makes the whole system faster. You do not want your RAM to be 50% full but have to wait for the very slow hard disk to load stuff as you need it. It's best to load off the disk beforehand or at times when the disk is idle, which is exactly what superfetch does.

 

Umm no. I didn't misunderstand anything. IMO Superfetch is useless, and my opinion will remain that it is worthless having it running.

 

Your opinion is not substantiated by technical fact. Superfetch uses more RAM to enable programs to load more quickly.

 

Well then there are no polite words that can be said towards you.

 

Its common sense the more the HD gets used, the more it will wear out. If it didnt then HD's would last forever. Superfetch might be a small process but it will add up in the long run since it does use the HD excessively. Im not saying your HD will die imminently because of Superfetch.

Yes defragging is a bigger process but have you actually experienced long periods of disk thrashing?

I said XP style management not literally XP. Those issues wont happen just because of disabling superfetch. We are on Vista now.

Have you actually tried disabling it? Try it for a day or two.

Yes thats what i want it do, what i dont want it to do is to use up my HD everytime it needs too.

Superfetch's idea is to load the programs faster but if the performance is the same on loading the programs with it off. What difference does it make?!

1 big difference... the hd doesnt load up the programs you dont need. You only load the programs you need. and like i said.. no performance difference

Thus less HD usage = less power consumption, quieter, and superfetch doesnt use up the HD's bandwidth.

Again im only speaking for x64 4gb users which have alot of memory space. Im not saying everyone should do this

 

I never said anything on how it supposedly works. I don't need any "technical facts". The real fact is, my programs all load almost instantly with it turned off, and don't load noticeably faster with it turned on. My HD also does not get continuously access for minutes at a time with it turned off.
If you like it, leave it on. More power to you.

 

WTF are you talking about?

 

Exactly.

Theory is nice. How it really works out is better.

You probably dont even know how superfetch works but if it the practically works for you then who the hell cares of the theory behind it

The end result says more.

 

I'm telling you, there has to Microsoft employees lurking in these threads. Either that, or they drank the Kool-Aid. Every time a thread comes up about Vista's performance and/or turning off services, they come out of the woodwork. :laugh:

 

I can't help but chiming in. This is just absolutely not correct. Sorry, but common sense just doesn't cut it for this one. Running the HDD for an hour, much less a few minutes, doesn't have much of a wearing effect on the HDD. Other common tasks such as turning the HDD on and off generate substantially more wear. Also, starting and stopping the HDD generates much more wear by comparison to running the HD. Because Superfetch is loading up programs you use all in one shot, you only have to start up the HDD once (I'm assuming this is how superfetch works, im not much into windows, especially not vista). Loading your programs one at a time, the disk will start and stop after each program. If anything, Superfetch will increase the lifespan of your HDD. But Superfetch or not, its not really going to matter. Your HDD is going to fail when it fails, and, *surprisingly and against all instinct*, using the HDD just doesn't effect its lifespan.

I'm not saying leave it on if it annoys you, but don't turn it off if the only reason is to protect your HDD from failure.

 

Superfetch doesnt load up once, it will repopulate the RAM everytime its free'd. So lets say after playing Crysis, RAM free's up, HD gets thrashed again.

Less disk activity, the better. What about the heads parking and unparking due to superfetch? HD's have a 600,000 cycle estimation. Like i said, your HD wont die tommorow but the disks activity superfetch uses will add up in the long run

 

Lawl orev, be nice!

 

that is the polite and proffesional way of saying $%@#!$#$@

 

Honestly, I don't think it would have much of an effect either way.

I'm not saying that Superfetch is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or that its even a good idea. It sounds like it doesn't help very much on fast computers. Sort of like how readyboost is pretty much a flop on reasonably fast computers with plenty of ram... (and yet for the longest time people with 4GB of ram would ask how to "take advantage" of readyboost)

Superfetch also sounds like a feature for low end hardware.

That said, I stand by my original assessment that its not going to kill your HDD, and that against all instinct, usage of your HDD is not going to effect its lifespan.

It might bother you, annoy you, and be void of much of any help to you, but its not going to burn you.

 

Yes, always go with your gut, because when those pesky "technical facts" get in the way of your reality, you can just ignore them.

This is really my problem with this thread. The basis by which the advice is being given is completely incorrect. If you don't want superfetch because the noise of the HD bothers you or something else like that, then fine. I might even buy the battery life argument, but to say that "it will use up the drive and cause it to fail" is simply false.

 

OK. OK. You're right. Since Technically it's supposed to speed everything up, myself and many others that report seeing no benefit to having it on are wrong. I'm sorry for not believing everything I read. My real life experiences are completely wrong, and Superfetch is the greatest. I'll just turn it on, pretend everything is opening so much faster, and ignore my HD activity.
Happy now?

 

I never said it was gonna fail! Like i said in the first page, i didnt mean to panic anyone. I also just said in the previous posts that your HD isnt gonna explode the next few seconds just because superfetch is on.

Im just saying Superfetch adds up to HD's usage and activity which can possibly add wear to the HD in the long run. PCstats.com did name it as the grand daddy of disk thrashing and they did briefly mention long term effects of wear and tear to the HD.

The point of this thread was so people try it out and see if it works out better for them. And it seems like some people have had success with superfetch disabled.

The HD wear argument was taken out of context, i didnt mean to make it a hot topic. I guess the term disk 'thrashing' did. My other arguments of HDD noise/light, power consumption was also supposed to have the same importance. Personally the HDD light/noise going off all the time annoyed me, thats why i disabled it the first place.

Yes i did say some things from speculative point of view but im not the only one complaining and concerned of vista's disk thrashing, its all over the net.

 

I'm gonna try it without and post my impressions in a few days.

 

thanks eleron but if you dont have 4gb x64 your results will vary. If you only have 2gb then the HD wont need to load as much stuff into your RAM.

 

You should see the effect immediately after the first reboot, at least if the Windows installation is more than few days old. If you don't, then I doubt the situation changes in few days and you might as well leave it off.

 

Send me a 4 Gb RAM kit and I'll dual boot

Yea,we'll see. I need to make a restart pretty soon due to some updates.

 

Disable superfetch after you do the updates. If your gonna test it, you might aswell make it accurate. The updates will use up the HD and interfere with the results

 

Vista is doing it's housekeeping when it first runs and will do so until everything is in order and it's only temporary. After all the housekeeping is done it actually becomes quieter and doesn't turn on the HD as often. New programs that are loaded are automatically set to run/load faster. Turning off superfetch doesn't make your system significantly run faster and might in fact do the opposite in the long run for it has to 'look' for files and programs to load. Sacrifice a couple of days for disk thrashing for a better performance. What's worse for a hard drive is turning your system on/off throughout the day. Those power spikes will ruin it faster than when it's spinning.

 

Did you not just read the previous posts? or did you just post what you personally think of it regardless? Ill just pretend you didnt post that

Please try to keep up.

 

Its funny that so many people are spending their time arguing over something that Microsoft and hardware manufacturer engineers and technicians have probably already examined and tested extensively before product launch. Ever heard of the term "liability?" It makes product makers shake with fear and test their products to ensure that they won't cause problems.

 

Yeah im also sure Microsoft engineers and technicians examined and extensively tested Vista for problems before product launch.

What did it end up with?

People downgrading back to XP.

 

I think is like an old hat, we are so attached to it that we go back to use it a couple of times, but eventually we put it in a box, and we wear the nice new one, so I think people will go back to Vista, that's the way I see it.

 

Oh sorry... I just put in my opinion and sometimes don't bother to read the rest of the thread. Gets tiring reading pros and cons and there's bound to be duplicate responses.

 

To be honest, a lot of it is FUD. We have a 4GB quad-core 2.4ghz box at work that runs Vista x64 PERFECTLY and runs all the apps it needs to run without a hiccup. They want to re-do it with XP for the sole reason that they can't figure out how to log on to another domain. Mind you, Vista has a thing to click on at the login screen SPECIFICALLY saying "How do I log on to another domain?" that explains what to do.

This is the extent of "I can't be spared to read one sentence in order to use this OS, I'd rather lose half a day, a GIG of RAM and revert this new workstation back seven years. Vista SUX."

Funny thing is despite the specs people didn't even want to TRY the PC simply because of Vista. It was only after they saw me using it and not complaining (as they tend to with the old XP boxes) that they suddenly wanted to try Vista.

 

lol. yes. lets start trusting microsoft to thoroughly test and support their software products at launch.

 

everyone seems to be arguing about how turning off superfetch isnt going to make a difference in the hard drives life, but what about the battery life of those of us who are on the road alot with our notebooks. I think even 1 minute gained by turning off this service is a +. thats my own 2 cents

 

well said. your battery life absolutely will suffer if your hard drive is spinning all the time.

 

Of course Vista isnt to blame for that one, your work mates are stupid.

The "Word got out that vista sux. Everybody jump on the bandwagon and be a tool" discussion has been dealt with many times before

I myself like Vista overall but there are certain aspects of it which i dislike.

 

flipfire,

I think you misunderstood the usage of Superfetch. Actually, the more RAM you have, the more benefits you will get from SF. People with less than 3 GB of RAM should turn off SF though. There are many articles with extensive tests, they all showed that SF will start benefiting users only when they have 3 or more GB of RAM.

 

By default, indexing only scans your Start menu shortcuts, do you turn that off too?

 

Care to share these extensive tests?

Im quite sure im ahead with the understanding of Superfetch. I did my research aswell, I didnt make this thread because i was bored. I made it because i actually saw a difference.

 

No matter how much ram I have, 1, 2, or 4GB, Windows XP or Vista only seems to use up to half of it... Maybe once in a blue moon I see it use 3 out of the 4GB.

 

I think you need to do your research a little harder.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed,1532.html

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software...-readyboost-how-does-it-affect-you-234109.php

 

Even though I'm only running Vista32, I decided to turn off Superfetch as an experiment. I haven't noticed any significant difference with it on or off so far, but if it doesn't make much of a difference in the first place, I'm considering leaving it off permanently, at the very least to maximize my laptop's HD-life.

 

flipfire,

When you think about the logic of more RAM the better for SF, it actually makes sense. When people have so little RAM, they don't even have enough RAM for themselves, so how would they have enough for SF? Now, people with so much RAM, they can really take full advantage of SF since a lot of their RAM will be just sitting there empty anyway, so why not fill it with stuff that you mostly use. RAM is faster than HDD, and SF is trying to use more RAM and less HDD in a long run, don't look at just the loading after boot up.

This is where you mixed up the logic.

 

With the way Vista itself along with drivers and hardware are changing, I would not consider nearly 18 month old benchmarks to be 100% representative of how a brand new system today would perform. It would be nice if they re-did these tests with SP1 and new hardware, tho realistically any informed new PC buyer will get 4GB+ RAM especially since it's so freakin' cheap.

 

I think you misunderstood how SF works and the logic behind it. I've already explained the logic in my previous post. If you want something more updated, here are more articles dated May 2008.

http://www.mobilitysite.com/2008/05/superfetch-leave-it-on-or-turn-it-off/

http://tendaonline.blogspot.com/2008/05/disable-superfetch-for-computers-with.html

Once again, SF is not designed for systems with little memory.

 

See now this is where you misunderstood. Yes i know that SF will be more effective on larger memory, because it will have more crap to cache. BUT AT THE COST OF THE HD's USAGE.

I dont know if your keeping up with the thread. Superfetch dumped 2.3gb of programs into my RAM at the cost of my HD's usage (bandwidth, more heat, power consumption). Am i really going to need 2.3gb of loaded programs in there? If disabling SF and loading programs into RAM one by one, doesnt make a performance difference why should i keep SF on? My logic ftw

For the 15th time or so, it didnt affect my performance disabling it. So why should i let it thrash my HD when theres no difference in performance anyway?

I think this thread has gone for too long and no one is actually logically getting me so ill just end up with this simpler conclusion:

Yeah Superfetch is such an important performance feature, that when we disable it, it didnt make a difference on performance. Though my HD did stop getting thrashed.

-

Maybe if you have a slow HD or CPU, Superfetch might be beneficial, since it will be preloaded from a faster source, the RAM. With these days lightning fast systems, loading isnt an issue.

Seriously those links made me laugh, specially coupled with Readyboost. It just made Superfetch sound like one of those useless things implemented in Vista.

EDIT: btw everything discussed in this thread is under my instance (fast cpu, 4gb RAM, x64). I dont know why some bothered to post when theyre not even running the same conditions.

 

IMHO, turning off Superfetch, on *any* Vista system, is the worse advise to give people. What does it matter to you, that your hard drive "trashes" for 3-4 minutes after boot up? You think it's going to kill it?

"HD usage"?? Omg.. This must be the funniest thing I've ever heard. No offense intented. What is your hard drive meant to do, in your notebook? Park its heads and sleep?

Come on people, in most cases, Superfetch is *the* most performance enhancing feature in Vista. Leave it alone.