Windows Prefetcher

Started by Andi

Andi

Windows Prefetcher   19 March 2016, 07:15

Hello,

I'm using an image based boot disk for some time and now I wanted to investigate how SoftPerfect RAM Disk interacts with Windows' (Windows 7 64 bit in my case) prefetcher. And it seems to me that the answer is: "Not at all". I looked into the "layout.ini" and the "NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.pf" file in the windows\prefetch folder. The latter is used during the prefetching process (i.e. during startup) while the former is a file created from the information of the "NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.pf"-file that is being given to the Windows defrager so that the defrager can place these files in sequential order at the beginning of the system drive in order to minimize the time the HDD's head has to seek for files. Windows (at least Windows 7 onwards; I don't know XP's behaviour) does this automatically (if you are using an HDD; it is unnecessary and therefore deactivated if you are using an SSD). But when I look into these two files (the ini can be read immediately, the .pf-file can be read with this tool), only the drivers "spvdbus.sys" and "spvve.sys" are there, not the image itself. Does this happen to everyone or just me (or should I wait even longer until the boot prefetcher updates these two files)? If I wanted to manually include the image in the layout.ini, at which position should I include it? Directly after the two drivers? (I am of course aware of the fact that the startup time decrease will be small: If it is only one undefragmented ramdisk then we are talking about two head movements here. But I somehow want to figure it out.)

Thanks for your replies.
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Windows Prefetcher   19 March 2016, 09:49

I don't think the Prefetcher will ever pick up the image file. As far as I know it only works for executable files and their dependencies like DLLs.

On the other hand, there wouldn't be much benefit even if it worked. Just defrag your HDD once to make sure the image file is in a large continuous block.
Andi

Re: Windows Prefetcher   19 March 2016, 10:16

Well, that explains why the image isn't included. Thanks. And the speed of the answer was awesome.

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