Setting up windows 7 to work with ssd. Optimal SSD drive setup

Solid state drives, as many people know, are significantly faster than mechanical hard drives. However, they also cost significantly more. Each gigabyte of capacity on a solid-state drive costs a pretty penny. And although SSDs are very fast, many users claim that SSDs can be accelerated even further by making simple optimizations. In our article we will look at nine popular optimizations SSD operation under Windows, and also evaluate their impact on performance.

Introduction

Solid state drives, as many people know, are significantly faster than mechanical hard drives. However, they also cost significantly more. Each gigabyte of capacity on a solid-state drive costs a pretty penny. And although SSDs are very fast, many users claim that SSDs can be accelerated even further by making simple optimizations.

This article was born out of our own efforts to maximize the available space you can squeeze out of your precious SSD. We also wanted to see if users' claims of improved performance were true by testing several models. We were interested in whether the optimizations would lead to increased performance, whether they were specific to models from a specific manufacturer, or whether they could be called universal. Or perhaps all these optimizations are completely pointless and they don't improve SSD performance.

We'll start by looking at the nine most recommended SSD optimizations that many users are advised to do after installing an operating system on an SSD. Microsoft Windows 7.

* Disable system protection (System Restore)
* Disable Drive Indexing
* Disable swap file (PageFile)
* Disable Hibernation
* Disable Prefetch and Superfetch
* Disable cache Windows entries
* Disable Superfetch and Windows Search
* Disable ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCache
* Adjust power settings

Before we move on to looking at optimizations, it doesn't hurt to check that your SATA controller is running in AHCI mode, and TRIM function active under Microsoft Windows 7.

Enabling AHCI and TRIM

Check that the SATA controller is in AHCI mode.
During the installation process, you should make sure that the BIOS is set to AHCI mode for the SATA controller. AHCI mode is required for native TRIM support on the SSD.
Check that SATA controller set to AHCI mode.

* From the Start menu, select “Control Panel”.
* Select "System" in "Classic View" mode (or in small or large icon mode under Microsoft Windows 7).

* In Device Manager, find the item “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers/IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers”.

If the item is present, then expand it and find controllers named AHCI in the list. If there are controllers with the name AHCI, then the system operates in AHCI mode. If no such controllers are displayed, then your system is not in AHCI mode.

If you installed the operating system in IDE mode, we recommend switching to AHCI mode after completing the steps in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976. Of course, if your BIOS supports AHCI.

It is better to enable AHCI support, since only in this case you can activate TRIM and the “native” command queue (NCQ). SSDs are very fast, but they only reach their performance potential when processing multiple commands simultaneously (this is why SSDs perform better when using a queue depth of up to 32 compared to QD=1).

Check that TRIM support is enabled

Check TRIM to ensure that TRIM commands are sent to the SSD by the Windows operating system. You can check if TRIM support is active as follows.

* At the command line type “fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify”

If DisableDeleteNotify = 0, then the TRIM function is active. If DisableDeleteNotify = 1, then the TRIM function is disabled.

When typing the command, do not include quotation marks.

TRIM is a SATA protocol command that tells the operating system which blocks of previously written data on the SSD are no longer needed due to file deletions or formatting. This allows the SSD to perform garbage collection, otherwise writes to the SSD would be significantly slower.

Well, let's see how justified the optimizations recommended by many users are!

Optimization 1. Disable system protection

Disconnection process:

* Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”.
* Select the item on the left “System Protection”.
* Click the “Configure” button
* Select " Turn Off System Restore/Disable system protection."

The System Restore feature should be disabled to limit the number of unnecessary writes to the SSD, but also to return the available space back to the SSD (we'll talk about how much space you get a little later). Additionally, there is a very popular view today that “System Restore/System Protection” will cause SSD performance to degrade over time due to its write nature on the SSD and its effect on TRIM. We can recommend the following article, which provides Additional Information(in English): System Restore and Your SSD.

Optimization 2: Disable disk indexing

Disconnection process:

* Open “My Computer”;
* Right-click on the SSD and select “Properties”;
* Uncheck the “Allow files to have contents indexed in addition to file properties” checkbox.
* A pop-up menu may appear indicating an error applying the attributes. This is quite normal, select the “Ignore All” option and continue.

The point of disabling disk indexing is as follows. 1) Indexing was designed for mechanical hard drives to provide faster access to files. Since SSD response time is around 0.1ms, there is no need to enable this technology. 2) Eliminate unnecessary writes to SSD. The effect is minimal, but anything you can do to limit write cycles on your SSD will help in the long run.

Optimization 3: Disabling the page file

* Right-click on the “My Computer” icon.
* Select "Properties".
* Select the “Advanced” tab.
* In the “Performance” item, click the “Settings” button.
* Select the "Advanced" tab and click the "Change" button for virtual memory.
* Uncheck “Automatically Manage Page File Size For All Drives”
* Specify “Yes” and confirm to restart the system. Then disable the page file for the SSD drive.

The paging file (PageFile) is an operating system function that is designed to help physical memory your computer in case of shortage. It allows you to move some information from memory to the hard drive to free up available RAM. Disabling PageFile frees up space reserved for the paging file on your hard drive, but you may run into resource problems if the system requires more memory than is physically available.

Optimization 4. Disabling hibernation

Disabling hibernation will reclaim 2GB (or more, depending on the amount of RAM) of precious space on your SSD. And the hibernation function does not provide any particular benefits in the case of SSDs due to the fast boot time.

Disconnection process:

* In the “Start” search menu, type “cmd” to search for the utility command line Windows;
* Right-click on the cmd program and select “Run as Administrator”
* At the command prompt, type “powercfg -h off.” When typing the command, do not include quotation marks.

The hibernation feature was designed for hard drives to allow the system to recover as soon as possible after inactivity (contents random access memory when hibernation is activated, it is flushed to the hard drive and then read upon waking). In case of low SSD access time, there is no point in using hibernation. If you disable hibernation, you will free up precious space on the SSD.

Optimization 5. Disabling Prefetch and Superfetch

Disconnection process:
* Type Regedit in the Run menu.

* Select an item; "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters"
* Right-click on the EnablePrefetcher and EnableSuperfetch items;
* Select "Change" and change the value from 1 (or 3) to 0, then reboot.

SuperFetch technology is designed to cache the most frequently used data, but given the low access time of SSDs, this function can be disabled.

Prefetch technology preloads frequently run programs into memory. By disabling this feature, you can free up memory, and the SSD will only work when required.

Optimization 6: Disabling Windows Write Cache

This step is not recommended for Intel SSDs as it will negatively impact their performance. We recommend running performance tests before and after disabling the cache to determine whether the effect is positive or negative.

Disconnection process:

* Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”.
* Select "Device Manager".
* Select "Disk Drives".
* Right-click on the SSD and select "Properties".
* On the “Polices” tab, uncheck the “Enable write caching on the device” checkbox.

Windows write caching uses high-speed RAM to store write commands that need to be executed on the drive until the time when the drive can write. SSDs are much faster than traditional mechanical hard drives, so the speed benefit from using caching is much smaller.

Optimization 7. Disabling Superfetch and Windows search

Disconnection process:

* Press Winkey + ‘R’ to display the launch dialog.
* Type “services.msc” (without quotes) and press Enter.
* Scroll to Superfetch, then right-click on it and select “Properties”.
* From the Startup Type drop-down menu, select Disabled and click Ok.
* Scroll to Windows Search, then right-click on it and select “Properties”.
* Click on the “Stop” button, then in the “Startup Type” menu select “Disabled” and click Ok.

Windows Search creates an index separate files, folders and other objects on your hard drive. The index is located in the “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search” folder and takes up about 10% of the contents of the indexed files. When searching for a file with using Windows The Search portion of the index is loaded into memory, allowing for very fast searches. In case of short SSD access time this function no longer has special significance, and it can actually negatively impact SSD performance.

Optimization 8. Disabling ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCache

Disconnection process:
* Type Regedit in the Start menu.

* Select the path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management"
* Right-click on ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCache.
* Select "Change" in each item, then change the value from 1 to 0, then restart the system.

ClearPageFileAtShutdown does what its name suggests, which is to clear the PageFile page file when you shut down your computer. It leads to additional operations records. Since we disabled the PageFile page file, as stated above, there is no reason for us to clear it when we turn off the PC.

The LargeSystemCache parameter specifies whether the system supports a standard-size cache or a larger cache, and also affects how often the system flushes cached pages to the hard drive. Enabling LargeSystemCache mode reduces the amount of physical memory available to applications and services.

Optimization 9. Configuring power consumption options

Go to "Control Panel"

* Select “System and Security”
* Select "Power Options"
* Select “High Performance” and apply it
* Select Change Plan Settings for the High Performance plan
* Click on “Change Advanced Power Settings”
* In the “Hard disk” item, set the “Turn off hard” value to “Never”, that is, 0 minutes.
* Select OK and save the settings.

This setting will allow the garbage collection feature to continue to operate even when you are not interacting with the computer.

Hello!

After installation SSD drive and transfer to it copies of Windows from my old one hard drive- The OS needs to be configured (optimized) accordingly. By the way, if you installed Windows “from scratch” on an SSD drive, then many services and parameters will be configured automatically during installation (it is for this reason that many recommend SSD installation- install “clean” Windows).

Windows optimization under an SSD will not only increase the service life of the disk itself, but also slightly increase the speed of Windows. By the way, regarding optimization, the tips and recommendations from this article are relevant for Windows: 7, 8 and 10. And so, perhaps, let’s begin...

1) Is ACHI SATA mode enabled?

how to enter BIOS -

You can check in which mode the controller operates quite simply - look BIOS settings. If the disk operates in ATA, then you need to switch its operating mode to ACHI. There are really two nuances:

The first is that Windows OS will refuse to boot, because... it does not have the necessary drivers for this. You need to either install these drivers first, or simply reinstall Windows (which is preferable and easier in my opinion);

The second caveat is that your BIOS may simply not have the ACHI mode (although, of course, these are already somewhat outdated PCs). In this case, most likely, you will have to update the BIOS (at least check the official website of the developers to see if the new BIOS has such an option).

Rice. 1. AHCI operating mode ( Laptop BIOS DELL)

By the way, it would also be a good idea to go to device Manager(can be found in the panel Windows management) and expand the tab with IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. If there is a controller with “SATA ACHI” in its name, then everything is in order.

AHCI mode of operation is required to support normal operation TRIM SSD disk.

REFERENCE

TRIM is an ATA interface command required so that Windows can send data to the drive about which blocks are no longer needed and can be overwritten. The fact is that the principle of deleting files and formatting in HDD and SSD drives is different. When using TRIM, the speed of the SSD drive increases and uniform wear of the drive's memory cells is ensured. Windows 7, 8, 10 OS support TRIM (if you use Windows XP, I recommend updating the OS, or buying a disk with hardware TRIM).

2) Is TRIM support enabled in Windows?

To check whether TRIM support is enabled in Windows, just run the command line as an administrator. Next, enter the command and press Enter (see Fig. 3) .

If DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (as in Fig. 3), then TRIM is enabled and nothing else needs to be entered.

If DisableDeleteNotify = 1, then TRIM is disabled and you need to enable it with the command: fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0. And then check again with the command: fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify.

Optimizing Windows (relevant for 7, 8, 10) for SSD drive

1) Disable file indexing

Moreover, when this function is disabled, the number of writes to the disk decreases, which means its lifespan increases. To disable indexing, go to the properties of the SSD disk (you can open Explorer and go to the “This PC” tab) and uncheck the box next to “Allow indexing of files on this disk...” (see Fig. 4).

2) Disabling the search service

This service creates a separate index of files, which speeds up the search for certain folders and files. An SSD drive is fast enough, and besides, many users practically do not use this feature - which means it is better to turn it off.

First open the following address: Control Panel/System and Security/Administration/Computer Management

3) Disable hibernation

When using an SSD drive, this function somewhat loses its meaning. Firstly, Windows system and so it starts quite quickly from the SSD, which means there is no point in saving its state. Secondly, unnecessary write-rewrite cycles on an SSD disk can affect its service life.

Disabling hibernation is quite simple - you need to launch the command prompt as an administrator and enter the command powercfg -h off.

4) Disable auto-disk defragmentation

Defragmentation is a useful operation for HDD drives, helping to slightly increase operating speed. But this operation does not have any benefit for an SSD drive, since they are designed slightly differently. The access speed to all cells in which information is stored on the SSD disk is the same! This means that no matter where the “pieces” of files lie, there will be no difference in access speed!

In addition, moving “pieces” of a file from one place to another increases the number of write/rewrite cycles, which shortens the life of the SSD drive.

If you have Windows 8, 10*- then you don’t need to disable defragmentation. The built-in Storage Optimizer will automatically determine

If you have Windows 7, you need to go to the disk defragmentation utility and disable its autorun.

5) Disable Prefetch and SuperFetch

Prefetch is a technology thanks to which the PC speeds up the launch of frequently used programs. It does this by loading them into memory in advance. By the way, on the disk it is created special file with the same name.

Since SSD drives are quite fast, it is advisable to disable this function; it will not give any increase in speed.

SuperFetch is a similar feature, the only difference being that the PC predicts which programs you are likely to run by loading them into memory in advance (it is also recommended to disable it).

When you open the registry editor, go to the following branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Next, you need to find two parameters in this registry subkey: EnablePrefetcher and EnableSuperfetch (see Fig. 8). The value of these parameters must be set to 0(as in Fig. 8). By default, the values ​​of these parameters are 3.

Rice. 8. Registry Editor

By the way, if you are installing on an SSD Windows disk“from scratch” - then these parameters will be configured automatically. True, this does not always happen: for example, failures may occur if you have 2 types of disks in your system: SSD and HDD.

Utility for automatically optimizing Windows for SSD drive

You can, of course, manually configure all of the above in the article, or you can use special utilities for thin Windows settings(such utilities are called tweakers, or Tweaker). One of these utilities, in my opinion, will be very useful for owners of an SSD drive - SSD Mini Tweaker.

SSD Mini Tweaker

Great utility for automatic settings Windows for working on an SSD drive. Settings that changes this program allow you to increase the operating time of your SSD by an order of magnitude! In addition, some parameters will slightly increase the speed of Windows.

Advantages of SSD Mini Tweaker:

• completely in Russian (including tips for each item);
• works in all popular OS Windows 7, 8, 10 (32, 64 bits);
• no installation required;
• completely free.

PS

Many also recommend transferring browser caches, paging files, temporary Windows folders, system backups (and so on) from an SSD drive to a HDD (or disabling these features altogether). One small question: “why do you need an SSD then?” So that the system just starts in 10 seconds? In my understanding, an SSD drive is needed to speed up the system as a whole ( the main objective), reducing noise and rattling, increasing laptop battery life, etc. And by making these settings, we can thereby nullify everything benefits of SSD disk...

That’s why, by optimization and disabling unnecessary functions, I only mean something that really won’t speed up the system in any way, but can affect the “lifetime” of the SSD drive. That's all, good luck everyone.

If you decide to purchase a solid-state SSD drive, there may be several reasons for this:

• You are not satisfied with the speed of your HDD.
• Do you need fast windows work and certain types of applications, games.

However, installing an SSD into a computer or laptop and then filling it with information is not enough. It is also necessary to optimize its operation with the operation of your OS.

Let's look at the main methods for optimizing an SSD drive.

AHCI SATA

Technology that allows the TRIM function to be used for various SSDs. It is enabled at the BIOS level of your PC or laptop.

Enable AHCI SATA:

1. Open the command line with the key combination win + R.
2. Enter the command: “regedit” (access to the registry).
3. Go to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → SYSTEM → CurrentControlSet → Services → storahci.
4. Change the value of the ErrorControl subkey to 0 (default 3) by calling the context menu and clicking the “Modify” option.
5. Go to the branch called “StartOverride” and change its value to 0 (default 3).
6. Restart your PC (laptop), go to BIOS/UEFI (how to enter BIOS, see separately for your laptop model or motherboard PC). In the “storage configuration” section, and in the “SATA port” subsection, set AHCI, or in the “SATA RAID/AHCI Mode” section, set AHCI (For different versions BIOS, its partitions and subpartitions).
7. Check if the function works in Windows. Go to the following path: Control Panel → Device Manager → IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. The device should appear in the last subsection: “Standard SATA AHCI Controller”.

TRIM function

By default, this feature is enabled on Windows 7 and higher, however, it is better to manually check whether this feature works. The meaning of TRIM is that after deleting files, Windows transmits information to the SSD drive that a certain area of ​​the disk is not used and can be cleared for writing. (the data remains in the HDD and recording is done “on top” of the existing one). Over time, if the function is disabled, the drive's performance will drop.

Checking TRIM on Windows:

1. Launch the command prompt by pressing the key combination win + R.
2. Enter the command: “fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify”.
3. If after entering the message “DisableDeleteNotify = 0” is displayed, then the TRIM function is enabled, if “DisableDeleteNotify = 1”, then TRIM does not function. If TRIM does not work, enter the command: “fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0”, then repeat steps 2 and 3.

Defragmentation

This function helps optimize and speed up the operation of the HDD, but for SSDs, it has a detrimental effect. For SSDs, the “automatic defragmentation” feature is disabled by default. To check if it works:

1. Press the win + R combination.
2. In the command line window, enter the command: “dfrgui” and click “OK”.
3. In the window that opens, select your SSD and look at the “Schedule optimization” item. For our SSD it should be disabled.

Indexing

A Windows feature that helps you quickly search for files on a disk with large amounts of information, however, it increases the write load on the SSD. To disable it:

1. Go to the section “This computer”, “My computer”, “Computer” (it’s different for each OS).
2. Select your SSD and context menu select “Properties”.
3. In the window that opens, uncheck the box next to the option: “Allow the contents of files on this disk to be indexed in addition to file properties.”

Search service

Its function creates a file index, thanks to which finding various files and folders is faster. However, the speed of the SSD is quite enough to abandon it. To disable it you must:

1. Go to the following address: Control Panel → System and Security → Administrative Tools → Computer Management.
2. Go to the tab: “Services”.
3. Find the “Windows search” service and select “Disabled” in the “Startup type” tab.

Hibernation

A mode that allows you to save the contents of RAM on the hard drive, so that the next time you turn it on, the information and open applications from the previous session.

When using an SSD, the meaning of this function is lost, since the drive starts up quickly anyway. And “Hibernation”, creating “write-overwrite” cycles, reduces the lifespan of an SSD disk.

Disabling hibernation:

1. Launch cmd.exe again using the key combination win + R.
2. Enter the command: “powercfg -h off”.

Write caching

This feature improves the performance of your SSD. When enabled, NCQ writing and reading technology is used. NCQ – accepts multiple requests simultaneously and then arranges their execution order in such a way as to achieve maximum performance.

To connect you need:

1. Open the command line with the combination win + R
2. Enter the command: “devmgmt.msc”.
3. Open "Disk Devices", select SSD and select "Properties" from the context menu.
4. Go to the “Policies” tab.
5. Check the box next to the option: “Allow recording caching for this device.”

Prefetch and Superfetch

Prefetch– a technology with which frequently used programs are loaded into memory in advance, thereby speeding up their subsequent launch. In this case, a file of the same name is created on disk space.

Superfetch– a technology similar to Prefetch with the difference that the PC predicts which applications will be launched by loading them into memory in advance.

Both features are of no use when using an SSD. Therefore, it is best to turn them off. For this:

1. Open the command line using the key combination win + R.
2. Execute the command: “regedit” (go to the registry).
3. Follow the path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → SYSTEM → CurrentControlSet → Control → Session Manager → Memory Management → PrefetchParameters.
4. Find several parameters in the registry subkey: “EnablePrefetcher” and “EnableSuperfetch”, set their value to 0 (default 3).

SSD Mini Tweaker utility

All of the above actions can be performed manually, but programmers have created programs called tweakers, the purpose of which is to customize the Windows OS, as well as its individual components, with a few clicks. One such program is SSD Mini Tweaker.

SSD Mini Tweaker– a program, a type of tweaker, that allows you to optimize your SSD without much effort.

Advantages:

• Complete Russification.
• Works on all OS starting from Windows 7.
• Free.
• Clear interface.
• No installation required.

other methods

Manipulations such as moving browser caches, swap files, temporary Windows folders, backing up the system from an SSD to an HDD (or disabling this feature) are useless, since although they increase the lifespan of the SSD, they limit the potential of its use.

Thus, by performing the simple above-mentioned manipulations with your OS, you can extend the life of your drive, as well as configure it to maximum performance mode.

So, you got a brand new SSD. You installed the system on it, armed yourself with an optimization guide you found on the Internet, and after a couple of hours you did everything possible to... slow down your work in the system!

Don't believe me? Think about what it's all about high performance. Advantages SSD speeds you can feel in three categories:

• system, for example, the speed of its loading and operation
• programs, including web surfing and working with documents, images and media files
• your actions, including disk navigation and copying/moving files

How myths are born

I'm pretty sure your SSD tuning measures negatively impacted at least one of these components. Later you will find out why this happened, but first about the reasons for such optimization.

If you read the inscription “buffalo” on the elephant’s cage...

There are plenty of guides and even tweakers online for optimizing SSDs. In fact, the same information is used everywhere, and:

• outdated, since it is aimed at saving disk space and reducing the number of rewrite cycles, which is irrelevant for modern SSDs in home PCs
• useless, because Windows itself takes care of what it offers to configure
• harmful, because it leads to a decrease in the speed of work - yours, programs and system

Look critical on your guide or tweaker and think about which items fit into one of these categories!

There is another problem - unsuccessful presentation of information, including incorrectly placed accents.

If you have a HDD along with an SSD, measure the speeds of both drives and keep the picture in mind. I will return to her, and more than once!

Special Notes for Dissenters

After publishing the material, I decided to specifically clarify several points so as not to repeat them regularly in the comments when responding to opponents.

In this article:

1. All myths are considered solely from the point of view of speeding up the system, programs and the user.. If a measure is declared useless or harmful, this means that it does not contribute in any way to speeding up work.
2. Reducing the volume of disk writes is not considered as an optimization measure due to the irrelevance of this approach. If this is your goal, myths 3 - 11 are for you, as is storing an SSD in a sideboard.
3. Using a RAM disk is not considered as it is not directly related to SSD optimization. If you have excess RAM, you can use a RAM disk regardless of the type of drive installed in your PC.
4. All recommendations are given with a wide audience in mind, i.e. to the majority users. When analyzing advice, keep in mind that they may not correspond to your tasks, work skills and ideas about the optimal and competent use of the operating system.

Now - let's go! :)

Myths

1. Disable SuperFetch, ReadyBoot and Prefetch

This advice: controversial, can reduce the speed of program launch, and also in Windows 10 - increase the volume of disk writes and reduce the overall performance of the OS if there is insufficient RAM

Speed ​​of launching programs from the hard drive

When each program is launched, the prefetcher checks for the presence of a trace (.pf file). If one is found, the prefetcher uses references to the MFT metadata file system to open all the necessary files. It then calls a special memory manager function to asynchronously read from the trace data and code that is not in memory on this moment. When a program is launched for the first time or the startup script has changed, the prefetcher writes a new trace file (highlighted in the figure).

It is unlikely that SuperFetch is capable of speeding up the launch of programs from an SSD, but Microsoft does not disable the function, given the presence hard drives in system. If proprietary utility SSD manufacturer (for example, Intel SSD Toolbox) recommends disabling SuperFetch, follow their advice. However, in this case, it is more than logical to keep all programs on the SSD, which will be discussed below.

Memory compression in Windows 10

This aspect is discussed in a separate article: The nuances of disabling the SysMain service in Windows 10. Earlier on this page there was a fragment from it published impromptu.

2. Disabling Windows Defragmenter

This tip: useless or harmful, may reduce disk performance

One of the functions of the CheckBootSpeed ​​utility is to check the status of the scheduled defragmentation job and the Task Scheduler service. Let's see how relevant these options are for the latest Microsoft OS installed on an SSD.

Windows 7

Windows 7 does not defragment SSDs, which is confirmed by the words of the developers in the blog.

Windows 7 will disable defragmentation for SSD drives. Since SSDs perform superior at random reads, defragmentation will not provide the same benefits that it does on a regular drive.

If you don't trust the developers, take a look at the event log. You won't find any entries there about defragmenting the SSD volume.

So, when the SSD is the only drive, the scheduled job simply doesn't run. And when the PC also has a HDD, disabling a task or scheduler deprives HDD decent optimization with a standard defragmenter.

Windows 8 and later

In Windows 8, the defragmenter has been replaced by the disk optimizer!

Optimizing hard drives, as before, comes down to defragmentation. Windows no longer ignores solid-state drives, but helps them by sending additional a set of TRIM commands for the entire volume at once. This happens according to a schedule as part of automatic maintenance, i.e. when you are not working on your PC.

Depending on the SSD controller, garbage collection may occur immediately upon receipt of the TRIM command, or it may be delayed until a period of inactivity. By disabling the disk optimizer or task scheduler, you reduce drive performance.

3. Disable or move the swap file

This tip: useless or harmful, reduces system speed when there is insufficient memory

The hardware configuration must be balanced. If you don't have much memory installed, you should add more, since an SSD only partially compensates for the lack of RAM, making swap times faster than a hard drive.

When you have enough memory, the page file is hardly used, i.e. This will not affect the life of the disk in any way. But many people still turn off paging - they say, let the system keep everything in memory, I said! As a result, the dispatcher Windows memory does not work in the most optimal mode (see #4).

As a last resort, the swap file is transferred to the hard drive. But if suddenly the memory is not enough, You will only benefit in performance by having pagefile.sys on the SSD!

IN: Do I need to place the page file on the SSD?

ABOUT: Yes. The main operations with the paging file are random writing of small volumes or sequential writing of large amounts of data. Both types of operations work fine on an SSD.

By analyzing telemetry focused on estimating writes and reads for the pagefile, we found that:

• reading from Pagefile.sys takes precedence over writing to pagefile.sys in a 40:1 ratio,
• read blocks for Pagefile.sys are usually quite small, 67% of them are less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% are less than 16 KB,
• The write blocks in Pagefile.sys are quite large, 62% of them are greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% are almost exactly 1 MB

Generally speaking, the typical page file usage patterns and SSD performance characteristics fit together very well, and it is the file that is highly recommended to be placed on the SSD.

But in practice, the desire to extend the life of an SSD at any cost is ineradicable. Here is a blog reader fretting over his SSD, transferring pagefile.sys to the hard drive, although he himself can even see with the naked eye that this reduces performance. By the way, my netbook cannot install more than 2 GB of memory, and with a solid-state drive it became much more comfortable than with a standard 5400 rpm HDD.

Finally, don't forget that complete shutdown page file will not allow you to diagnose critical errors. The paging file size can be flexibly adjusted, so you always have a choice between disk space and performance.

Tricky question: What was my page file size when I took the task manager screenshot?

Special Note

On the Internet (including in the comments to this post) you can often come across the statement: “A swap file is not needed if you have installed N GB RAM". Depending on your imagination, N takes the value 8, 16 or 32. This statement does not make sense, since it does not take into account the tasks that are solved on a PC with a given amount of memory.

If you installed 32GB for yourself, and 4-8GB are used, then yes, you don’t need FP (but then it’s not clear why you bought 32GB RAM :). If you have purchased such an amount of memory in order to use it as much as possible in your tasks, then the FP will be useful to you.

4. Disable hibernation

This advice: vague and harmful for mobile PCs, may reduce battery life and speed of your work

I would formulate the advice like this:

• stationary PCs - shutdown is normal, because you might as well use sleep
• mobile PCs - turning off is not always advisable, especially when battery consumption is high during sleep

However, people have, are, and will continue to disable system protection regardless of the type of disk, it’s already in the blood! And no, I don't want to discuss this topic in the comments for the hundredth time :)

6. Disable Windows Search and/or Disk Indexing

This tip: useless, slows down your work speed

Sometimes this is argued by the fact that SSDs are so fast that the index will not significantly speed up the search. These people simply never really used real Windows search!

I believe that it makes no sense to deprive yourself of a useful tool that speeds up everyday tasks.

If you have fallen victim to any of these myths, tell me in the comments if I managed to convince you of their uselessness or harm and in what cases. If you disagree with my assessment of "optimization", explain what the benefits of these actions are.

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about the author

Vadim, in recent days I have bought myself 4 SSDs to install on all my computers. Let's just say... life has changed :-)

I also thought for a long time whether to buy a laptop with an SSD or a hybrid drive, the second one won, I chose 340GB + 24 SSD. What was surprising was that the standard installation of Windows 8 was on a 5400 drive, but not on an SSD. After suffering for a long time, I moved Windows 8 to an SSD and was a little freaked out, because... There is about 3GB left on the SSD. Knowing that over time the W8 would swell and it would be necessary to fight for space, I returned everything back, transferred the TEMP and Page file to the SSD, plus installed frequently launched programs.

Still, you just had to buy a laptop with an SSD and not worry about it. They gave me an SSD for NG and now I’ll stuff it into an old netbook, install W8 and be happy.

Thank you for the articles about SSDs, our entire department reads them.

Alexei

You, Vadim, have done a great job of going through SSD myths; we can hope that there will be fewer fans of SSD perversions now. I have Win8 on an SSD, it works just the way I installed it, I’m happy and I don’t bother myself with all sorts of optimizations whose output is questionable.

PS: Answer to the question: 1Gb.

• Alexey, thanks for your response. You can’t put your head down on everyone, but I’m not trying to :)

  The answer to the question is incorrect. How did you come to him?

madgrok

Before buying an SSD, I read a mountain of forums, benchmarks, etc. And I came to the conclusion that all the tweaks are in the firebox.
Why do people buy SSDs for themselves? Of course it would be faster! :) And most optimization tweaks basically negate all the performance gains, which is what Vadim wrote about.
I use my Vertex 4 256 GB as a regular disk for the system. I bought it sometime in the fall. Excellent flight, 100% health
Excellent article, I will recommend it to all my acquaintances and friends to read so that they don’t suffer. :)
And in general, thanks to the author for an excellent blog. I really like the fact that he tries to “disassemble the topic to its bones.”

Andrey

Vadim, at the end of the article there is a survey about the presence of SSDs on our computers, I think that this topic is still relevant - there are those who do not intend, at least in the near future, to acquire a solid-state drive for a number of reasons - someone does not see the point of installing it on an old one computer - saving for a new one, or as in the survey point - satisfied with the HDD, or like Pavel Nagaev - he thinks for a long time which to prefer...
What would you recommend? Is it worth moving the OS to an SSD to “increase system performance,” so to speak?

Andre

Hello Vadim, I think a lot of people are now looking at buying an SSD, and it would be very cool if you wrote an article on choosing an SSD!

Alexey Matashkin

Vadim, thanks for the article.
In my practice, I have never encountered these myths, I only heard some advice separately, so I read it with pleasure.

I don’t quite fit into the survey :) The main PC is not a home PC, and it has an SSD. But at home, the usual is enough for now.

There is nothing to add regarding questions, because I don’t use tweaks, all installed SSDs work normally with the system.
Although, an important detail is updating the firmware on the disk. In my practice, there are 3 cases of serious failures that were resolved with firmware version updates.

Valentine

Pavel Nagaev,

Your 24 SSD was most likely designed for caching, which is why it is so small, maybe you needed to use it as a cache, in which case you will get the benefits of both media - capacity and speed. Vadim, do you have an article regarding hybrid hard drives or combining HDD and SSD operation? I think many readers might be interested in such an article. I think the topic about 12 myths is very useful, as I have many friends who consider themselves experts, but make such mistakes and impose these mistakes ordinary users, thanks to a link to this article, it will be possible to convince them to make such mistakes

Vadims Podāns

Good and useful article.

Sergey

Yes, it’s really surprising people who buy SSDs to speed up work, but then transfer everything and turn it off and again lose performance.

MythBusters are in action! We had a great run through all these myths.

Alexey G

At first I fell for disabling hibernation, but then I realized that it was inconvenient.
I remove the 8.3 marks. Because I use new versions of the program, and I don’t need it)

From life: when I assemble a PC with an SSD, I transfer user files to the HDD. If the PC for unknown reasons (playful hands, viruses) starts to not boot, then if I’m nearby, I’ll restore the configured image installed system(thanks to the blog), but if a person calls another “master”, the first thing he will do is format the disk: (Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a smarter method in my city. So this is a forced need to preserve the user’s files.

Answer to the question: 2834MB?

Dima

Thanks Vadim.
As always, intelligibly and with a light sense of humor.
As I promised, I part with myths easily and see you off on your last journey. I'll turn everything back on.
Best regards, Dima.

PGKrok

I agree on all points, but I myself had to transfer the index files, some programs and personal photos and videos to the HDD, because... SSD - only 60 GB (I've already mastered it :))
For comparison (to the question of “keeping a picture in mind”)
Result CrystalDiskMarc (HDD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/HDD1301020_6347406_6812031.png
Result of CrystalDiskMarc (SSD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/OSZ3010201_4238885_6812055.png

SATA-3 SSD controller - SATA-6

Dawn

I bought a 60gb ssd and left only Windows 8, program files, appdata, program data on it. The rest is on hdd.
Reason: the system partition is growing too quickly, and just like that, the space will go to zero.
When purchasing, there was one goal: to speed up the cold boot of the system. That's what I achieved - 8 seconds.
Vadim, the article is excellent, thank you!

Ruby

About transferring TEMP and cache - I stupidly moved them to a gigabyte ramdisk - this is a real speed increase, incomparable with an SSD.

Denis Borisych

I’ve been working in IT for a long time and I still never cease to be amazed at woe to optimizers.

I've had an ssd in my home computer for about a year now and it's still going strong. 7 starts in 10 seconds, programs load quickly and easily without any optimizations. Well, except that the folder of necessary and important documents is not on the ssd (its size is 500 GB). And in the “My Documents” folder there is usually a list of documents.

As a person very close to IT, sometimes I am not enthusiastic about MS innovations (the inability to use Explorer without a mouse alone is worth it). But I must objectively admit that in terms of optimizing the operation of the OS on an ssd and stability of operation, they are undoubtedly great.

Ruby

I would also transfer the search index, but on the Windows blog they write that it is still kept in memory, so there is no point.

SuperFetch is needed in any case; it preloads files into RAM in advance, increasing speed and reducing the number of accesses to the drive.

Valery

Vadim, I read your articles quite regularly and often put the advice from them into practice.
Having bought an SSD (Intel 520 120GB), I also first read about all sorts of optimizations and even applied some, but now I left only the indexing transferred to the HDD and Intel’s recommendations for its drives, and this is where some of your advice and Intel’s recommendations diverge:
http://123foto.ru/pics/01-2013/42746566_1358157387.jpg
Who should I listen to?))

Alexei

Vadim Sterkin,

Came at random :-)
My paging file takes up 1 Gb per 16Gb of RAM (size selected by the system). Moreover, the system monitor shows almost zero % load. I decided that 8Gb should have at least 1Gb.

Oleg

Hello Vadim. I always look forward to new articles from you, this article was VERY useful for me and for my friends. To my regret, my arguments and advice do not reach some friends, for some reason they trust more forums where they do not always write useful information.
I hope this article will convince you.

I'll be waiting for an article about choosing an SSD.
Thank you.

Georgiy

Thank you for the article.
To be honest, I didn’t quite understand about Superfetch - what is the increase in performance on an SSD?

As for the size of the paging file, the answer seems to be this: the line allocated says 10.7 GB. The amount of RAM must be subtracted from this figure.

Alexander

I recently bought a Kingston Hiper X 3K 120GB SSD. I installed Seven sp1. I did not see any increase in download speed or program performance.
Previous configuration: Asus P5Q, 2 WD 500Gb Raid 0, DDR2 2 1GB each.
My conclusion: when connecting an SSD to a “slow” Sata 3Gb/s port, the increase in system performance compared to that installed on stripping is insignificant. You will have to upgrade to a motherboard with Sata 6Gb/s and at least 8GB DDR3 memory.

GlooBus

Pavel Nagaev,

SSD drives of 16-32 GB soldered onto laptop motherboards are of no use. The best thing in this case would be to take a laptop in a simple configuration with an HDD and do the upgrade yourself. I did just that, took an ASUS X301A with 2 GB of memory, 320 GB HDD and upgraded to 8 GB of memory and 128 GB SSD. The laptop worked completely differently! Loading the computer from pressing the button until the password entry window appears 6-7 seconds. I didn’t make any tweaks, except that I turned off indexing, because... I don't use search.

Alik

The other day I installed VERTEX 4 128Gb on it Win 8, applied optimizers and after a week I realized that it was in vain, incl. will have to reinstall. And here is also a sensible article.

Michal

Vadim Sterkin,

I think this is due to the fact that most people simply have not yet had concrete practice in using SSDs like you have.
and there really are a lot of myths.
For example, I’m from the Republic of Uzbekistan, and we’ve only just got SSDs here.
I have no experience working with them yet. and very expensive too.
I read your article and realized that I had moved the swap file in vain.
Thanks for the article, I hope it’s not the last :)

For a long time, the main component that “slows down” the performance of even the most sophisticated home computer, were hard disks. The fact is that spindle HDDs at some point reached the limit of development in terms of speed. This was due to physical laws that did not allow the disk spindle to spin above a certain speed, which affected the data access time, as well as the writing and reading speed. The volume continued to grow, but the performance did not. The next generation of hard drives was SSD drives.

An SSD drive is a computer non-mechanical storage device based on memory chips. Simply put, now the hard drive is a large and very fast flash drive on which there is operating system and user files.

Why is it needed? optimization SSD Windows 7 ?

Undoubtedly, the main advantage of an SSD drive is its writing and reading speed, but it also has disadvantages, such as a limited number of write cycles. This disadvantage is especially relevant for outdated versions operating systems that can “kill” the drive ahead of schedule, without taking into account the specifics of working with it.
That is why it can be a significant moment optimizing Windows for SSD. This article is intended to help “extend the life” of your SSD drive by correctly configuring your computer’s operating system.

Setting up an SSD drive

The Windows 7 operating system is initially optimized to work with solid state drives, but to increase reliability the following rules should be followed:

1. Use solid state SSD drive(for the operating system and programs) along with a classic HDD on a spindle. In this option you combine speed and reliability.

2. Before you start using the solid-state drive, be sure to go into the BIOS and set the ACHI mode.

3. From any other computer, go to the SSD drive manufacturer’s website and check for more recent device firmware. If possible, update the firmware.

4. When marking a disk during Windows installations Leave about 20% of the total disk space unallocated. As the SSD wears out, it will take clusters from this area.

Optimizing Windows 7 for SSD

1. Disable the system cache Prefetch and Superfetch. There's no point in using them solid state HDD will not be. Most likely, Windows 7 will disable Prefetch on its own, but we will definitely check this. How:

Open the registry editor (Start - enter “regedit” in the search bar)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management -> PrefetchParameters
Install - EnablePrefetcher = dword:00000000

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management -> PrefetchParameters
Install - EnableSuperfetch = dword:0000000

2. You must disable automatic file defragmentation. It also makes no sense now. It will only needlessly reduce the resource of the SSD drive.

Start - in the search bar enter - Defragmentation. Click on the “Set up schedule” button. Uncheck the “Run as scheduled” checkbox.

3. If you have a 64-bit operating system and a memory capacity of 8GB or more, then it makes sense to disable the page file.
Computer -> Properties -> Advanced system settings -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual memory-> Change. Install - Without swap file

4. Change the Memory Management parameter:
Open the registry editor Start-Run->regedit

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management
Set - DisablePagingExecutive = dword:00000001

5. SSD optimization may also include disabling NTFS file system journaling:
Start – enter –cmd in the search bar – click on the program icon with the RIGHT mouse button – Run as administrator.
In the command line window, enter: fsutil usn deletejournal /D C: - example for drive C:

6. Disable sleep mode. The system will already boot very quickly and there will be no need for sleep mode.
In already open window From the command line, enter - powercfg –h off and press ENTER.

7. Disable indexing for the SSD disk:
Start-Computer-click on system disk right-click and select properties - uncheck the option “Allow the contents of files on this drive to be indexed in addition to file properties”

8. Transfer temporary TEMP folders from SSD to HDD.
Open Computer – (right mouse button) Properties - Advanced system settings - Advanced - Environment variables.
Enter new address for the TEMP and TMP environment variables, placing them on a second hard drive.

9. Finally, all that remains is to transfer the user’s folders (Documents, Videos, Downloads, etc.) from the SSD to the HDD.
We create a user folder on the HDD in advance, in which user libraries will now be stored.
We right-click on each folder whose location we want to change. On the Location tab, click the “Move” button. Move it to the HDD into the newly created folder.