Fast startup on or off??

[marques-1998]

Hello!

Should I have fast startup on or off, what are the pros and cons?

Thanks you all!

 

[nukemaster]

On for hard drives. Maybe off for SSDs

Fast startup allows your computer to get up and running faster after shutting down. This is done by logging off your user and then placing the computer in hibernation. This saves data from memory to the hard drive or solid state drive. All data is loaded back into memory on startup and the system is ready to go again.

Why I recommend ON for hard drive users? Hard drives are not the fastest and for a small bit of extra storage space to hold the hibernation file, you can get much faster system startups. If you use restart, your system will perform the full shut down and restart procedure.

With SSDs this are pretty fast to begin with and space is sometimes more of a concern. SSDs also have so many write cycles on the flash. For this reason some users will avoid fast startup since it can at least a few gigabytes to the SSD every shutdown. Add this to the already fast startup of SSDs and I personally shut this feature off.

If you are dual booting(multiple versions of Windows). Fast startup off gets you to the boot menu faster. With fast startup, the system restarts when you select your OS(unless it was the OS using the fast startup feature to begin with).

I do not think fast startup will actually cause harm to any system, but sometimes you should still use a restart instead since the OS is not actually shutting down.

 

[thx1138v2]

If you are talking about BIOS fast startup, it usually has to do with DRAM testing.

Off will test all RAM lightly before attempting to boot the OS. It can take quite a while depending on how much RAM you have and how fast your processor and RAM is. The test usually writes to the RAM in blocks and reads it back to test against what was supposed to be written.

On will disable the RAM testing. Faster but no RAM test. It checks that it has RAM but doesn't test the RAM.

Usually leave if On unless you think you are having RAM problems.

Try it both ways to see the difference.

 

[marques-1998]

If you are talking about BIOS fast startup, it usually has to do with DRAM testing.

Off will test all RAM lightly before attempting to boot the OS. It can take quite a while depending on how much RAM you have and how fast your processor and RAM is. The test usually writes to the RAM in blocks and reads it back to test against what was supposed to be written.

On will disable the RAM testing. Faster but no RAM test. It checks that it has RAM but doesn't test the RAM.

Usually leave if On unless you think you are having RAM problems.

Try it both ways to see the difference.

ON: Faster startup OFF: slower startup, that was the only difference I notice, While gaming I notice no diference, so should I let it ON??

 

[nukemaster]

These settings be it bios or the Windows 10 feature should not affect performance of the system outside of how fast it starts and gets to Windows.

 

[Colif]

If you unplug PC when fast startup is on, the event viewer will report an Event 41 at startup, as PC is actually still on as far as windows is concerned. This isn't a big problem, just disconcerting. Also a reminder you should unplug PC before working inside, especially if removing ram.

Fast startup in BIOS now normally just means that all extra USB devices apart from mouse/kb are ignored at boot up. Really depends on the motherboard maker, some define it differently.

if you don't use hibernation but still use fast startup, you can save yourself 20% of the file size: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/25151-specify-hiberfile-type-full-reduced-windows-10-a.html