Disabling indexing with SSD's

[Coup27]

Do people still do this?

I remember when SSD's first came out it was one of the must do tweaks to reduce the number of random writes on your SSD. Now SSD endurance has been put to bed, do people still do it? Are SSD's fast enough now that even if you leave it enabled your search results are no quicker?

 

[blankslate]

I haven't done extensive tests but the read speed of the average SSD seems to compensate for not having indexing on.

*e2a*
I have indexing on my Data HDD and indexing off on my SSD they both seem to come up with file search results very quickly. Probably only a preference thing at this point for indexing on an SSD or not.


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[Puffnstuff]

I use indexing to decrease search times and am not worried about wear.

 

[Deders]

I would have thought the wear would be minimal seeing as most of the process is reads, the only writes would be amending a database.

Also very few computers are purely SSD. I would have thought Indexing would help the most with the kind of data you don't really need to keep on a SSD.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Do people still do this?

I remember when SSD's first came out it was one of the must do tweaks to reduce the number of random writes on your SSD. Now SSD endurance has been put to bed, do people still do it? Are SSD's fast enough now that even if you leave it enabled your search results are no quicker?

I'm sure some people still do it, I don't think it's worth it for any relatively recent SSD that has TRIM and a decent bit of free space.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Indexing is too awesome. Especially for content searches.

 

[pcgeek11]

If you have a platter drive and an SSD you can have the SSD Index Moved to the Platter drive.

Then you get the best of both worlds.

Move the Search Index to Another Drive

1. Click Start, type index in the search bar, and click indexing options

2. Click Advanced

3. Click Select new and select a new location on a different physical hard drive:

4. Click OK

The service will restart and moved the index to the new drive:

 

[Puffnstuff]

Offloading the index from the ssd completely defeats the purpose of having the high throughput in the first place.

 

[Deders]

Offloading the index from the ssd completely defeats the purpose of having the high throughput in the first place.

Not really, Indexing scans all your drives and creates a database of your files so they can be looked up in an instant instead of having to search through drives/folders at the time. It doesn't really need high bandwidth to access a database.

Great suggestion PcGeek11. I didn't realise you could do this.

 

[pcgeek11]

Offloading the index from the ssd completely defeats the purpose of having the high throughput in the first place.

That is silly. The index is a database...

 

[Coup27]

If you have a platter drive and an SSD you can have the SSD Index Moved to the Platter drive.

Then you get the best of both worlds.

Move the Search Index to Another Drive

1. Click Start, type index in the search bar, and click indexing options

2. Click Advanced

3. Click Select new and select a new location on a different physical hard drive:

4. Click OK

The service will restart and moved the index to the new drive:

Nice post. I did not know you could move it, although I am going SSD only in my upgrade this Christmas hence the question.

Offloading the index from the ssd completely defeats the purpose of having the high throughput in the first place.

I think you have missed the point. People recommend to disable indexing to reduce the number of writes. As NAND endurance is not really as much of an issue as people originally thought it's probably fine to turn it back on but with SSD's being as fast as they are, my question is are searches any quicker with indexing on than off?

 

[Puffnstuff]

Yes it makes all the difference in the world so turn it back on and leave it on.

 

[therealnickdanger]

I don't even bother tweaking anything anymore. Just plug in SSD, install OEM-specific software for said SSD, done.

Indexing is awesome.

 

[Cerb]

Indexing is too awesome. Especially for content searches.

I disagree. That is the reason I turn it off, and change the search settings, because it never seems to find everything, in indexed locations, if the indexes are enabled.

That said, AstroGrep is now my primary content search tool.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I disagree. That is the reason I turn it off, and change the search settings, because it never seems to find everything, in indexed locations, if the indexes are enabled.

That said, AstroGrep is now my primary content search tool.

Spotlight in Mac OS X is very effective. Windows Search is a joke.

Happy?

 

[Coup27]

When playing around in the Windows 7 indexing settings earlier I had a read of the help file and found this:

Can I index my entire computer so all searches are fast?
You shouldn't do this. If you make the index too large, or if you include system file locations (such as the Program Files folder), your routine searches will slow down. For best results, we recommend that you only add folders that you search frequently.

What's the definition of too large? My music folder is 160GB with over 10,000 files. Tbf, if I can't index the whole machine (minus system folders) I'll just leave it off. It's not like I search all the time.

 

[Mike64]

I use indexing to decrease search times and am not worried about wear.

:thumbsup: I like indexing. If you have a lot of files, SSDs are in no way fast enough to make up for not using it, whether you search file names only or, heaven forbid, content...

As far as ever I saw/read, that tweak was based on theory, not empirical testing, and always seemed a bit "paranoid", like much of the chatter about the "danger" of "excessive" writes in general. Mine isn't one of the earliest drives by any means, but it does date back to 2011, and despite taking no precautions against excessive writes (except the "precaution" of not running benchmark after benchmark just for shits and giggles), it's still going strong...

 

[Cerb]

Spotlight in Mac OS X is very effective. Windows Search is a joke.

Happy?

Never. It's bah humbug season! Windows should include find and grep! But, really, searching for text I know is there tends not to work right with indexing on (misses files), while it's fine with it off.

 

[erdemali]

Indexing is our saviour, since we have folders setup in windows OS. While installing windows as fresh state, most files are written in sequential order as well as folders and their contents. So the search speed is fast, since the folders and their contents are in sequential order, regardless of indexing. Once we start installing drivers and updates, sequential order between folders and and their files are broken. That is because it is due to the SSD's nature of delete and write sequential feature. And thus, searching slows down without indexing so the virtual speed of ssd. If we disable indexing, the folders and their contents relationship gets broken which cause slowdown of search function.
The bottom line is,
Since we have folders and files relationship in windows OS, indexing should be kept and utilised.
P.S.: So the RAM ruins sequential order between folders and their contents, as we access and modify files they travel back and forth between ssd and the RAM. That causes the broken sequential order of folders and their contents relationship.

Using RAM is nonsense in modern days computing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Using RAM is nonsense in modern days computing.

Err, nevermind...

 

[Cerb]

Err, nevermind...

It was inaccurate from the start, but I stopped being able to translate it long before that statement about RAM.

 

[erdemali]

It was inaccurate from the start, but I stopped being able to translate it long before that statement about RAM.

Pleas explain your refute??

 

[erdemali]

What's more the only link between folders and their contents is windows OS and indexing. Otherwise folders make nonsense of info in ssd's. If you don't have indexing, ssd ignores folders and look for files individually at a search. In other words, in ssds organising files in folders do not help searching to be any faster without indexing.

 

[Cerb]

Pleas explain your refute??

1. Files are written all across the drive, these days. Windows has been using similar allocation techniques to *n*xes for years, now, resulting in reduced fragmentation, but also spreading data around. Even for bootup, it mostly relies on special bootup files, managed with ReadyBoot, pre-loading the hibernate file, and other little tricks.

2. Folders and files (but not their contents) are metadata, and may be in completely different locations (some definitely will be), relative to the files they relate to. They are trees, pointing to arbitrary lists of data offsets, with no particular location order relationships, unless managed by some 3rd-party defragger/optimizer. There is no linear space/location relationship.

3. The SSD's nature is, like an HDD, as a seekable block device, made up of 512B (usually) or 4KB blocks. How it reads or writes is largely irrelevant, and is completely hidden from the OS anyway. The drive has no concept of files, folders, or any other such things. It's got blocks and bytes, nothing more. How it does what it does doesn't matter.

4. Disabling indexes breaks no relationships. It just removes a lookup-optimized metadata cache from what the search function can utilize. It may not even slow down the search function. Windows 7 would automatically turn off indexing, if your SSD was fast enough, because they found the speed difference to be negligible in searching, while the overhead of maintaining the indexes was non-negligible. When it comes to file contents searching, though, the search will definitely be slower w/o indexing.

5.

So the RAM ruins sequential order between folders and their contents, as we access and modify files they travel back and forth between ssd and the RAM. That causes the broken sequential order of folders and their contents relationship.

That sort of order was never assured to exist in the first place, probably won't at all exist on a drive that's been in use for awhile, nor does it really matter. Files, and fragments of them, get scattered all about the drive, all the time, by design.

6.

What's more the only link between folders and their contents is windows OS and indexing.

No, it's not. The link between folders and their contents comes from the master file table or file allocation table, which are abstracted away from what's accessing them anyway, and unrelated to the search indexing functionality.

If you don't have indexing, ssd ignores folders and look for files individually at a search.

The search uses, and does not ignore, folders, regardless of whether you have any indexing or not; and will look for files individually, or not, regardless of indexing.

 

[erdemali]

First one has to know how an ssd does searching, before thinking of removing indexing. The only reason we should keep indexing is due to incompatibility of OS and SSD.
Any file written to an ssd is given sequential reference numbers or so. Once we want to do searching through an ssd, the only thing taken into consideration is the reference numbers given to files by the SSD. The indexing is separate option only links folders and files by the OS which helps searching. By how much, that is debatable.

I will talk about why RAM is obsolete in modern day computing bit later and why it cause overheating CPUs nothing else but duplicate work. In the past RAM was way faster than HDDs. That was one of the prerequisite those days.