Crucial SSD storage tool recommends to turn off 8.3 (LFN) for my SSD.

During an SSD Crucial Executive scan, the recommendation was to turn off the 8.3 file naming feature to optimize the drives performance. The suggestion had a footnote indicating that turning the feature off would improve performance of the SSD; but come at a cost of possibly hindering the file search feature in Windows.

I have read varying conflicts of interest in regards to disabling the 8.3 file feature; meaning that some said there was a performance gain, while others were not able to notice an improved benchmark performance.

Does anyone have first hand knowledge of an article that justifies turning the 8.3 (LFN) feature off and having a significant performance gain.

At this point, it just seems like a matter of preference versus credible facts to point to a noticeable performance gain.

Any insight from anyone who has turned this feature off and had significant system performance impact for the better - I'm all open for suggestions and recommendations.

8.3 (LFN)

Those are not the same thing. The 8.3 goes back to DOS days a number of years ago, I first learned about it in the mid-to-late '80s. The LFN/Long File Names is newer, came about with Windows 95 in 1995. By default Windows stores information on the boot drive and probably other drives about both types of file naming, mostly for compatibility with programs. There is a Master File Table that lets the Operating System keep track of where the files are stored on the drive.

Berton said:

Those are not the same thing. The 8.3 goes back to DOS days a number of years ago, I first learned about it in the mid-to-late '80s. The LFN/Long File Names is newer, came about with Windows 95 in 1995. By default Windows stores information on the boot drive and probably other drives about both types of file naming, mostly for compatibility with programs. There is a Master File Table that lets the Operating System keep track of where the files are stored on the drive.

O.K. - I was mistaken about what the Crucial Executive tool wants me to do. It wants me to turn off 8.3 file naming.
By the way, you helped me before, so I have no doubt you may have further insight to the possible action I should take on the tools' suggestion.

Do you think I should follow the recommendation of the tool?

Oooppps: I got you mixed up with Ben Myers

I would still appreciate your insight though!

I probably do more file management with helping my clients than most users so I would leave it alone but it all hinges upon what a user wants or needs. When considering storage take up some room as a character, number or letter, usually is 2 Bytes [8 bits make up 1 Byte b = bit B = Byte], if that amount of space is critical I'd think turning off LFN would save more but with such things could cause unforeseen problems later on.

Berton said:

I probably do more file management with helping my clients than most users so I would leave it alone but it all hinges upon what a user wants or needs. When considering storage take up some room as a character, number or letter, usually is 2 Bytes [8 bits make up 1 Byte b = bit B = Byte], if that amount of space is critical I'd think turning off LFN would save more but with such things could cause unforeseen problems later on.

I figured as much I suppose. It just seems that the tool is suggesting a huge performance gain and realistically by your knowledge of the matter, it is probably best to ignore the suggestion of turning it off.

PolarNettles said:

Disabling 8.3 support would only help file creation/search performance in folders with huge numbers of files. Most home users don't have workloads that would be affected by this. My guess that with modern systems you'd have to get into the hundreds of thousands of files in a single folder before 8.3 filename generation becomes a significant performance concern.

Understood.

The way the Executive tool was explaining it; is that if folders only had a couple of files, it somehow would still make a difference. I don't see how though, and in light of the fact that you mentioned that one would have to get into the hundreds of thousands of files before 8.3 filename generation becomes a significant performance concern, tends to kind of make me wonder why the tool is even suggesting it for a performance gain in the first place on a drive that is not even one quarter full.

I thought Windows Storage Sense takes care of that now anyhow.

I honestly don't see how my system performance can be any faster to tell you the truth. From the moment I turn my computer on to the moment I am able to carry out the first process (any process) is about 17 seconds from a cold boot.

I can't ask for much more from a nine year old system to be rather humble about it.

I never had to use WinNT 3.5, got started with WinNT 3.51 then right away got into the Microsoft Partners program which let me get Upgraded to WinNT 4 then about a year later to Win2000.

PolarNettles said:

I just tried creating 100,000 files with and without 8.3 filename generation. It's difficult to really benchmark something like this due to all the layers of caching but I didn't measure any difference in performance.

I appreciate you testing the "with and without" 8.3 filename generation feature. On a further note, I am interested in how you created 100,000 test files so quickly. I remember there was a batch file that would do this if I'm not mistaken - correct?