Speeding up disk access (disable the date of last access)

Most operating systems use existing file systems with advanced features: rights management, logging ...
Among other things, NTFS (Windows) and ext3 (Linux) are capable of recording the date of last access to a file.

If this is useful for controlling when a file has been accessed, it means that for every reading file there a. .. writing hard!

From performance point of view is absurd.

Unless we absolutely need this feature (secure servers, traceability ...), you can disable it.
Some experts believe that Linux kernel can earn up to 10% in disk performance.


Under Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista (NTFS only)

Open the Registry Editor (regedit) and go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem
and create the variable (right-click New, DWORD): NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
with the value 1

The change would take effect immediately.

Linux

Edit / etc / fstab and add options and relatime nodiratime to the partition concerned.

Example:

# / Etc / fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file System> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc / proc defaults 0 0
/ dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults, errors = remount-ro, relatime, nodiratime 0 1
/ dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0

Then go your disk (or restart for the root).

Note: relatime does not disable write access during certain software files need to know the date of last access. There is the option to disable completely noatime records in file access. Nodiratime disables the records when accessing files. Watch the mount manual for more information.

Note 2: All the Linux kernel does not have the option relatime. In this case, use noatime.