Four Steps to Optimize Your SSD
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June 22nd, 2011 written by Tibor in Tips and Tricks
Mechanical hard disks have ruled for ages—but their reign is coming to an end. Uptake of faster, more energy-efficient solid state drives (SSDs) is increasing. Fast boot times and overall performance coupled with a decrease in prices are their major upsides, but users need to take special care of their SSDs. This blog post outlines the most important steps for optimizing your SSD.
Step 1 – Jump to Windows 7
Both Windows XP and Windows Vista come from an era in which SSDs were not widespread. They do not support the TRIM command which is important to boost systems’ performance and lifespans. TRIM allows Windows 7 to tell the SSD which files should be deleted and completely erases the corresponding data blocks. The moment a file is deleted from an SSD, Windows 7 not only updates the file system (as it normally would) but also informs the SSD which data blocks can be removed. These blocks are marked as free so that Windows and third-party programs can use them. On a mechanical hard disk, this happens automatically, but on SSDs (without support for the TRIM command), data blocks need to be completely erased before they can be used again—this causes a loss in performance. Windows 7 (and it’s bigger server brother “Windows Server 2008 R2″) are the only Microsoft operating systems that support the essential TRIM command.
Step 2 – Make sure that TRIM is enabled
While Windows 7 officially supports TRIM, there have been cases in which it’s not enabled (or maybe not supported). To see if TRIM is enabled, open up a command prompt by clicking on the Start orb and typing “cmd” into the search bar.
Right-click on the first result (“cmd”) and click “Run as administrator”. Next, type in the command “Fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify”.
Hit Enter. If this returns the result “= 0″, you’re good to go! Otherwise, TRIM isn’t supported and needs to be enabled. Try entering the command “fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0″. If that doesn’t help, a firmware upgrade might be necessary to enable TRIM.
Step 3 – Do not defrag your SSD
Defragmentation is one of the more useful steps to keep your hard disk at its best. However, with SSD, defragmentation is not necessary. Read operations are incredibly fast throughout the entire disk. Thanks to the flash-based nature of SSDs, it simply doesn’t matter if data is stored in a non-contiguous manner. What most users don’t know is that defragmentation can actually be harmful to the SSD as the thousands of disk operations that occur during defrag reduce the life span of solid state cells. By default, Windows 7 should automatically disable its scheduled defragmentation—but unfortunately, I’ve seen too many cases where the built-in Disk Defragmenter was still enabled, despite the fact that an SSD was built-in! Users should make sure that it’s disabled. Here’s how: Go to the Start menu and click on “All Programs”, “Accessories”, “System Tools” and “Disk Defragmenter”. This can be even easier regulated with the new TuneUp version TuneUp Utilities 2012. It recognizes the SSD drive and excludes it automatically from defragmentation.
Go to “Turn off schedule” and make sure that Windows does not defragment your SSD drive (probably drive C:).
Step 4 – Disable SuperFetch, Prefetch, ReadyBoost, and ReadyDrive
Most performance-related features, such as SuperFetch, Prefetch, ReadyBoost, and ReadyDrive (for hybrid disks), should automatically be disabled when using an SSD, according to Microsoft’s blog post.
“If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn’t have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive will all be disabled.”
While these technologies were designed to address certain performance bottlenecks, they are not necessary on SSDs. Windows 7 automatically disables all of the features mentioned above. If not, please check the SuperFetch service and the Prefetch feature and turn these off—but make sure that your SSD is fast enough. It could be either that Windows 7 didn’t correctly identify your hard disk as an SSD (and thus left all the features on) or that it deemed your SSD to be too slow (and left them on, as well). There’s only one way to find out: Disable SuperFetch and Prefetch and see if performance decreases at all. To do this, go to “Control Panel”, “System and Security”, “Administrative Tools”, and “Services”. Scroll down until you see the “SuperFetch” entry, double-click on it, and choose “Disabled” from the list.
Hit “OK” and close all windows. Next, open up the registry; click on the Start orb and type in “regedit”. Hit Enter, and go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters”. Double-click on “EnablePrefetcher” and enter “0″ (default value is “3″) to disable the Prefetcher.
Now conduct any test (e.g. some of the performance tests we usually run) to determine if performance stayed the same or not. If performance is the same as before, leave SuperFetch and Prefetch disabled. If performance decreased, go back and undo all the steps you previously took!
Reduce file operations
SSDs are perfect for anyone with a need for raw performance, but you’ll need to treat them right. Follow our advice and avoid unnecessary file operations in order to maintain your system’s performance and prolong its lifespan. Use the SSD as a system drive (Windows, third-party programs and important data), and move your huge files (like pictures, music and videos) to a secondary mechanical or external drive.
Need more advice about SSDs? Use the comment section below—we’re more than happy to help!
25 Responses to “Four Steps to Optimize Your SSD”
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November 29, 2011 at 9:21 am
I have a corsair force3 120gb ssd and at their website they advise it is not necessary to disable or change any win7 services or features. I tested drive with superfetch on and off and had the same performance results
June 22, 2012 at 5:50 am
You are the gayest of gays
November 30, 2011 at 8:43 pm
I have a SSD boot drive, and also have spinning disks in my system that
I load games off of. Now, my games all load slow.
Is there a way to turn on readyboost and tell it to cache the spinning disks?
Thanks,
December 15, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Hi Ray, internally we have concluded some tests that show that there is a slight performance difference – we ran tests using CrystalDiskMark, PCMark, AppTimer etc.
Plus, if you turn these features off, Windows will produce less overheap (due to all these algorithms being in effect).
Krisia, I don’t think that’s possible…unfortunately you can’t control these caching features. However, why don’t you run your games off of your SSD? Performance (well, loading times especially) would increase drastically!
Best, Sandro
December 24, 2011 at 7:27 am
Hello
is there a way to move all the cached unnecessary files eg. youtube streams, picture downlaod(from constant browsing) .. from my SSD drive (c Drive) all into my other drive (eg. D- drive) ?
December 28, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Hi Edwin, absolutely, Microsoft details this under http://support.microsoft.com/kb/172949. This will help!
Best, Sandro
January 10, 2012 at 8:48 pm
I have read that SSDs often have very short lives vis a vis write cycles. This suggests they would best be used for *.dlls and *.exes.
I could easily put my own such files on there, but how to I put the C:\windows\*.exe *.dll with putting things like C:\users on there as well?
January 12, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Roedy, well, I wouldn’t call SSDs lifespan “very short” – even on intense usage, it would last you years.
However, I’m slightly confused by your question: By default, your SSD drive is your primary drive C:, right? So stuff like .exe/.dlls is ALREADY on there if you installed Windows on the SSD. Both Windows and Users folder will be on the SSD, then. If it’s NOT your primary drive, there’s no other way than to perform a clean install of Windows on the SSD.
January 17, 2012 at 1:20 am
I followed the steps above to disable superfetch service, and then set EnablePrefetcher to 0 in the registry. When I did this, however, I noticed that EnableSuperfetch was set to 3. Should that be 0 as well?
January 18, 2012 at 7:16 pm
No, it’s enough to disable the SuperFetch service! The registry value has no effect anymore once that’s done.
Best, Sandro
January 28, 2012 at 9:25 am
I have Windows Vista, which do not support TRIMM command. If I will delete any file from SSD then this file actually isn’t erased. If the “deleted” file is not completely erased, or data blocks of this file won’t be marked as “free”, then these data blocks will be inaccessible to the further data recording and SSD’s capacity will decrease.
I ask you to prompt to me – whether there are any utilities for full deleting (reseting) data blocks which has remained after removal of files from SSD?
February 2, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Hi Michael, what kind of SSD is it? Depending on the drivers/tools. OCZ SSDs, for example, support the Wiper Tool which invokes the TRIM command. See http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_set_up_Windows_on_a_VERTEX#Windows_Vista for more information! Check out the last section. If your SSD is made by another manufacturer, you might want to check for the latest firmware/tools on their download site.
March 26, 2012 at 12:45 am
I hope TuneUp 2013 will have a SSD Optimizer in it. I use TuneUp for years now, and since i use a SSD it’s really awkward to do these steps manually. There are some programs, but the have some bugs, or aren’t supported that well. I hope to see a good SSD Optimize feature in TuneUp 2013.
Sorry for my English
.
May 4, 2012 at 1:17 pm
Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter appears to recognize SSDs, at least as of the updates applied through 5/4/2012. Finally converted my windows work OS HD to a Samsung 830. After moving the existing OS over, the defragmenter shows C in the disk list on the main page, but NOT in the scheduler list of disks; only spinning disks there. I can only assume that it will never try to defragment that in the weekly schedule since it’s not in its disk list. I prefer to leave it on to defragment the other spinning disks. This appears to allow that. Anyone heard differently on this?
July 23, 2012 at 6:22 pm
ASUS G73 (Refurbished), bought in 2011
Average boot time: 1 minute 40 seconds
OS: Windows 7
Stuff: Upon pressing the power button, the computer turns on and gets to the “Starting Windows” screen with the windows logo. After that, the screen goes black for about 1 minute and 15 seconds (This black screen is the annoyance I’m trying to get rid of!). After this, things go normally and the computer logs me on.
1. TRIM is enabled
2. Defraging my SSD is disabled
3. Disabled SuperFetch at the Control Panel
4. Disabled Prefetcher at Regedit
Average boot time after changes: 1 minute 40 seconds
I noticed, when I changed Prefetcher’s value to 0 in Regedit, the entry under prefetcher was Superfetcher and it’s value was 3. I thought I disabled that from the control panel. Got tips? Nothing happened.
August 14, 2012 at 2:05 pm
Superfetch is set to manual for me. Although it may be unnecessary, is there any downside to having superfetch enabled for ssd’s? Thanks in advance for any help.
September 1, 2012 at 3:51 am
My boot time just randomly dropped down to 52 seconds last week!!! Random update occurred after I installed a new program (video game) and then it went from 1m40s to 50s. How did that happen?
November 10, 2012 at 11:21 am
Sandro,
You posted a link to a Microsoft article that talks about changing the default location for temmporary internet files on browsers that, probably, nobody is even still using these days. Come on now. Let’s get with the program. The year is 2012.
January 2, 2013 at 5:01 pm
JohnnyDoey,
Idgits like you who complain about a free lunch are the reason why it is getting harder and harder to find useful information on the internet. If you have better information then he posted, how about actually posting it instead of just bitching about it?
Is the information for an out of date version of IE? Sure it is, but the same principle can be applied to a newer version by anybody with half a brain. Unless, you’re the type that needs a GPS to get to the end of your street.
Sandro, THANK YOU for providing good information. There is so much BS out there about optimizing SSD’s, I’m glad to see somebody got it right.
January 25, 2013 at 7:01 pm
Thanks for the info. This article helped in determining whether or not these processes were actually disabled or not. I’m running an ASUS G75VW with 16mb Ram and a HP 240gb SSD as Primary and 1Tb as secondary. Did a start up test and from time I pushed start button it was 30sec before desktop was up and running.
February 7, 2013 at 9:34 pm
it’s true. you are the gayest of gays.
April 1, 2013 at 10:52 pm
Thank you for the good writeup. It if truth be told was once a amusement account it.
Look advanced to more delivered agreeable from you!
However, how could we keep in touch?