Superfetching and Prefetching on a SSHD in Windows 8.1 64-Bit

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goodyfresh

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Apr 26, 2015
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Hey fellas, so I have a conundrum here. I originally had a variant of this question posted over in the Storage forum, but someone recommended to me that I ask this question in the Windows 8 forum since it relates to the Windows Superfetch service.

Anyway, I have a recently purchased HP Envy laptop running Windows 8.1 64-bit Home Edition off of a 1TB Seagate Laptop SSHD hybrid-drive with an 8gb NAND Solid-State cache. I have been absolutely bewildered, as of late, as to whether I should keep Superfetch enabled, disable Superfetch, or somehow tweak the settings (Superfetch for boot only? Prefetch but no superfetch? etc.) for fetching in the registry. I know that everyone recommends keeping all prefetching disabled for a SSD, enabled for a HDD, and disabled for a HDD with a separate SSD boot-drive. . .but I have not been able to find ANY information online as to the best way to handle Superfetch/Prefetch when using a HYBRID drive with a small Solid-State Cache like mine. Would superfetch possibly increase the writes to the solid-state cache to the point of shortening the life of my drive noticably during the next few years? Will leaving it enabled, or somehow tweaking its or prefetch's settings, help me get even faster boot and application-startup times, or should I just disable all fetching by the OS and allow Seagate's Adaptive Memory Tech to do its work?

I'd appreciate any input you guys could give me on this question.
 
Solution
MarkW
Both SuperFetch and Prefetch are READ operations. They do store some data, but for the most part what they do is learn what your system does when it boots, and tells defrag to store those files together in the order they load to speed up booting, and to load applications you use at the same times each day into spare memory on your system so that when you ask for those programs, they are already in memory, and they start up very quickly. This memory is listed in the Task Manager as Cache Memory. Cache memory will empty itself and make the emptied memory available to any running app if the app asks for more memory than what was free when the app requested the memory.

As a result, both booting and loading the programs you use regularly...
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MarkW

MarkW

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Both SuperFetch and Prefetch are READ operations. They do store some data, but for the most part what they do is learn what your system does when it boots, and tells defrag to store those files together in the order they load to speed up booting, and to load applications you use at the same times each day into spare memory on your system so that when you ask for those programs, they are already in memory, and they start up very quickly. This memory is listed in the Task Manager as Cache Memory. Cache memory will empty itself and make the emptied memory available to any running app if the app asks for more memory than what was free when the app requested the memory.

As a result, both booting and loading the programs you use regularly will benefit by superfetch and prefetch. So it might notice that you load email, and a web browser in the mornings, but in the evenings you have Word and Excel loaded. It will cache the programs you use for the time of day you use them.

So my recommendation is to leave both active, no matter what mix of hard drives and SSDs you have.
 
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Solution
SinxarKnights

SinxarKnights

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You should leave it alone.

The fetch services don't write. They fetch certain data and place it in RAM. If the services are causing problems and you are sure it is in fact the fetch services then disable it if needed. According to Seagate the host system has no effect on the adaptive memory tech.
 
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goodyfresh

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Thank you very much, sir! So this could only ever increase perfomrance, not decrease it, then?

And hold on, don't the prefetch/superfetch services write files into a "Prefetching" folder in the C:/Windows directory, and therefore DO produce some disk-writes?
 
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