Comment by nullify88
5 months ago
You can also achieve nearly the same level of performance by adding exclusions to Windows defender. I typically exclude the game process as I still would want folders scanned when updates / downloads are running. There's a noticable improvement to load times, streaming texture latency, and CPU utilisation.
I don't believe ReFS is contributing so much to the performance improvements seen when using Dev Drives. Removing storage filters from volumes can go a long way.
The file system filter is still queried using exclusions. Eliminating all file system filters yields a faster read/write.
According to some benchmarking removing the storage filters offers a mild boost when compared to adding an exclusion and you don't have the benefit of some AV protection when other processes are accessing the volume like steam etc.
https://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2023/11/22/test-driving...
In WSL 1, unix find and git status still run about 4x faster on Dev Drive than on NTFS with defender off.