If I recall correctly - if you turn off the Optimizer - you must reboot for it to take effect...
Ken
Hi wang:
This is weird.
Try setting the NIS Idle Time Optimizer to be on, save the changes and then close.
Then go back in and reverse this process. Let us know if the Idle Time Optimizer still does the scan at night.
One more thing...
What is the current level of defragmentation on or HDD or HDD's? If high, I would also run a defrag manually.
KLR may be right. After a system reboot, I didn't see optimizer run last night. I'll leave the system up tonight and see what happens. My system was newly built so level of fragmentation is very low. Anyway, SSDs are not really physical disks, so access to data is close to linear. I highly recommend NIC to follow Win7's step and treat SSDs differently before people like us riot here. :-)
By the way, I have Pulse Update off, and I have done quite a few reboots. However, it runs regardless of my setting. It doesn't even wait until idle to do it. Is it supposed to be normal?
Thank you.
Hi wang:
In my opinion, you should *not* have to reboot. Another weird one.
As for your other question...
Even if you do not turn on Pulse Updates, LiveUpdate picks all the missed streams, and it updates your computer in the full definition updates. So it would appear that when you turn it off, it should stay off. Try resetting it by toggling it on then "Apply ->OK" - and then reverse the procedure and advise if it worked.
Did you upgrade from NIS 2009 to NIS 2010 in an "overlay" installation?
Pehaps there are some "stuck" settings which might be resolved by a complete (and properly done) NIS reinstall.
Kindly advise, thanks.
Message Edited by Plankton on 01-06-2010 10:53 AM
After I did that, it appears to work now. Thank you.
No, I have everything fresh. Fresh OS and fresh NIS 2010 install.
Hi wang:
Glad to hear that.
Feel free to open a new thread with any other questions.
Cheers!
Personally, I don't think the high number of writes to the disk are such a big deal (even if they do seem a bit excessive), SSD are rated for a lot more write cycles than you guys seem to think they are... At 'least current-gen SSD of any quality are. Look up Intel's specs sometime, they claim you could write 100GB to the drive every day and it'd still last 5 years, so even if Norton's writing as much as 1-5GB of data to the drive per day... That's not gonna have much of an impact on it's lifespan.
Now the optimizer option issue is MUCH more worrisome as a rogue defrag service moving files willy nilly on a SSD has the potential to subject it to a lot more write cycles than NIS' excessive logging... And the stance that a Symantec employee took on a different thread is completely ridiculous... It's like he had no concept whatsoever of how SSD works. He basically said that it's unlikely the SSD would often be defragmented enough that the optimizer would be constantly running on it and that if NIS' optimizer tool does any harm to the drive by defragging it then the way in which the user is employing the drive is doing more harm to it anyway.
However SSD by defnition are never defragmented, the OS and NIS could interpret them to be (by looking at it in the same way they look at a HDD), and that is why Win7 never defrags SSD. It does not matter one iota whether stuff is written contigiously on a SSD since area of it is accessed it at the same speed (almost instant, or 0.1ms, or 1/10th of the acess time of even the better HDD out there). Defragging a SSD would not only put it thru excess write cycles for absolutely no gain, but it could be defating the SSD's own wear-leveling algorithms (that spread stuff around the drive so that you're not writing to the same memory cells continuously).
Basically defragging a SSD will do more harm to it than anything the user could do! (hence the ignorance of the statement by bkennedy in this thread, a Symantec employee, shame it's closed and I can't reply there)
From what I've read in other threads it's not hard to disable the optimizer tho, if you still see it running after you've disabled it and rebooted it might be because an optimizer job was started previous to you changing the setting... The only solution seems to be to let it run it's course (it won't be a big deal to let it happen once on a SSD, FWIW).
I'm not terribly disappointed that Symantec isn't on top of this issue, since SSD are pretty new tech... Kind of driven by enthusiasts right now (altho plenty of high-end laptops are already being sold w/SSD). But I AM kinda puzzled as to why they're pulling Norton Internet Security in this direction.
The idle optimzer function not only calls upon Windows' defrag service but it also apparently cleans temp files and whatnot... That doesn't seem to be tied at all, logically, to the concept of Internet Security. Symantec has made great strides since 2008 to make their security suite lean and mean, why they would bog it down w/something like this (which belongs in Systemworks or elsewhere) is beyond me.
Please please please don't add any more non-security related features NIS! I suppose they may be trying to remove other causes of system-slowdown so that people don't take it out on NIS, but this is not the way ('specially when they're just duplicating stuff that Vista & Win7 already do fine on their own!).
SSD are rated for a lot more write cycles than you guys seem to think they are... At 'least current-gen SSD of any quality are. Look up Intel's specs sometime, they claim you could write 100GB to the drive every day and it'd still last 5 years, so even if Norton's writing as much as 1-5GB of data to the drive per day... That's not gonna have much of an impact on it's lifespan.
With respect I have looked up Intels' spec and I write software that is heavily I/O bound for a living so know about this. It's a simple fact that Norton is writing well over 5GB per day on my systems even after NIS settings optimisations. This is also in many more individual writes than many applications will use for the same writes which means the effective re-written blocks to the SSD can be much higher even allowing for Windows write caching and Intel drive caching/optimisations.
Now, if I only ran NIS 2010 or used enterprise level drives (10 x the write cycles) then I wouldn't be too bothered, but the level of writes from NIS 2010 is 5 times all the other applications put together (on heavily loaded development PCs), which irrespective of SSD use is less than optimal given file I/O is a key issue in PC performance. I can understand that the drive to reduce the memory overhead of anti-virus applications means that less internal application caching is going on, but the balance has tipped to far back to making a lot of writes in my opinion. SSD use caused me to check how the many applications I use perform in relation to file I/O and NIS has come out worse by far, although it's still my favourite security package by far! Hence my topic subject that this is 'not ideal' - its not a show stopper but needs consideration.