Storage location for statistics shown in About
6 posts
In the Windows registry at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SPVVEngine\LifetimeStatistics
Some follow up questions:
How often does this write to the registry? I realize that the registry is being updated all the time by all kinds of processes, but one of the reasons someone would use a RAM Disk to to minimize writes to an SSD. Is there a way to disable this behavior?
What do the keys at HKCU\Software\SoftPerfect\RAM Disk\General do? In particular, what does StatSpeed=1 do?
There are two statistics areas under the driver's service key, and only one of them ever touches the physical disk:
- VolatileStatistics is updated 10 times a second, but it's a volatile registry key. It exists only in RAM and is never written to disk (it disappears on reboot). It has zero effect on SSD.
- LifetimeStatistics is the only persistent part: four 64-bit counters, 32 bytes total (lifetime memory read/write and peak read/write speeds), saved once every ~30 seconds.
Why this is negligible for SSD wear:
1. Registry writes don't go straight to flash. The SYSTEM hive lives in memory. On Windows 8.1 and later the kernel can delay writing changes to the hive file for up to an hour, and in the meantime updates are coalesced: repeatedly rewriting the same 32 bytes collapses into a single eventual write instead of 120 separate ones. Our four values share one hive page, so a save just re-marks a page Windows is already going to flush alongside the constant registry activity from every other process.
2. The numbers put it in perspective. Even with a deliberately pessimistic ceiling, such as one 4 KB hive page every 30 seconds with no coalescing at all, that's ~12 MB per day. A normal Windows PC writes in the order of several to tens of gigabytes per day just from the OS and ordinary background activity. In other words, Windows itself writes much more in a couple of minutes than this counter does in an entire day; and the real figure is far below the 12 MB ceiling. Thus it has no measurable effect on the drive's lifespan.
There isn't a dedicated switch to turn the lifetime counter off, precisely because its disk footprint is this small by design.
On the HKCU\Software\SoftPerfect\RAM Disk\General keys
These are unrelated to the driver, rather they're the GUI's own user preferences, written only when you change a setting, never on a timer:
- StatSpeed: controls whether the main window's status bar shows the live transfer-speed readout (the SSD ▲▼ / RAM ▲▼ rates). StatSpeed=1 means it's on; clicking the status bar toggles it. It's purely a display preference and does not cause any periodic writing - the value is saved once, only when you toggle it.
- TempBackup: the temporary-folder redirection path, if set.
- Language: the chosen UI language.
- TrayIconStyle: the tray icon appearance.
- ShowRenewalPopup: whether the licence-renewal reminder is shown.