By default, on drives formatted with NTFS, each time a folder is accessed, Windows will update the timestamp with the date of access.

On systems with a lot of subdirectories, this can slow down the system considerably by adding this to whatever else machine happens to be doing. For example, search operations could be improved by stopping this feature.

To disable this feature, start Regedit by clicking Start, Ready and typing Regedit in the Run box. Go to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/FileSystem.

Create or modify the DWORD value “NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate” and set the value to 1. The setting will be enable at the next logon or at the next reboot.

This tweak is listed in the system category. See all tweaks or click one of the latest tweaks listed below:

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