Windows 7vs8 SSD Optimization Windows 7vs8 SSD Optimization Disable indexing Description: Indexing creates and maintains a database of file attributes. This can lead to multiple small writes when creating/deleting/modifying files. Searching for files will still work. Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications -> Services - > Right-Click Windows Search -> Startup type: Disabled -> OK Description: We also need to stop Windows 7 indexing the SSD. SSD drives seek so fast that Indexing is not needed. In fact, while Windows 7 is indexing the SSD it is slowing down your system. Instructions: Go to Computer -> Right click on SSD Drive -> Properties -> Uncheck Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties -> Click OK Once you unchecked indexing follow the onscreen instructions, you may have to skip some files you do not have access to. Disable defragmentation (no need disable with W8) Description: Defragmenting a hard disk's used space is only useful on mechanical disks with multi-millisecond latencies. Free-space defragmentation may be useful to SSDs, but this feature is not available in the default Windows Defragmenter. Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications -> Services - > Right-Click Disk Defragmenter -> Startup type: Disabled -> OK Turn Off the Disk Defragmenter Schedule (no need disable with W8) Description: Disk Defragmenter schedule allows to run defragmentation automatically in Windows 7. Disk Defragmenter is set to run on a automatic schedule by default in Windows 7. Instructions: Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter -> Click on the Configure schedule button -> Uncheck the Run on a Schedule box -> Click on OK -> Close the window. Disable Superfetch (no need disable with W8) Instructions: Open regedit.exe and browse down to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters Find the "EnableSuperfetch" key on the right-hand pane, rightclick it, hit modify and change 3 to 0 and hit OK. Disable Prefetch (no need disable with W8) Description: Frees up RAM by not preloading program files. Instructions: Open regedit.exe and browse down to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters Find the "EnablePrefetcher" key on the right-hand pane, right click it, hit modify and change 3 to 0 and hit OK. Firefox - Use memory cache instead of disk cache Description: If you use Firefox, there's a way to write cached files to RAM instead of the hard disk. This is not only faster, but will significantly reduce writes to the SSD while using the browser. Instructions: Open Firefox -> Type about:config into the address bar -> Enter -> double-click browser.cache.disk.enable to set the value to False -> Right-Click anywhere -> New -> Integer -> Preference Name "browser.cache.memory.capacity" -> value memory size in KB. Enter 32768 for 32MB, 65536 for 64MB, 131072 for 128MB, etc. -> restart Firefox Note: If you're going to install RAM Disk on your computer you can change the Firefox cache location to the RAM Drive. Free up extra drive space Disable the Page File Description: Eliminate writing memory to the SSD, free over 2GB of disk space. WARNING: If you run out of memory the program you're using will crash. Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Settings (Performance) -> Advanced Tab -> Change -> Uncheck Automatically manage -> No paging file -> Set -> OK -> Restart your computer Alternatively, if you want to play it safer, you can set a custom size of 200MB min and max. Disable System Restore Description: Don't write backup copies of files when installing new programs or making system changes. Can free up between a few hundred MB to a couple GB. WARNING: Although unlikely, if a driver installation corrupts your system, there won't be an automatic way to recover. Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> System Protection Tab -> Click Configure -> Check Turn off system protection -> Click Delete -> OK Disable Hibernate Description: You may free up 1GB of space on the SSD if you have 1GB of memory, 2GB of space if you have 2GB memory. You will lose the hibernation feature which allows the equivalent of quick boots and shutdowns. Instructions: Start Menu -> Type cmd -> Right-Click the cmd Icon -> Run as Administrator -> Type powercfg -h off -> Hit ENTER -> Type exit -> Hit ENTER To enable type: powercfg -h on TRIM check (always enabled in W8) Go to the Command Prompt and type: fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled) DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled) source: OCZ forum
I don't think you would want to disable defrag (now called optimzer) in Windows 8. It automatically detects and optimizes (TRIMS) SSD drives.
@AnimaliX Thanks for detailing the steps but I think, just as Belarathon said in the post above, Windows 8 will take care of TRIM and defragmentation when it detects the SSD.
Sigh. Obviously, you are not well-educated on this matter. * As you correctly note, Write Caching is enabled by default on internal drives (and disabled by default on removable drives). This setting has absolutely nothing to do with SSDs and is instead all about reducing the likelihood of data corruption if there is the surprise removal of a removable drive. The defaults are fine and should not be messed with unless the user knows what the setting does and knows what the consequences are. If you have an external SSD (in an enclosure, for example... yes, that is an unusual use case), then you do NOT want write caching, for example. And if you have an internal non-removable drive (doesn't have to be SSD), you probably want write caching. It's internal/external, not SSD/HDD. And the defaults are correct almost all of the time. * Indexing: You do NOT need to disable indexing. Indexing is good, and while a SSD does improve random access, that does not solve the problem that indexing is supposed to address because without indexing, you need to incur a separate I/O accesses for every file that you encounter in a search (and if you're searching the file contents, not just the metadata, those accesses could be quite substantial), whereas with indexing, you only need one I/O access. So why is there advice to disable indexing? This was a hack to work around the crappy JMicron controllers of early SSDs (this is from years ago). Those controllers sucked so badly with random write that they were actually worse than traditional spinning HDDs. For all modern SSDs (and for old SSDs not based on JMicron's crap), you should NOT disable indexing. * Defrag: Windows will not defrag a SSD. If you leave defrag enabled, it will defrag any HDDs that you have on your system. Windows knows if a drive is a SSD (Windows will ask for a drive's rotational speed, and SSDs will report a speed of zero, in which case Windows will know that it's a SSD and will not do anything). * Superfetch: Same deal as defrag. If you leave it enabled, Windows will ask the drive what kind of drive it is, and if it's a SSD, it won't do anything. You can disable it if you want, but there is essentially no effect if you have a SSD. * TRIM should already be working without any additional intervention. Basically... Windows already Does The Right Thing (TM) if you have a SSD. There is no need to fiddle with these settings... Now, a few words about the page file: The page file is supposed to augment main memory. So the page file should be the maximum amount of memory you'll ever use, minus the amount of physical RAM that you have. So the less RAM, the more page file you need. And if you're like me and have 16GB of RAM, you probably don't need a page file at all. So the more RAM you have, the less page file you should need. Windows takes the opposite approach. The default page file size is equal to RAM (and can expand to 2x RAM). In other words, on Windows, the more RAM you have, the larger your default page file. This is pretty silly (but Microsoft does have a reason for doing it this way: they don't know ahead of time how much memory you'll need; if you need 8GB, and you have 16GB of RAM, then you don't need a page file, but if you need 32GB and have 16GB of RAM, then you need a page file, so they play it safe--Windows assumes that if your computer has 16GB of RAM, then you're probably going to do stuff on the computer that will require 16GB or more of RAM). So if are sure that you have more RAM that you need, then it's perfectly safe to disable the page file (you won't get crash dumps if your system happens to BSOD, but unless you know how to use a debugger to analyze such dumps, they are useless to you anyway). As for the hibernation file, you'll notice that by default, the hibernation file is set to only 75% of RAM. This is because Windows will page things out if you hibernate (so some of it goes into hiberfile, but some gets shoved into pagefile). Which means that if you disable your page file, but want to keep using hibernation, you'll probably want to set your hiberfile to 100% of RAM ("powercfg -h -size 100" from an elevated command prompt).
Enigma - thank you for sharing your knowledge! ) It was interesting for me to read it! So, if we follow your advices, we should NOT use any of the top written advices? I personally have 128 GB Samsung 830 SSD, which is relatively new model. I'm using WIndows 8 RTM (Enterprise), and... In that case I should NO do any additional settings to my drive - isn't it? Thanks all guys!
Thanks Enigma256 for detailed post I agree with your findings. I am eager to have my hands on SSD. @bigstoyan: With Windows 8, there is nothing to worry. Let the schedule of "Defragment and Optimize Drives" run as it detects SSD automatically and issues TRIM at idle time to let SSD finish its work. There is nothing to worry about any settings for SSD under Windows 8.
i dont "Optimize" my system for SSD but i have one.. i think win 8 dos it for it self.. win 7 i had to do ometimes an "TRIM" in win 8 defrag can make this automatic on SSD drives.
When I disabled indexing on my ssd using win8RTM PRO and Windows server 2012, upon reboot, indexing was enabled, I have the old Indilinx controller on my ocz ssd
my c is a mech drive but my game drive is ssd, i enabled dedup and saved 7gb ht tp://forums.m ydigitallife.in fo/threads/34417-Data-d eduplication-for-Windows-8-x64
Hi, I was wondering is that possible to change the regular SATA 2.5" laptop hard disk to SATA SSD for my HP laptop? Is that compatible? Thanks in advance!!
I do not follow any recommendations to extend the life of my SSD (Vertex 3 MAX IOPS) and I read and write to it constantly. The performance benchmarks are still very high and the SMART system's expected life time is still at 100% since using the drive as the main OS and data drive in April 2011. I'm currently at 12202 GB Lifetime reads and 6158 GB life time writes. At this rate, I will have reached 50% of the drive's life in about 7 years... in which case I think I will have a new drive or technology by then anyway. Windows 8 is smart enough to handle its own optimizations. There is no need to change the defaults except the Advanced write caching option. Windows own weekly/background/idle optimizations will take care of most all performance or maintenance issues automatically. The write caching option is off by default because it could lead to data loss if power is lost unexpectedly. Enabling it may offer little performance boost. Windows 8 "Defrag" or Drive optimization will send the TRIM command to empty blocks of free space on an SSD when run (like the old OCZ and Intel SSD tools). This is based on the drive and controller supporting TRIM. Drives like mine automatically do this TRIM command in the background (background garbage collection) and this automatic forced TRIM will only speed up the future write performance of the drive.
Of course you can. There may be a limit if you use older SATA2 controller, but that should be enough for normal use/gaming use.
Hi Winter, Thanks for your reply...I am thinking to replace my 2.5" internal hard disk to SSD hard disk coz I heard SSD will be a lot quicker than normal hard disk to run Windows 8 Pro? Thanks again!
Any SSD drive should run faster than any HDD drive. Only HDD RAID may compare with SSD, but not always.
thanks for advices and sorry all... my post was not finished I did not know that I have to be approved before publishing.
RAID is made of multiple drives, minimum 2 drives are required to make RAID. Read more about it on wiki.
Please, can you tell me how you measured Lifetime reads and writes - just to check mine ) 10x everybody!