The NTFS filesystem, as you may be aware, timestamps files. It also monitors and records when a file was accesed. For most instances this is not a problem in itself but does take time to do this.
If you have an application, such as a search tool or database, that frequently accesses many files for a simple read operation, the operation required to update each file’s Accessed timestamp can drain your system’s performance. Fortunately, you can disable the Accessed timestamp using the FSUtil command. Here’s how:
- Open a Command Prompt window.
- Type the following command line:
FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1
If you wish to turn the Accessed attribute back on, simply repeat the command and replace 1 with 0.
This has been reported to work under XP Pro, XP Home, and Vista