Superfetch Causing Massive Disk Usage

[Chantz]

Hey guys, I figured out why my disk usage was constantly at 100% in task manager. It was due to superfetch. I'm curious as to how this problem occurred, how disabling superfetch will affect me, and whether there is a way around disabling it.

My basic specs are i7-4790k and 32g ram in an MSI Z-97-G45 Gaming mobo.

-Thanks

 

[SinxarKnights]

Use an SSD and Superfetch doesn't load your programs into memory. Disabling it has no real effect other than making your most used programs load normally (instead of being fast due to being in RAM).

 

[Chantz]

Use an SSD and Superfetch doesn't load your programs into memory. Disabling it has no real effect other than making your most used programs load normally (instead of being fast due to being in RAM).

I know SSD's don't use superfetch, but I don't have an SSD in my rig, only an HDD. I know that you can copy the OS's and temp files onto an SSD to switch your start up drive. But I haven't gotten around to buying an SSD. I'm looking for a fix for the higher % rate caused by superfetch.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[SinxarKnights]

You have two options, use an SSD, or disable it. Since you don't want it to use the HDD to read data from, there is no option but to disable it since you are not using an SSD.

I'm curious as to how this problem occurred

It isn't a problem. It is how it works. After a while of using your PC it fills up the RAM with files that are frequently used. 32GB of random files takes a while to load. It also will remove/add new things on the fly. If you open a program that isnt preloaded it has to write a bunch of stuff to disk to make room in RAM for the new application. For the majority of people it works great as the most common use for a PC is web browsing so there isn't much to load, just the browser and a few other files for quicker access.

If you do a lot on your PC there is a lot more to load and swap on a regular basis.

how disabling superfetch will affect me

Disabling it has no real effect other than making your most used programs load normally (instead of being fast due to being in RAM).

and whether there is a way around disabling it.

Use an SSD.

 

[Chantz]

You have two options, use an SSD, or disable it. Since you don't want it to use the HDD to read data from, there is no option but to disable it since you are not using an SSD.

I'm curious as to how this problem occurred

It isn't a problem. It is how it works. After a while of using your PC it fills up the RAM with files that are frequently used. 32GB of random files takes a while to load. It also will remove/add new things on the fly. If you open a program that isnt preloaded it has to write a bunch of stuff to disk to make room in RAM for the new application. For the majority of people it works great as the most common use for a PC is web browsing so there isn't much to load, just the browser and a few other files for quicker access.

If you do a lot on your PC there is a lot more to load and swap on a regular basis.

how disabling superfetch will affect me

Disabling it has no real effect other than making your most used programs load normally (instead of being fast due to being in RAM).

and whether there is a way around disabling it.

Use an SSD.

Are there any drawbacks of constantly having disk usage at 100%? That's the only thing that I'm really bothered by.

 

[homebrewdr]

Despite what another user said, your disk running at 100% is not the way its designed. Go to your services and turn it off. I'm not sure what causes this issue, but superfetch obviously has some issues. Happens to one of my gaming laptops as well. If I turn it off, everything runs 5 times faster than with it on. Therefore, in my case and yours, Superfetch isn't doing what it was designed to do, which is speed up your program loading times.

 

[zakaria212p]

Hey guys, I figured out why my disk usage was constantly at 100% in task manager. It was due to superfetch. I'm curious as to how this problem occurred, how disabling superfetch will affect me, and whether there is a way around disabling it.

My basic specs are i7-4790k and 32g ram in an MSI Z-97-G45 Gaming mobo.

-Thanks

My laptop has an HDD as well (and 4gigs of RAM, it's pretty ancient). Superfetch was also constantly putting my 6YO HDD under a constant 100% load, making everything extremely slow (RAM usage was also spiking up after spending just 20 minutes on chrome running 5 tabs). Disabling Superfetch sped everything up by a MASSIVE margin (and I seriously say massive). Everything was running on slow motion (keyboard taking half a second before registering a keystroke annoyed me most) but now it's all good again. Hope it helps

 

[misodle]

I have a lenovo t540. HDD. 8 Gig of Ram.
So until the latest Windows 10 update, everything was fine, but after the Creator's update, periodically after a boot or when resuming from sleep, the disk would spin up to 100% for a long time, the machine at times being completely unresponsive. I run lots of things, development tools, browser, Outlook, multiple SQL Server installations. I found this post and stopped Super Fetch during one of these episodes, and guess what. Disk usage immediately dropped to 0%.

So long story short, disabling superfetch worked for me. I did not have constant 100% disk usage, but periodic 100% disk usage and this seemed to fix the problem for me. +1 for this solution, and thanks to original poster for suggesting it.