18. MOVE DOC FOLDER TO HDD – CAPACITY
Keeping in tune with the observing of SSD space above, Windows 7 and Windows 8 provide the ability to change folder locations, enabling your relocation of key folders to a hard drive. This is key for mass storage of such things as music, pictures and video.
Whether you are in Windows 8 or Windows 7, right click on the folder you want to move, search for the new location and ‘Apply’.
19. ADJUSTING CPU STATES – PERFORMANCE
THIS TWEAK IS NOT ADVISED FOR THOSE THAT AREN’T CONFIDENT IN THEIR PC ABILITIES AND WE DO NOT RECOMMEND IT. IF NOT MONITORED PROPERLY, IT MAY RESULT IN HARDWARE DAMAGE OF WHICH WE CANNOT BE RESPONSIBLE
This last optimization will provide a significant performance boost, however, it is not readily available in any Optimization Guides that we are aware of and, in fact, discussion really isn’t that prevalent considering the boost that can be obtained. It consists of shutting off C1E, C3 and C6 states through the CPU management console of your bios which shuts down regulation of the CPU. For overclockers, this is a common tweak and, in fact, many sites have also adapted this (unbenounced to readers) in order to achieve much higher low 4k random write performance. We also did this in a few of our reviews, achieving results such as this:

These results were obtained while conducting our Samsung 840 Pro SSD analysis some time ago. The difference is obvious. Shutting these states down mean disabling the CPU thermal monitoring, higher idle CPU temperatures and higher power draw. A great discussion and further examples can be found in our Forum Thread. Once again, because of the obvious drawbacks, we do not support this optimization and it is not used (but for one or two testing instances) on any of our site systems.
20. THE SSD TOOLBOX
There can be many advantages to choosing the right SSD which provides the buyer with many choices. Of particular interest are Toolboxes from companies such as Samsung, Intel and OCZ that allow such things as automated firmware updates, secure erase, resetting, formatting, adjusting over provisioning, automated optimizations as well as banchmark testing of the drives. All companies update their toolboxes on a frequent basis and they can be obtained, free of charge, by clicking on the company name above. In addition, Samsung and Intel provide free data migration software.
21. FREE BENCHMARK SOFTWARE
There is nothing better than free stuff and in the benchmarking world free software is everywhere. In our position, we elect to use much of this software as it provides the reader with a no cost comparison that can be done at home. Here are links to the free software that we are aware of:
AS SSD | ATTO | Crystal DiskMark | Crystal Disk Info | Anvil Storage Utilites | CPU-Z | HD Tach | IoMeter | TRIMcheck |
If you are aware of any that we haven’t listed here, please comment below with the link and we will get it up.
REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
If you read through this entire document, congratulations because you are as big a techie geek as I. We started the article off with a straight forward observation that not one of these optimizations is necessary for your sheer enjoyment of your SSD. As this is SSD Optimization Guide was compiled with the same ideals that we had with the last, we believe that it will be a valued resource, as traffic and comments of the last seem to predict. If you have any thoughts or ideas, constructive or otherwise, feel free to e-mail the site or post them in comments and we may update the guide accordingly
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