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The SSD Optimization Guide Redesigned

Les Tokar May 16, 2012 184 Comments

15. VERIFY TRIM

Verifying that TRIM is working is actually a next to impossible task which requires monitoring your computers activity closely as TRIM can take only a split second to complete.  There is truly no way for the user to confirm that it is working.  Verifying TRIM will confirm for the user that the TRIM commands are being sent from the software to the ssd.  This, unfortunately, is the closest one will come without trying to catch it in action for that split second.

1.  Using the Start Menu Search Box, Search CMD;
2.  Right click the Cmd Program and select Run as Administrator;
3.  In the command line type “fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify”
If DisableDeleteNotify=0 TRIM is Enabled.
If DisableDeleteNotify=1 TRIM is Disabled.

————————————————————————————————————————

16. POWER SETTINGS.

1.  Go to Control Panel;

2.  Select System and Security;

3.  Select Power Options and Click the drop down for Show Additional Plans;

4.  Select the High Performance bubble to apply it;

5.  Click Change Plan Settings for High performance;

6.  Click Change Advanced Power Settings;

7.    Click the hard disk drop down option;

8.  Change Turn off hard disk after to 0 minutes (will display as never after applied);

9.  Select OK; and

10.  Select Save Settings.

.


————————————————————————————————————————

17.  DISABLE ‘CLEARPAGEFILEATSHUTDOWN’

AND ‘LARGESYSTEMCACHE‘.

1.  Type Regedit into the Start Menu box;

2.  Select the file path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\

MemoryManagement”

The 2nd and 5th files are ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCache.
3.  Right click and select Modify on each of these to change the value from 1 to 0 and Restart.




————————————————————————————————————————

18.  NTFS MEMORY USAGE & NTFS DISABLE NAME CREATION.

1.  Type Regedit into the Start Menu box;

2.  Select the file path:

“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem”

3.  The 5th files is NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation. Right click and modify to 1; and
4.  The 11th file is NtfsMemoryUsage right click and modify to 2 and Restart.

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  • RT

    Great tips! I just bought the Intel X-25 G2. Im removing my cd drive from my 13″ Macbook Pro – 2.26 Core 2. Then adding the SSD in the cd area using a Obtibay enclosure to run the SSD. Ill be loading just Windows 7 on the SSD via bootcamp from my other drive in the machine. The one tip that I keep reading about is the AHCI MODE. There is no bios or at least I dont think so when booting into Windows from a mac. How can I check if Im running in AHCI mode from my mac via windows 7 on the ssd? If Im not running in AHCI mode can I still use your tip above to turn it on?

    SITE RESPONSE: Apologies But I cannot answer that question with respect to a Mac.

  • bob

    you should mofity this post because if you disable all the windows searhing and indexing then you cannot do for exmple

    1. Type Regedit into the Start Menu box;#
    1. Using the Start Menu Search Box, Search CMD;

    because it wont be found, so you have to start looking manually for this apps

    • mell0

      In windows XP you couldn’t search regedit through start, it can still be easily done by pressing windows button + r, and then type regedit.

  • Dave76

    Thanks for the great SSD guide.

    Do you have any more information on #18?

    What are NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation and NtfsMemoryUsage, what is the effect of these tweaks on the SSD?

    Thanks for any details.

    • There are no effects on the SSD.

      • Sency Sunny

        Can i ask a doubt about samsung evo 850 ssd?

    • shinji

      NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation disables the OS ability to create legacy filenames for older applications.

    • Zappa

      Shinji was right with the ntfsDisable8dot3… It may be noticeable, and older applications mean older than 20 years, that is when that legacy long file names format was used.

      It creates short name version for every long named file it creates, for any old application that uses that legacy long format system.

      I imagine the full path counts in the length of the filename, so if you have a application writing files regularly to a folder with a long tree, all of them may be long file names, and all would be forcing the ssd to create 2 names for each file in the “index”.
      Further, each time it has to create a short name version it has to make a search on all short name versions in case already exists one, then add +1 or whatever (remember the Progra~1, Progra~2, names? One can see them with “dir /x” on cmd prompt).

      I just tried a “cd Program Files (x86)” and it worked well, so no need for Progra~N etc. unless you use a very old program (or “badly” coded) from around 1995.

  • Peter

    Hi, thanks for a great guide!
    As regards “15. VERIFY TRIM”, would you recommend using the Intel SSD toolbox on a X25 G2 to schedule daily TRIM just in case Win7 autotrimming for some reason fails to work (even though disabledeletenotify=0)?
    Thanks!

    • Yes, I did it every now and then with my Intel as well.

  • sam jeong

    why disable superfetch?
    you did explain the purpose of these up to #15 but after that there’s no explanation.
    can you tell me why disabling superfetch is beneficial for ssd?

    SITE RESPONSE: There are some that might state that SF adds unnecessary writes to the drive lessening the lifespan but we would not state such as most will never have their ssd reach end life.

    as there are no differences with or without SF in SSD use however, why would you want it running. A fine tuned system does not leave things that don’t serve any purpose running.

  • spiegel

    followed the steps, and the performance of my Crucial(micron?) M4 64 gb was increased about 15 %!!

  • William

    Awesome guide… today I will receive my new gear and can’t wait to optimize my system, Still one question in regard to disabling Windows Search.

    I am very used to start my stuff right from the desktop icon, or I type the name of the program in the Start Menu search box. This search box will disappear 🙁 I plan to add a traditional HDD for bulk data and not-so-frequently-used stuff. Is it possible to leave Windows Search enabled, but exclude the SSD from being indexed?

    Thanks!
    William

  • Martin

    That’s a totally different search option in Windows features to actually remove the box, there is further options windows menu properties to turn on or off the ability of that box to search programs, but the above refers to disabling windows search and indexing, not disabling the search box and ability to search programs and control panel.

  • Aubrey

    Followed the steps here and the Windows 7 guide and gained over 20GB’s of space back on my SSD. Not to mention a faster boot time! I haven’t benched marked the SSD since these tweaks so I can’t speak for any perf increase.

    Be careful with that AHCI fist at the top. Tweaked that in my BIOS settings (in liu of the REG edit) and almost couldn’t restart my machine! ^_^

    Thanks for the tips!

  • i have a few suggestions for SSD optimization:

    disable swap on SSD but enable on secondary HDD if you have
    change event logging to secondary HDD if you have
    change default program installation folder in registry to secondary drive if you have

    essentially you really need to minimize writes to your SSD to ensure longevity. every little bit counts!

    • Tom Duhamel

      Consider this. SDD’s are currently nominated at 10,000 writes per cell. Assuming perfect wear balancing, if you were to delete and rewrite the entire SSD once a day (which is very unlikely) it should last about 27 years.

      Stop thinking you are going to wear out your SSD very quickly, you won’t. It’s a good idea to remove some files from the SSD, but not everything. The whole idea of SSD is to improve performance. Leave on the SSD what is going to help toward performance (temp files, swap file, cache files, etc) and move to a secondary rotating drive anything that won’t benefit from the SSD (music/movie files, other large files… possibly your documents, depending of what kind of work you do).

      The tips on this page are not about avoiding wearing your SSD, in my opinion. They are about optimizing your system (disabling your page file if you have more and 4 GB of RAM, as it won’t be useful, disabling superfetch as there is no benefit with an SSD, …) and gaining back space as there is less space on an SSD than there is on a typical HDD (disabling hibernate as it takes a lot of space and it is not as useful with SSD as it is with HDD).

      That was just my opinion. I respect yours, as I my opinion is sometimes found wrong too.

  • Scipion

    This is very good stuff as i am new with ssd. I wonder if u have a program that runs all of this above.
    I hv intel i7 2600k, ssd intel 120 gb, 460 gtx 1gb oc, 8 giga ram.

    scipion@walla.com

  • Daniel

    Amazing guide! My windows experience index for primary hard disk increased from 6.7 to 7.4!!! Very happy!!! Thanks a lot!

  • Alistair Nel

    Awesome Guide thanks.

    I would also recommend you change your windows temp folder to another drive as this also writes a lot of junk.

    Right click my computer -> properties -> advanced system settings -> environment variables

    edit:

    temp & tmp

    to secondary drive.

    • Thanks Alistair!

      I will look into this and consider inclusion!!!

      • lightminer

        Is there a way to move this into RAM? The Linux guides like this move the linux equivalent to RAM. Of course, you need to have a decent amount of RAM to do this, but many people have lots now.

      • Gigglebits

        There is 3rd party software out there for creating a RAM disk in Windows 7 and allocating your temp files to it. The free version of this software (http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk) allows you to create up to a 4GB RAM disk. That should be more than adequate for most things, but if you want more space, you have to pony up $20.

      • Craig Cn

        Raedon (amd) has the same for free but if you have amd memory, the space is increased.

      • Gigglebits

        There is 3rd party software out there for creating a RAM disk in Windows 7 and allocating your temp files to it. The free version of this software: http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk allows you to create up to a 4GB RAM disk. That should be more than adequate for most things, but if you want more space, you have to pony up $20.

    • Anonymous

      I’m of two minds on this one.. One of the benefits of SSD is that you boost speed by having your temp/tmp files on a super-fast filesystem. On the other hand, if you have really huge temp/tmp files, those should be on larger storage.

      • SmEdD

        Temp files are 90% install files. Application temp files are stored in the users folder. TO have an install god a little bit faster to me isn’t a huge issue.

    • Garzhad

      Better Yet: Store brower cache and all temp files to a small(256MB) RAMDISK. Then create another ramdisk around the same size, install your firefox on it, and enable the ramdisk software to save to 2ndary HDD on shutdown and load from HDD on startup. Crazy fast.

  • scipion

    I have Intel i7 2600k, ssd intel 120 gb, 460 1gb oc 8 giga RAM at 1333 Mhz LG9. I was looking for the AHCI but couldn’t find it in BIOS. My mo-bo is MSI P67 GD65 and I should have it. In the mean time it says that it is “pass-through IDE” which is I have no idea what.
    Can you pls help a bit on this?

    scipion@walla.com

    Thnx!!!

    • There should be a SATA mode visible in you bios menu somewhere. The manual will explain for that motherboard.

      You are in IDE mode which is not the same performance as AHCI.

  • rhys

    very helpful thanks alot

  • Jribeano

    thanks for the great guide, i use this everytime i do a system wipe and see a noticeable speed boost, and space saving, when doing all steps in conjunction. thanks again!

  • Sujanks

    Thank you. I installed OCZ Agility 3 120GB on my T’Pad T410, and followed all the 17 tweaks (except #1); now my computer is extremely fast, and the battery lasts 1 hour longer than previously. Thanks again.

  • Vincentlockert

    Great guide! second time I use it now 🙂

  • Mikelim

    Seems that some of the above steps are no longer required for Windows 7.
    See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

    • I know that article very well…. Its not entirely correct because Windows DOES NOT always turn off some of the suggestions by default, especially in cases of migration, which is why they are available here.

  • Ravi

    Hi, thanks for a great guide! I followed almost all of your steps, but now when I’m booting it is very slow. It seems like it is doing (or not doing) something after the splash screen, takes maybe 30 seconds before I’m in Windows. I updated all my drivers for my Mobo including SATA (Marvell driver). Could it be a problem with the SATA driver or something else?

  • Ravi

    Hi Alberello,

    As you can see from my earlier post I had the same problem, but as I didn’t get any reply on my post I had to re-install windows. I would have been nice to know which one of the tweaks that caused the problem(s). Can anyone help us please?

  • anthony

    hello, great guide!!

    what does step 18 do exactly??

    thanks

    • Tom Duhamel

      NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation:

      In another era (MS-DOS), file names were limited to 8 characters plus 3 for the extension. This was dubbed as 8.3 naming convention. Starting with Windows 95, you could now use longer file names. However, for compatibility with older applications, Windows would now create two file names for each file, the long one which you see, and a shorter 8.3 name so that older applications would still work. This compatibility feature is not needed anymore, but for some reason is still active by default until today in Windows 7. I doubt the increase in performance is really great by turning this off, but it certainly can’t harm, and I personally disable 8.3 file names.

      NtfsMemoryUsage:

      Does absolutely nothing at all. It is there for backward compatibility (because it once did something in an early version of Windows) but it does absolutely nothing in Windows 7. For some reason, it is still yet listed on many tips websites.

  • Not-an-msfan

    Want to buy an SSD but don’t wish to buy windows7? Use Linux. Linux has had SSD support since long before microsoft ever heard of an SSD. Did i mention Linux has always been faster and a free operating system. It will also run windows software and game thru the included WINE application.

    • Sbsubs

      Aren’t you just a said soul, trolling, and hating!

  • Anonymous

    some of them are useful even to hdd

  • Efstratios_christoforidis

    Your guide is highly appreciated. Thank you very much!!…I have installed an OCZ Solid III in an alienware M17X R3 together with the LPM fix…and it is running excellent!!

  • Dataslak

    Agree: This is a great guide!

    A note regarding #10:
    http://blog.tune-up.com/myth-buster/myth-busted-why-disabling-superfetch-on-vista-and-windows-7-is-a-bad-idea/

    They claim that turning off superfetch is not a good idea, and that they have tested this rigorously to back up their claim.

    What do you think?

    • Superfetch serves absolutely no purpose with an SSD. Its comparable to a car with five wheels whereas the fifth serves absolutley no purpose but to add to the additional possibilities of problems that could occur. The question I would ask ANY testing Superfetch with an SSD is what benefit does it serve at all?

      My view on this is much the same as pagefile which was brought in during the period that new OS requirements demanded additional RAM but it was simply too expensive… Pagefile then filled that gap whereas, it serves no purpose for todays system which sport 4GB ram for typical use and in excess of that for power users.

      • Well-Duh

        Given enough money this is true. But applications grow and machines get older and reach memory expansion limits. So…you can set pagefile to start very low and allow it to expand under system control IF ever needed. If not the file stays insignificant. Works with near zero impact if you aren’t rich. 🙂

        Yeah a couple of my machines are older with 8GB RAM expansion limit and I tend to open enough big apps that I see some occasional pagefile use.

      • Well-Duh

        If money is not a problem…

        it seems a second SSD dedicated to applications (X:/program files) would improve performance. First user stuff is not competing with any OS oriented I/O. Second all those optimizations can be applied without slightest drawback (no system restore etc).

        and maybe a small additional SSD for temp file area – again on the non-compete theory (multiple processes) and because this is the SSD that would most likely wear out first.

  • Max Strzelecki

    Regarding tip # 3, disable System Restore because it does not work well with TRIM, I was just reading Microsoft’s information regarding System Restore and TRIM:

    “Windows 7 requests the Trim operation for more than just file delete operations. The Trim operation is fully integrated with partition- and volume-level commands like Format and Delete, with file system commands relating to truncate and compression, and with the System Restore (aka Volume Snapshot) feature.”
    (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx)

    • Yes I know this article. I haven’t used System Restore for 2 plus years now myself but, in early tests, I observed significant slowing in our systems when System Restore was active after a period of time. Turn restore off and the performance returned. I can’t speak to present testing but I can say that I still have people comment on how they have had a return of performance in systems that have slowed mysteriously and I suggested turning off and deleting restore points.

  • kyle

    Great review, Missing a few steps or info in some of them to make it easy for registry editing, but other than that great! I couldn’t find the windows log in or out timers for some reason in the registry even though I have edited those before.. hmm sp1 might have changed things a bit!

    I have a few modification I would add to this list.

    modify your installation locations for “my Documents” and pics, video, movie folders to go to a secondary drive. I also directed my downloads to go to a remote hard drive. for info on this go to:

    http://www.w7forums.com/change-location-my-documents-folder-t338.html

  • Calle_hahne

    Can anyone mail me an answer what the option SSD Performance Mode does? I found it in the BIOS and it was [DISABLE]

  • Jacobfogg

    It would be great to see a guide like this for Linux users

    • While I would concede that this would be a great move, unfortunately we haven’t got the Linux expertise on staff for such a project. Thanks for dropping by!

  • matthew

    I’m waiting for my m4 SSD to come in. I’m currently using my HDD as my main drive. Since I did not start my computer build with a SSD as a primary drive, are there any other previous steps before I follow this guide? If I were to Install my SSD and use it as my Primary for OS and apps, would I be losing everything off my HDD or can I transfer what I want? I apologize if this doesn’t make sense.

    • My advise is to do a fresh install of your OS with the SSD to avoid any of the inevitable problems many seem to always have. I believe in building the perfect OS one step at a time (ie fresh install/optimize for performance and space/add software/add data)

      • matthew

        Just to clarify, a fresh install of OS on the SSD will not result in the loss of any data on the HDD? After optimization just redirect my programs & drivers(for mouse, monitor, mobo, graphics etc)to the state drive and then wipe my spinning drive clean of said programs?

        This is my first build ever and I’m very knew to all of this which is why I ask these things. I appreciate your help!

        http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html

        From comparing these 2 guides,(might have missed something else)both seem to be hitting the same points except about pagefile. He mentions pagefile twice.
        What are your thoughts on this?

      • Haven’t used Pagefile in years. It serves no purpose in todays system if you have sufficient RAM.

      • Peicheck

        I just applied this guide in my new intel 520 series.
        i have 4GB RAM and also i do video editing and i have 3 screens, do you recomend me to turn off pagefile?
        sometimes i went almost to the limit on my RAM capacity

      • If you went almost to the limit, I would not recommend turning off pagefile and, most obviously, your use is well above that of the typical user.

  • Suggestions to improve this article:

    Explain what each of these settings does, and what happens when you change them.
    Explain how much of a performance gain you can typically expect to see from performing the optimization.
    Explain what the goal of the optimization is: is it to improve the overall system speed? is it to save wear on the drive by reducing I/O? is it to reduce energy consumption?

    Most of the optimizations at the beginning of the article have most of this info, but toward the end it just says how to apply the optimization, not why, or what it does.

  • guest

    sitting, excellent guide 10+

  • MySchizoBuddy

    can you post the mac equivalent of this guide

  • Guest

    Thanks. Good job. You might consider adding info re changes in windows 8.

  • 987654

    Following your recommendations mean lost of most of the major functions of a modern system. I lost more computing power than gain. What’s the point!

  • Stan

    It is very very good optimization guide!
    My SSD+18% effect!
    Stan

  • Leea6

    Do you know if these settings would work with a Macbook air running Windows 7 (separate boot partition of course)

  • Bob

    disabling the recylce bin is a hideous idea, but the rest is awesome thank you 🙂

    • I have been without my recycle bin for years. Its simply you being certain that you want to delete something when you delete it and turning it off regains substantial space for your SSD needs. Tx Bob!

    • well-duh

      Bet he has fiber network backups to online SSD archive working for him. So if he does make a mistake…someone can fetch it back. Same as for no system restore. If you put enough money into a fast network and archive system…you can get extremely lean on the desktop.

      I see similar advice about not using virus protection from guys working on multi-layered Fort Knox type secured networks (with protected archive snapshots and working file backups). Truly is much faster. If you work in that environment. But lots of those folk do forget where they work. Especially if the home connection is through corp network via VPN. Or in LEs case home and travel machine do incremental backups via high speed VPN. 🙂

  • Nick

    i dont have a disk with win7 on it, its on my hdd in the restore partition.

    will this affect how i do this job? what if i have a failure later on, will i be able to get windows back?

  • Goytá

    About item 4 – Disable Drive Indexing, this is not the first time I see the procedure described that way, but that’s useless in most cases, for two reasons: first, even with the “Allow drive…” checkbox unchecked, there are subfolders and individual files that may still be on the indexing list, and they will be indexed. Second, if one also has one or more HDDs (and most SSD users will have this combination) and they or part of them are indexed, Windows has a single index for all and by default it will also be stored on the C: drive, under ProgramDataMicrosoftSearch. Add to that the inconvenience of doing without the indexed search – even on a SSD, it’s much faster and more efficient to search a few kB of the index than a few gigabytes of files.

    There are two real solutions for that. The more drastic one is disabling the Windows Search service altogether, which will of course make the feature unavailable, but is guaranteed to stop all indexing. The more intelligent one is simply moving the index to a HDD, which can be done at Control Panel – Indexing Options – Advanced. Since the problem is not indexing the drive “per se” but writing the index on it, if the index is moved, the SSD can be kept indexed and the user will have the feature available.

    As for disabling System Restore, I won’t do it and won’t recommend it. It can be tweaked to use less space and be done less frequently, which should minimize the problem, but it also takes a snapshot of system files that a simple Registry backup won’t preserve. More than once it has saved me and my Windows install, and I consider it a vital feature. If that implies losing some of the SSD’s speed, so be it – speed isn’t everything. I doubt that a few hours on the Windows logon screen every week – something recommended for every PC with a SSD – won’t be able to do all the necessary garbage collection and return the drive to almost-new performance.

  • Robbedoes18

    Nice guide, most work in win8 too, I did not all settings bcos I have 4gb of ram (HTPC). maybe you specify what to and don’t if you run win8, or if you have a medium level htpc with ssd. Thanx:D

  • Ferguson005

    For whatever reason, in order to RAID my SSDs, it requires my SATA mode to be set to “RAID” . If i set it to AHCI it doesn’t allow me access to my raid controller

    • Its hard to provide advise no knowing the complete system or ful set of circumstances. I might suggest joining our Forums where there are many experts that can help you along!

  • Ej_60031

    is there a guide that describes the steps for a mac os?

  • Hi,

    I just replaced my HDD and installed a SSD in my PC. Did a clean Install of Win 7 and now I’m about to execute the SSD Optimization guide. Still had one question in mind:

    I have one SSD in my system that contains the OS and 5 normal HDD in RAID that contain all my data files.

    If I follow the Optimization Guide would that effect the HDD in my system?
    For example disabling all the things that are necessary for the SSD will they also be disabled for the other HDD’s inside my PC?

    I assume that this is not split up but then again I’m not an expert in this field.

    Thanks,
    Carlo

  • There are differences in the speed of SSDs. Some are actually much slower than others. Also, don’t buy the cheap 64GB drives, as you will run out of room fairly quickly. At the minimum, I’d go for 120GB. I personally have two 240 GB SSDs that will be going into my new build, and plan on getting another. I live by SSD drives now and I’ll keep waiting on these things to get to decent sizes at reasonable prices.

  • This should be titled SSD Optimization for Windows. What about us non-Windows users?

    • If you are looking for a Windows Optimization Guide, there is one available here as well but, if you are negating the value of the SSD Optimization Guide, it has over a million reads and enough complimets to justify its place I guess.

      Thanks for taking the time to write Charles!

  • John

    I wish this guide had more information about the justification for some of these tweaks and actual evidence to support the tweaks. The guide makes claims like “in our testing” but no benchmark evidence is persented.

  • The Muss

    Don’t disable page file. Windows uses it.

    Don’t disable superfetch/prefetch. They’re usually on RAM. No matter how fast SSD is they’re still way too slow compared to RAM. I know superfetch takes space. But it’s for your sake.

  • Peter

    I disabled PAGEFILE on my SSD and set PAGING FILE on a HDD instead (sytem managed size.)
    However each time I start windows I get this message:
    “Windows created a temporary paging file on your computer because of a problem that occurred with your paging file configuration when you started your computer. The total paging file size for all disc drives may be somewhat larger than the size you specified.”

    • We don’t recommend moving your paging file to a HDD and, if you think about it logically, it is a questionable move as you are actually moving the data much slower in your HDD pagefile than it would move in RAM first and foremost.

      Our advise is to shut down pagefile if you have sufficient RAM first and foremost, next would be to leave pagefile in SSD storage and we would never recommend moving to HDD as it logically would slow your system simply by the mechanics of your pagefile speed via the HDD.

  • Peter

    I cloned my OS (Win7 Ultimate x64) onto a SSD.
    I performed the registry tweaks to allow AHCI drivers to install then switched to AHCI mode, but Windows will not boot.
    Nor will it boot if I switch back to IDE mode.
    Fortunately it will boot from my old HDD in IDE mode and only after doing that will it then boot from the SSD (still in IDE mode.)
    I was going to reformat my old HDD to use for other purposes, but I am reluctant to do that until I can resolve this problem.

    • So, if I get this right, you cloned your IDE mode Os onto and SSD and then tried to get it to work in AHCI…

      Our first advise to all in switching to SSD is to always go to a fresh install. This becomes even more crucial if you are originally running in IDE mode as is evident in this case.

      The problem is that the system requires more than switching of registry entries to move from IDE to AHCI and your problem can be found in the bios in this case. I would recommend a fresh install after making sure the motherboard is in AHCI mode, which it sounds like it is not in this case.

      Good luck.

      • Mr Jolly

        try reading the guys post beyond 1.5 lines, he talks about switching the mode clearly! if u need to reinstall OS its a joke and not worth it in the slightest unless u are install browser i am a noob therefore done guy…. 😉

      • terrorfrog

        sorry but i dissagree at least partly,..

        fresh install is always a good idea as long you dont have my pc – youll end up with another 60 hours of installing 🙂

        but its really not nessesary to reinstall – usually its fine to install the ahci driver and switch the regestry – then you switch the bios option to ahci

        if for some reason that still dont work – surprisingly the windows boot repair works in that case – just laod the disk driver manually bevor you start.

        (driver thing in case you got issues with the msahci – for that you only need the regesry)

        however i know theres the romu fresh install is needed – well – i personally have 2 guesses where that comes from – 1 after reinstalling everyting is usually better – of course it is lol
        2 – comes from the old windows NT/win2k,CP aka winserver until R2 – so pre vista/win7 platform

        there the things where very different – specially because of the dam HAL – which not only made a difference in CPUßs (you could not switch from single to multicore or intel to amd) but also made major troubles with switching basic hardware drivers like IDE

        well HAL is gone – kinda – ahci/ide are just regular drivers like any other just used a little earlier than the others and needed to start. but basically just a bunch settings and a .sys file

        theres absolute nor reason to reinstall if youre able to do the modifications – its like you reinstall because of a graphicscard change

        the only difference between ahci and any other driver is that this is one of a few drivers so critical an error or wrong driver cant be recovered by the system itself (like VGA mode for a wrong GPU driver) – (well it could be recovered but thats another story MS faulty design as usual)

        anyway only thing with cloning to consider is to keep the correct partition allocation – which can be tweaked later by partition utilitys – easiest way to check is to run AS SSD Benchmark – which will check AHCI and partition

        most important is the usual win7 1024k offset – try to keep it while copying 🙂

      • Eliezer Berlin

        During installation, Windows 7 automatically detects that you’re installing to a SSD drive, and performs some automatic tweaking based upon that. While I’m sure you can manually perform all the tweaks it does automatically, I doubt spending 10 hours researching and editing registery keys to optimize it for the new drive (not only is it no longer an IDE drive, but also a SSD drive) is REALLY a better idea than spending 10 hours reinstalling everything. (Keep in mind install times are much faster with your new SSD drive. xD)

      • LiftedSeven

        A quick question: If I have 2 SSDs and 1 HDD that I have for storage strictly, does it mean it still needs to be AHCI mode, or will it cause an issue for my HDD drive?
        Running Windows 8.1. SSD will have the operating system, 2nd SSD for games, and of course HDD for storage.
        Thank you, Les 🙂

  • Shin

    I have a problem with my SSD, My cousin gave it to me since he upgraded, It’s barely 2 months old and its been with me for 3 weeks, just this morning when I turned on my laptop It wont boot. xD When I go to bios and check HD diagnostic, it says “NO IDE DETECTED”… I’m not really a techy, but I read on some forums to reformat and with my windows 7 disk in the drive… help. xD

  • terrorfrog

    some interresting new ideas i always forget about like no gui and disable multiboot (if your not using grub anyway)

    However i was an tweak addict for a looong looong time too.
    what healed me was to many systems – 10 virtual pc, laptop, regular machines and so on – it simply sucks doing all that stuff over and over again.

    i really whish an open way to create config profiles (user and machine) and storing option into a cloud (not that server based profile nonsense from microsoft) so we could aply tweaks and stuff with a click 🙂

    however – i must say – first time in my life – samsung made a good job with their ssd tool – at least today – it really does something – and aplies the most important ssd tweaks with one click

    i just which it could be extended to cour own config so i coudl add some scripts lol

    ps: yea i know i could write script with the scripting hosts and the new shell – however while im used todo on linux i really dont have any energy at all on windows todo so …

  • henry

    Hi very good guide,appreciate you work.

    * Moving Firefox browser cache to another drive reduce SSD writes?

    *Moving Win7 Temp folder(temp&TMP) to another drive(hdd) reduce ssd writes?

    *Do modern SSD really needs all tweaks for decrease data writing for lifespan?
    New Crucial c-300 128gb here.
    thanks.

    • Hi Henry. Thank you and I appreciate your input. I stayed away from the ‘reduce writes’ theory because 99% of people…actually 99.99% will never have the drive long enough to realize end life IMHO.

    • ChrisH

      I use Superspeed RAMdisk Plus to create a 4GB RAM disk, browser cache, pagefile and temp file folders are stored there. The contents of the RAMdisk are automatically saved during shutdown and reloaded at boot time. Advantages are obvious (I hope), the disadvantage is that the RAMdisk file needs to be loaded at boot and saved during shutdown – which takes extra time. However, because my PC is mostly always powered up this is still a good plan for my usage.

      • Jay

        How do you make Firefox cache in a particular partition?

      • Goytá

        1. With Firefox NOT running, locate the file “C:Users[username]AppDataRoamingMozillaFirefoxprofiles.ini” and delete it or rename it.

        2. Using Notepad, create a new “profiles.ini” in that location with the following contents (WITHOUT the delimiter lines I put just for clarity):

        —————-

        [General]
        StartWithLastProfile=0

        [Profile0]
        Name=default
        IsRelative=0
        Path=[desired location, e.g. R:Firefox]

        —————-

        3. Move all other files in that folder to that location.

        5. Next time Firefox is opened, it will look for its files there and update them accordingly.

        Please note, however, that not only the cache, but ALL files that Firefox associates with that user will be moved there. Thus, if you move them to a RAMdrive as ChrisH does, you will have to be sure that the RAMdrive is available at all times you use Firefox, and that its contents are saved every time you shutdown and reloaded every time you boot. Otherwise, Firefox will either fail to load properly or recreate a default install in the AppDataRoaming subfolder mentioned above.

  • Swimming

    This blog is
    excellent, I like study your posts. You know, many persons are searching
    around for this information, you could aid them greatly.
    .

    Swimming

  • Ed Sullivan

    Hi, Have a new 120GB SSD, and am going to continue to use XP at present (too much software I have to use for business which won’t work on Win7, and don’t have time to migrate at present). I intend to load XP, software and current data on SSD, and put infrequently used data, archives, etc on a second conventional HD. I could therefore (where possible) store certain files, such as system restore?, temp files?, etc. on the conventional HD. Any suggestions as to what to move to conventional HD, and how to do it. I think many people with SSD’s will have a second conventional drive, so I think the answer would be useful to other people too. Thanks for such useful information! Ed

    • Goytá

      @c206a3aba9e77af1ec3179b2e55c0819:disqus, it is a bad idea to use a SSD with XP, because XP is old technology that predates SSDs (at least in their present form), has poor and incomplete support to them, and most significantly, doesn’t support the TRIM command (this means that your SSD’s performance will slow down gradually but drastically over the course of a few months, until you perform a secure erase – not a mere reformatting or repartitioning – and start over). Windows 7 also self-optimizes for SSDs when it detects that the system drive is one (running the Windows Experience Index benchmark just after install will do that as a side effect).

      Your incompatible business programs are not a problem if you run XP on a virtual machine under VMware Player or VirtualBox – both free, excellent and extremely useful for this and many other purposes. Depending on how often you use your business programs, put the virtual machine’s files on the SSD or on the HDD – on the former if you use them most of the time, on the latter if you use them on a more occasional basis. This would be the best solution for you: running Windows 7, with an XP VM for your incompatible programs. Please think about it – it may sound esoteric, but it’s actually very simple and straightforward to do.

      Programs and DLLs are the most frequently accessed files and the ones that most impact performance. Data files are not as critical for performance. So, I moved “My Documents”, media files, pictures and all data files (including “Contacts”, “Saved Games”, “Searches”, etc.) to the HDD (you can move them from their default location in the “Properties” window – “Location” tab). You can also have a working folder on the SSD with a selection of documents that are currently in active and frequent use, moving them to the HDD when they can be just archived and will be accessed infrequently from then on. Anyway, opening and saving data files is not the critical part – they can be kept on the HDD without impacting much the performance.

      I also moved the Windows Search index to a folder on the HDD (you can do that from Control Panel – “Indexing Options” applet – just disabling indexing on the SSD’s “Properties” does NOT solve the problem). You can’t move System Restore to the HDD – Windows keeps the restore data in the “System Volume Information” folder on each tracked drive. Just set a not so large maximum size and clear that frequently if you feel safe. Of course, all system backups go to the HDD – even better if an external USB one, in this case.

      I chose NOT to disable the paging file and kept it on the SSD (I only kept it small at 512 MB). This is controversial, but I decided it would be better this way. The paging file is required by some programs to be present for them to function properly, but it is rarely used in practice these days when RAM is plentiful, yet you want it to be speedy when it is. Microsoft itself recommends the paging file to be active and on the SSD.

      And I also chose to keep the Temp folder on the SSD, taking care to empty it frequently with CCleaner. The Temp folder is one of the most frequently written and accessed areas, so if you want speed (and anyone who has a SSD wants it), it should be on the SSD. Fortunately, gone are the days when you should do everything to spare writes and erases on your SSD in order to save limited write/erase cycles and extend its life. The cycles are still limited, but it’s a very large limit now, enough for many years of even heavy use, as confirmed by many practical tests.

      Good luck!

  • JimInBoulder

    Great guide, but I’m wondering about the implications of some of these recommendations in the case of a mixed solid-state and mechanical drive system. My boot drive is an SSD but I also have three conventional hard drives too. It would be helpful if the guide addressed this issue.

    • Goytá

      @jiminboulder:disqus, please be more specific. You talk as if having a mixed SSD+HDD system were an exceptional case. It’s not – it’s the rule in maybe 95% of the cases where a PC has a SSD. You can see that a lot, if not most of what is discussed on SSD forums and topics, including this blog page, is what to put or not to put on either, and why. (Sometimes, opinions differ a lot and are far from a consensus, such as with the paging file and the system Temp folder.) So, I don’t think it’s an unaddressed issue, unless you have some specific problem in mind. What exactly are the implications you’re worried about? What are your doubts?

  • CybrSage

    My only complaint is that I wish all the registry items were lumped together and all the CMD items were lumped together.

  • LolDude

    If you’re developing with SQL you can’t disable Pagefile because is needed, no matter if you have 1TB of RAM.

  • doctrbob

    Awesome guide!…I have a question. I use a Corsair 120 gb SSD for my Win7 OS, and a pair of HDD set up in RAID 1 for my data files. My BIOS is set to RAID, but there is the option for AHCI and/or IDE. Does this mean I am not operating in AHCI mode? If not, is it too late to change without reloading everything? If so, do I want to modify my Registry as you suggest above? Thanks in advance

    • Goytá

      Where exactly it is depends on the specific BIOS model and version you have, and there are those that don’t support AHCI at all. That said, if your BIOS is set to RAID, you are in AHCI mode, whether or not that’s explicit in the BIOS parameters. AHCI is a prerequisite to run a RAID array, so if you have RAID, you have AHCI.

  • Quin

    @15. Verify trim. open up notepad.
    copy paste ”
    fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify
    pause
    ”
    save file as “filename”.bat

    run the file as administrator and you can take your time to watch if trim is enabled or disabled

    kind regards
    Quin

  • Tweak

    Hi,

    Nice guide and thanks.
    Regarding tweak #18 here is what I found about that.
    http://www.tweakhound.com/blog/?p=1164

  • Indexed

    Thanks for this in depth guide. I’m following it step by step, but disabling drive indexing doesn’t seem to work. After the box marked “Allow files to have contents indexed in addition to file properties” is unchecked, “Apply changes to C:, subfolders and files” is chosen, then “ignore all” is selected in the pop-up, Win 7 spends a couple minutes disabling indexing on the SSD. However, after exiting and re-entering the SSD properties, “Allow files to have contents indexed….” is checked again. I have tried this a several times with the same result. Is there another way to disable indexing on the SSD while retaining the search features?

    • Goytá

      Actually, that is a flawed tip, because just unchecking “Allow files to have contents indexed…” does NOT solve the problem. Any other drives you have will still be indexed, and the index for all drives is written by default under “C:Program DataWindowsSearch” – hence, on the SSD. Another problem is that it is still possible to specify exceptions to be indexed in drive C:’s subfolders and files, even if indexing is disabled on that drive.

      There are two real solutions for that. The more drastic one is disabling the Windows Search service altogether, which you can do by right-clicking on the “Computer” icon, then “Manage”, then accessing the “Services” page and changing that service’s properties. Please note that the “Indexing Service” on the list there is a dummy legacy service – the one you really have to stop and disable is called “Windows Search.”

      Of course, that will prevent you from using indexed searches altogether, and they can often be very useful. Windows 7 will also send an annoying message offering to index an unindexed location whenever you try to search it. Since the real problem is not indexing the SSD, but writing the index on it, there is a more intelligent solution, in my opinion: move the index away from the SSD and on to a HDD. You can do that in the Control Panel – “Indexing Options” – “Advanced” button – “Index Location.” Indexed searches will still be lightning fast and you can index the SSD as well (it’s still much faster to read a few kB of the index on a HDD than several mega- or gigabytes on a SSD).

      • Indexed

        Thank you, Goyta! I took your advice. It seems like a great solution when a backup drive is being utilized. Not sure what I’ll do when I upgrade the laptop, but I’ll cross that bridge later. Thanks again.

  • dmoose

    I’m not sure but I think the superfetch tip messed up my loading times, for some reason when I boot my computer on, it takes while after the bio shows up. Before it went straight to windows but now it shows a black screen for a moment and then windows. it’s on a laptop if that matters

    • Goytá

      I don’t doubt you. SSDs are fast, but RAM is stil much faster than NAND memory. Superfetch moves much of the I/O burden to RAM, so even with SSDs it’s still an improvement and I see no reason why it should be disabled, especially if you have a 64-bit system with oodles of RAM to take advantage of it.

      • dmoose

        Thanks for the reply. So I enabled it again but I still get that blank screen in between the bios and windows 7, very weird. But the computer boots much faster, just not sure where I went wrong then.

    • Slave1ne

      Same here! I ran into this exact same problem after disabling SuperFetch and my boot times increased. Reversing the changes corrected it.

      @DMOOSE – The (now) very short black screen you see @ boot is from turning off GUI Boot. The way you can tell is there should be a line of small white dots all the way in the upper left-hand corner of that black screen…

  • Nice info! I did pretty much anything said, but my speed only improved a little bit:
    Before settings:
    Sequential Read : 377.502 MB/s Sequential Write : 369.477 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 288.615 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 357.192 MB/s

    After settings:
    Sequential Read : 378.775 MB/s Sequential Write : 374.046 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 288.455 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 359.661 MB/s

    Samsung 830 SSD

    Test : 1000 MB [C: 49.5% (118.2/238.5 GB)] (x5) Date : 2012/08/31 16:35:17 OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

    What should I do? I was expecting 500+ Mb/sec

    • Goytá

      Since you mentioned no test software, if I understood it correctly, you just copied a large file and evaluated the speed that Windows Explorer reported. That’s too crude a test, and in a situation where lots of things can interfere. You should use specialized benchmarking software. A combination of ATTO, AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark should give you a good idea of how your SSD is performing. ATTO is notorious for giving glowing results, because it tests the drive in the most favorable conditions (this is why all SSD manufacturers base their advertisement on it), while AS SSD does just the opposite and gives much lower marks, especially with SandForce drives (not your case). Neither is representative of real-life use and the real performance must be somewhere in between.

      Keep in mind that different testing software use completely different methodologies and give wildly differing results in different circumstances and tests, so they should not be directly compared, and none of them should be taken at face value – a set of different tests will give you a better overall idea of the drive’s real performance.

      Also keep in mind that no such test will tell you the extent to which your drive’s performance will be maintained or degraded over a longer period (months or years). Some of the measures outlined in this blog post are not really meant to improve speed, but rather durability and/or long-term performance.

      That said, don’t bother too much about the numbers, because even taken at face value, your results are good enough to ensure a very fast user experience. As far as the latter goes, there wouldn’t be much noticeable difference in practice if you went to the 500+ MB/s bracket. Due to a misapplied firmware patch, I once used my OCZ Vertex 3 in SATA II mode, obtaining 280 MB/s maximum (in SATA III, it easily reaches 560 MB/s in ATTO for large sequential blocks), and it took me over a week to notice that something was wrong – that’s already almost as fast as Windows and the user can productively and significantly notice and use, in terms of interface speed and responsiveness.

      • Looks like was plugged in a SATA 3Gb/s , so I figured out the right port and now, Crystal Mark shows 510Mb/s read and 400 Mb/s Write (
        http://i.imgur.com/8XYXX.jpg)
        Thanks for the reply!

      • Goytá

        It didn’t occur to me that your SSD could be plugged to a SATA II port because your values exceeded 300 MB/s and that shouldn’t be possible with a SATA II port. Some Intel mainboards have mixed Marvell and native Intel ports, both SATA III but for some reason SSDs perform much worse when plugged to the Marvell port. That could be a possible reason as well.

  • miklog

    comment one hundred (and thank you for the suggestions)

  • Curt

    Hi,
    Thanks for the good work… Just wanted to add as I upgraded my laptop that Partition Assistant does the realigning job through cloning process. Its freeware and efficient. Saves some time over the GParted solution.
    Cheers, Curt

  • Daniel

    Awesome guide, although I moved the pagefile (1GB) to another drive, I have 16GB Ram, but certain applications refuse to run without a pagefile, very sad.
    And coulnd’t disable the spin down time because I have 3 more disks. Is there any way to disable spin down for the SSD alone? Thanks for the great guide!

  • Antony

    Just dropping you a line to congratulate and thank you for this extremely concise and informative guide to SSD tweaks.

  • oasis789

    • I don’t concern myself with other sites Tweaking Guides but thanks. At one point, they used to tell me that all of our tweaks were nonsense but, well I guess many readers feel otherwise. The beauty of the Internet is that you can pick and choose from many sites.

  • Aidas

    Hi, great guide, thanks much.
    Question – would all of these tweaks apply in multi-drive system?
    Say I have SSD system drive, zero RAID, and another large stand alone HDD.
    Mostly concerned about registry tweaks – would any of these degrade the HDD performance?

    • Goytá

      That situation is typical of a vast majority of SSD users, as it’s not economically feasible or advantageous for most to invest a huge sum in large amounts of SSD storage. So, a SSD system drive combined with bulk data storage on one or more HDDs is what nearly all of us use. Therefore, the answer is yes. And there is no impact on the HDD, which shouldn’t be of concern anyway in such a setting – stored data access is not critical for system performance in most cases and in most modern configurations, while system file and program access speed is.

  • slovenec

    Great review, but it doesn’t work for me. I have notebook Asus G73SW and I’ve upgraded it with Samsung SSD 830-240GB. My boot time is 85 seconds and this is not normal. Please can anybody help me?

    • Yes this is not normal FOR ANY SSD. Did you do a fresh install or upgrade/migration? Your answer could be right there.

      • slovenec

        Fresh install, no antivirus nothing else. Trugh bios goes fast and than waiting……. and after 85 seconds WIN Home premium 64 bit. 🙁

    • slovenec

      * MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

      Sequential Read : 453.929 MB/s
      Sequential Write : 420.946 MB/s
      Random Read 512KB : 306.204 MB/s
      Random Write 512KB : 357.014 MB/s
      Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 19.615 MB/s [ 4788.8 IOPS]
      Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 49.356 MB/s [ 12049.9 IOPS]
      Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 241.513 MB/s [ 58963.1 IOPS]
      Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 124.740 MB/s [ 30454.2 IOPS]

      Test : 1000 MB [C: 12.8% (30.4/238.4 GB)] (x5)
      Date : 2012/12/11 21:01:14
      OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
      Is this normal for my SSD?

      • slovenec

        For everyone who has the same problem, you have to search in applications there is the problem. On driver CD for ASUS G73 is ATK Package that couses boot time of 85 seconds. Without that ATK application 25 seconds.
        :))

  • Joel G

    Excelente guia! Saludos!!!

  • John

    Thanks Bob! Awesome stuff. Helped a lot a new guy into the SSD world like myself. 🙂

  • kettyo

    Great guide, thanks a lot for it!

    One thing to note though is that if you have a laptop you’re strongly advised against changing your energy profile to ‘high performance’. It disables cpu underclocking so your battery will run out much faster.

    • Conversely, if you are going to benchmark your portable, ensure that it is on high performance.

  • Hi guys.
    New here, and in need for some advice for a SSD config.
    My PC is for use with a pro-audio studio DAW (Cubase 7 64 bit).
    OS is Win 7 Enterprise 64 bit, Quad Intel CPU, 8 GB of RAM, ATI GPU (X1950 Dual Head), and 1 TB HDD Sata 3 for main drive.
    RAID 0 of 640 GB for work (recording/playng,etc).
    I’m planning to install as SSD driver for all my sample audio libraries (for streaming with Native Instruments Kontakt 5), wich are a heavy 560 Gb library…
    Any advices on how to configure this specific drive for this specific function?
    Thanks a lot and all the best from Portugal

    • Goytá

      António, for the use you have in mind, I don’t think a SSD would be indicated. Even the slowest mechanical HDD is already more than fast enough to serve media files, even if your audio samples are in uncompressed high-bitrate PCM WAV (the format where the greatest amount of data would need to be read) – playing time is still much longer than the time needed to retrieve the data from the disk (I’d say *at most* a few tens of milliseconds for each second of playing time). With compressed formats, that’s even less, because then the compressed data will be copied to RAM and the CPU will decompress it from there.

      This is a typical application where mechanical disk drives are still the best choice, because they already deliver all the performance you need for that and are much cheaper.

      In short, if you put a SSD to serve audio, it will offer no real speed advantage in that case and you will spend a fortune. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

      Boa sorte e abraços do Brasil! 🙂

  • Igor Novak

    Every time right after i install Windows7

  • chris

    “6. TURN OFF PAGEFILE …does not improve performance whatsoever.” Have to take issue with that one – I’ve upped my RAM to 8gb to turn off the pagefile and saw a significant performance boost, and have seen one in XP, Vista and Win7 whether on an HDD or SSD. When Windows has a paging file to use, it pages to disk repeatedly even when it doesn’t necessarily need data on the disk, just to maintain the memory pages it’s maintaining in RAM. SSDs are fast, but they aren’t as fast as RAM – there IS a performance boost here and in my experience it’s significant affecting boot time, speed of big apps like Chrome, and time to load big apps. If you can upgrade your RAM to something large enough to get rid of it, do so.

    • I agree totally but it cannot be measured by any metric. The tweak provides a savings of space.

  • Is it possible that one or more of settings are giving BSOD ?

    • Goytá

      Unlikely, Kevin. BSODs are usually caused either by hardware conflicts that Windows cannot solve or by driver (i.e., software, not to be confused with “drive” without an “r,” which is hardware) bugs and conflicts. None of these is caused by any of the suggested adjustments. It is, however, possible that the drive itself is causing it, conflicting with some other component. Or the cause may be completely different and it’s just a coincidence that the BSODs are happening after you installed the drive. Without analyzing the memory dump from the BSOD, it’s very hard to say.

      • Thank u for the Reply.

        can i post the memory dump file message here next time i get a BSOD to check out what may cause it ?

      • Goytá

        I’m not the site owner, just a frequent commenter on this topic, but I suppose that would be inappropriate for the discussion section of a blog post. You should try a proper technical support forum for that – there are many out there. There is also software for analyzing BSOD dumps, like BlueScreenView, for example. Such programs usually don’t give much information, but they do pinpoint the problem module(s) and that can be a good clue for you to research further.

      • Thankl you Goyta and your effortts here are truly appreciated. Kevin, I would have to agree here that you not post the file, but rather, join our Forums where the expertise there can help you along.

  • Thank you ever so much for the lesson Mr. Tokar. I’ve been doing that kind of noodling around for 30 years and I Love it! I disagree that the some who think its a waste time are right. I got my boot time down to under 10 seconds. That’s Real time saved. Anyone who spends a lot of time with computers knows you spend a serious amount of time just waiting for them to do something. Thanks again. Not only did I learn a lot but it was so much fun that by the end I was learning my way around the registry all over again. It’s been a while and the names have changed but the faces are all the same! Ciao!

  • Cheap SSDs

    This here is a great article. You guys can find more info about SSDs at http://cheapssds.com

  • Felipe

    First of all, thanks for the guid, it really helped a lot!

    9. “Disable Prefetch and Superfetch”, “10. Disable Windows Search and Superfetch”:

    Maybe that parts of the tutorial can be causing some issues on my PC. I just checked the Event Viewer and It’s returning a frequent error: “Session “ReadyBoot” has terminated with error(s) 0xC0000188″.

    When this error occurs, I generally get a dialogue box with the following description: “The maximum file size for session “ReadyBoot” has been reached. As a result, events may be lost (not logged) to file C:WindowsPrefetchReadyBootReadyBoot.etl. The maximum files size is currently set to (some amount of) bytes”

    Event Viewer Details: –
    –

    3
    0
    2
    2
    14
    0x8000000000000010

    50

    Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-EventTracing/Admin
    Felipe-PC

    –
    ReadyBoot
    C:WindowsPrefetchReadyBootReadyBoot.etl
    3221225864
    0

    Disabling the Superfetch can cause this issue? Can I ignore these errors or it’s better to solve them?

    Thanks!

  • Fiat

    Dunno if this has been addressed already, but windows 8 has a nasty habit of turning System Restore/System Protection back on by itself and here´s how to make sure that it stays off:

    Code:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionSystemRestoreSetup_Last]
    “Unattend_DisableSR”=dword:00000001

    or start group policy editor (Run: gpedit.msc)

    goto:

    Computer Configuration> Administrative Templates > System > System Restore

    At right pane, double-click “Turn off Configuration”.

    Select “Enabled”.

    Click “OK”.

    Double-click “Turn off System Restore”.

    Select “Enabled”

    Click “OK”.

    Now it should stay off permanently..

  • UFCwhore

    Any updated guide? Since last 2 years a lot have been done 😉

  • Alex

    great guide, thank you! You know if anything here works with the new Imac Fusion drive?

    • By working ona Fusion drive, I am going to believe the Fusion drive on a Mac tied into BootCamp. if this is the case, we have yet to test in that environment.

  • toad_004

    Disabling indexing completely might be worthwhile if your one and only drive is an SSD. But in most cases, it’s far more practical to simply move the index to an HDD.

    You should also move Windows “MY” folders (My Documents, My Videos, etc) to an HDD. Basically, anything that isn’t a program (or Windows itself) should be placed on an HDD.

  • Mozef Kaddas

    Thank you for the very detailed guide, its very clear and took me through the whole process for the sake of SSD window Tweak. Well done.

  • Phil Wright

    Just finished the optimization course. Thank you. Very helpful to a not quite newb. Bookmarked your amazon link. Sorry I didn’t know about it sooner. Just now going from xp to 7 w/new ssd & old 1tb hdd. Your course will be used frequently as I get my upgrade build going. Really, THANK YOU for passing on info even an old salt like me can understand.

  • Tim Titus

    I thank you for the guide, I found it quite helpful. I have a question I can’t find an answer for. I have a Samsung 840 EVO500 GB, set up as described. Everything seems to be working fine however, my HDD case LED is constantly lit, there is no discernible flickering. Is this normal behavior for an SSD?

    • I wouldn’t think so but I might check the Task Manager for activity.

    • Josh

      I would also check that the wires from the HDD LED on your case are connected properly to your motherboard. Connect backwards (reverse polarity) can cause the light to never blink or to always stay on, like you’re seeing.

  • JC

    NtfsMemoryUsage does nothing. It has no affect on any behavior of any component of the system at all. It exists purely for compatibility reasons. See http://www.tweakhound.com/2009/12/11/ntfsmemoryusage2-tweak/ (postcript in particular). Please do your research first, you have a social responsibility to not continue the spread of bad “tweaks” and misinformation. This alone is enough to make me shrug off the rest of the article as more misguided advice.

  • LiftedSeven

    Thanks a LOT, Les!
    Will be following the guide after I do a fresh install again. Might as well start from scratch and do everything you suggested.
    Going to use Windows 8.1 on one Kingston Hyperx drive, and load Battlefield 3 and 4 on 2nd identical one.
    Cheers, and I appreciate people like you that take the time to create a comprehensive guides like this. 🙂

  • Well-Duh

    Unfortunately System Restore is still quite necessary for most system drives. Unless you have taken the system off the Internet and no longer update or change the software – chances are avoiding a system reinstall outweighs any performance loss. Or alternatively you can skip System Restore if you are a rich bleeding edge tech-savvy type (SSD Reviewer) and take complete system images on your fiber optic network attached all SSD archive at each system shutdown.

    For poor people attached to the Internet it seems about every other month MS updates themselves will make glad you can do a system restore.

    Now if you have an SSD devoted to applications or user profiles alone…sure turn off the system restore. Individual applications (other than MS megaware like full Office) usually don’t crap out when updated and updates are infrequent. Moreover the most individual applications are easily and quickly reinstalled without any overall system impact. I’d put any complex or critical hardware applications on the system disk with restore point enabled though.

  • Craig Cn

    Great review of the SSD world and did try a few things but I have a problem; or not. I bought 4 samsung 840 evo 250 gb and put them into a RAID10, performance is great but Samsung’s Magician cant find the drive so their software cant be installed; is this a good/bad thing?
    And, installing service pack 1 (win 7, 64bit ultimate) wont install no matter what I do, anybody had this problem before? I did all the troubleshooting and tweaks and it wont install beyond 11%. Error code says file not found
    If anybody had these problems, please pass on some advice,
    Thanks Craig

  • Steven E

    Freshly installed a Samsung 840EVO 120GB SSD and followed almost all of your tips – the registry I left alone. I’m booting an i5 3.3GHz with 8.00GB RAM and 64-bit Windows 8.1 in about 26 seconds – after dealing with the log-on screen. There were a few bugs, but I found that rebooting frequently during installation of Win 8 and upgrade to 8.1, encouraged configuration when it stalled on its own.

    Programs load very fast, including browser windows. I appreciate the help and will keep this guide handy. The other guides that encouraged migration just didn’t work, and wasted a lot of my time.

    I am still tweaking settings and file locations, but this was worth the well less than $100 and a few hours of work.

    –Steven

  • Brandon

    #18 sounds like it increases the paged memory available. I would think you’d want that off if we’re trying to eliminate the page file.

  • Nutrynion Dromeda

    This is awesome. Thank you for the work and contribution. I love tweaking things to an extent of course without damaging the hardware or software all the time just to be able to but also testing the limits. Of course I back everything up for just in case.

  • The Debauchery King

    Hey, if this thread isn’t quite dead can someone help me? I tried this guide and now afterwards my computer starts for about 5 seconds, then turns itself off. Then back on, it doesn’t affect anything (to my knowledge) but it’s becoming a bit annoying, if anyone could point out one of the optimisations that might to that I’d appreciated it so I could reverse it.

    • There is nothing in these optimizations that shoukld cause that whatsoever, sorry.

  • Alex

    Thanks for the article, helped me new SSD

  • KoreaWatch

    Could I use this optimization guide for my healthcare?

    • I don’t quite understand. Do you mean can you link to it? Sure.

  • nice guide crokes.com

  • Keith

    I don’t like Tweak 16 because it Disables the CPU throttling feature. IMO the Balanced Power Setting is the best option.

  • Kevin De Schepper

    is this also for W10 ?

  • Keith

    Tweak number 8, I would not suggest because,
    SSD’s with SandForce Controllers have No External Cache, therefore No Hard Disk Caching is taking place. So in the Device Manger under Disk Drives, Policies Tab,
    Uncheck both boxes under Write caching policy, because they are not used and not needed in Windows 10.

  • Marcus

    Did your guide to the letter, now it does not REBOOT, any idea?

    • No thoughts whatsoever. Nothing in the guide would cause system failure and this has been the most popular SSD Optimization Guide for years now.

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