HDD constantly caching ?

Dicehunter · 4 Jan 2009 at 18:34

Ok so my hard drive is caching a lot, not all the time but a lot and its loud as i have a Raptor X with the clear top, i summed this up to be vistas superfetch.
My main question is if i disable it how much of a performance hit would i get if any and are there any downsides to disabling this service ?

miniyazz · 4 Jan 2009 at 19:57

I was under the impression (may be wrong though) that superfetch was used more when the computer was idle. Is this when you're using the computer? Anyway, easiest way to figure out the performance hit would be to use it for another day or so, but when you load a program/whatever jot down how long it took to open, then disable superfetch and do likewise.

mnet674 · 4 Jan 2009 at 21:08

A while after boot it should stop superfetching, you can see how much it has cached in the task manager though...if you leave it idle too long it'll probably start defragging in the background instead!

littlepuppy · 4 Jan 2009 at 22:40

I had to upgrade from raptor 35gb adfd to velociraptor because of vistas disk activity - even with everything toned down as it was too loud :-(

Using old disk in an xp build now....

Lanz · 6 Jan 2009 at 17:35

Secret is to not turn your vista PC off, use sleep instead, that way you dont suffer from prefetch and index activity after you turn it on.

miniyazz · 6 Jan 2009 at 17:53

Lanz said:
Secret is to not turn your vista PC off, use sleep instead, that way you dont suffer from prefetch and index activity after you turn it on.

Or you could delete your prefetch from time to time, it can get a bit hung up about stuff you don't use sometimes!

mame · 8 Jan 2009 at 23:13

If it is a new install of vista it does take a while to settle down.