Best way to handle SQL Server fulltext index updates

Question

Hi all,

I have a fulltext index which doesn't need to be immediately up-to-date, I'd like to spare myself the I/O (when I do bulk updates, I see a ton of I/O related to the index) and do the index updates during low usage times (nightly, perhaps even weekly). It seems there are two ways to go about this:

1. Turn off change tracking (SET CHANGE_TRACKING OFF) and add a timestamp field to the indexed table, so that you can run alter fulltext index on <table> start INCREMENTAL population, or
2. Enable change tracking, but set it to MANUAL, so that you can run alter fulltext index on <table> start UPDATE population when you need it updated.

Is there a preferred method? I couldn't tell from this overview if there was a performance benefit one way or the other.

Tom