Set up an SSD drive in Windows 7. How to optimize Windows for an SSD drive. Transferring temporary files

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 makes for 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• outdated, since it is aimed at saving disk space and reducing the number of rewrite cycles, which is irrelevant for modern SSDs in home PCs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 an excess random access memory, you can use the RAM disk regardless of the type of drive installed in the 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 everyone necessary files. It then calls a special memory manager function to asynchronously read from the trace data and code that is not currently in memory. 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 of hard drives in the system. If the SSD manufacturer's proprietary utility (such as Intel SSD Toolbox) recommends disabling SuperFetch, follow its 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 Windows Memory Manager 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 completely disabling the pagefile will prevent you from diagnosing 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.

You can mark fragments of text that interest you, which will be available via a unique link in the address bar of your browser.

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 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 on 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 am nearby, I will restore the configured image of the installed system (thanks to the blog), but if a person called another “master”, then the first thing he will do is format the disk:(More Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a smart method in my city. So this is a necessary 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: growing too fast system partition, just look, the place 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,

From those soldered onto laptop motherboards SSD drive 16-32 GB is 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 with 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 :)

Hello!

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

Windows optimization under SSD will not only increase the service life of the disk itself, but also slightly increase the speed Windows operation. 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, the Windows system already starts quite quickly with an 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 SSD drives, since they are designed somewhat 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, a special file with the same name is created on the disk.

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 fine-tuning Windows (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 people also recommend transferring browser caches, swap files, temporary Windows folders, system backup (and so on) from an SSD drive to an HDD (or disable 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 operation of the system as a whole (the main goal), reduce noise and rattles, increase the battery life of a laptop, etc. And by making these settings, we can thereby negate all the advantages of an SSD drive...

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.

For a long time, the main component that “slows down” the performance of even the most sophisticated home computer, there were hard drives. 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 the operating system and user files are located.

Why is it needed? SSD optimization 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 drawback is especially relevant for outdated versions of operating systems, which 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 for working with solid-state drives, but to increase reliability you should adhere to the following rules:

1. Use a solid-state SSD disk (for the operating system and programs) together 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 partitioning the disk during Windows installation, 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. They will be of no use when using a solid-state HDD. 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 the already open command line window, enter - powercfg –h off and press ENTER.

7. Disable indexing for the SSD disk:
Start-Computer-right-click on the system drive 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.
We enter a new address for the TEMP and TMP environment variables, placing them on the 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.

An SSD is a device that has the same purpose as a hard drive, but in terms of its structure and operating principle it is very different from its counterpart. In particular, if the matter concerns the operation of Windows installed on an SSD, you should properly optimize this device to significantly extend its service life.

SSD optimization for Windows

Let's assume you have already installed the Windows operating system, starting with version seven, on a brand new SSD. If not yet, you can follow the link below to learn a short guide that will allow you to perform this procedure correctly.

The main feature of a solid state drive is that it has a limited number of rewrite cycles. This means that as little data as possible on the disk should be erased and rewritten. First of all, we will take this point into account when optimizing the SSD for the Windows operating system.

Step 1: Checking TRIM Activity

TRIM is a special feature introduced in Windows 7 that finds unused areas and allows you to clear them for later recording. If this function is undesirable for HDDs, then in the case of SSDs it will extend the service life of the drive.

Step 2: Disable automatic defragmentation

The next point that can seriously affect the service life of a solid-state drive is automatic defragmentation. The fact is that defragmentation is a useful tool for hard drives. It optimizes records on the disk, which allows you to speed up work with the HDD. In the case of SSDs, the less information is overwritten, the better.

As a rule, if an SSD is installed on your computer, Windows automatically disables this procedure, however, you should still check if this is the case.

To do this, press the keyboard shortcut Win+R to open the “Run” window and enter the following command in it, followed by pressing the Enter key:

The disk optimization menu will be displayed on the screen, in which, by highlighting the item "Solid State Drive", in the lower area of ​​the window you should see the value "Off". If you see the item "On", click on the button to the right "Change settings".

Uncheck the “Run on a schedule (recommended)” option, and then save the settings.

Stage 3: Deactivate the page file

The swap file is system file, which allows you to make up for the lack of RAM when it is fully loaded.

The idea is that the page file takes over unused data from RAM to the hard drive (solid state drive). It becomes clear that when this file is active, information is regularly overwritten on the solid-state drive, which needs to be minimized.

Alternatively, you can completely deactivate the page file, which will reduce the number of rewrite cycles on the solid-state drive, however, if you run several resource-intensive games or programs on your computer, the RAM may completely run out, which means a message will appear on your screen the following plan:

Step 4: Disable Windows Hibernation

Hibernation is a popular mode for turning on a computer, in which, after finishing work, the computer turns off completely, but after turning on it continues from the same place where you left off. Thus, the user does not have to re-launch all programs, open files, etc.

To disable hibernation, run Command Prompt as an administrator (as described above), and then run the following command in it:

Powercfg -h off

From this moment on, hibernation will be disabled, and the file responsible for it will be deleted from the system.

Step 5: Disable File Indexing

The file indexing procedure allows you to quickly find files on your computer, but due to constant rewriting, it negatively affects the life of the SSD.

Step 6: Enable Record Caching

Activating the record caching function will benefit both the solid-state drive and the hard drive.

Step 7: Disabling Prefetch

Prefetch is a special technology for speeding up system loading, which is aimed at working with slow media. As you understand, this function is useless for SSDs.

1. Launch the Run window using the Win+R keys and enter the following command:

A registry window will appear on the screen, in which you will need to go to the following branch:

HKLM SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Session Manager Memory Management PrefetchParameters

Double click on the option "EnablePrefetcher" and set the value in it «0» . Save your changes.

These tips will allow you to reduce the number of SSD write cycles without affecting system performance. But even if you do not resort to the tips listed in the article, the solid-state drive will delight you with its excellent performance for a long time. If you know what other SSD optimization techniques exist, share them in the comments.

Nowadays, many users are upgrading their personal computers and laptops by installing SSD drives – solid state drives – on them. Compared to the already familiar HDDs, solid state drives actually have a significant advantage in operating speed. operating systems and working with data.

Many people have a completely logical question: is it necessary to make any additional adjustments to personal computers and laptops when installing a new SSD? In our article, we will try to consider in detail how to work with SSDs in the two most popular operating systems – Windows 7 and Windows 10 (the actions that we will perform in the “top ten” can also be used on Windows 8).

In the notes, we note some features of SSD manufacturers, as well as some nuances for working with SSDs in laptops. So how is it done? SSD setup to get the maximum benefit from the modern equipment we purchase and install?

Microsoft, when creating the Windows 7 operating system, initially intended this system to be compatible with SSD solid-state drives, and when such drives are detected, the system settings will occur automatically. However, it is best to manually check all your computer settings to get the most out of your SSD.

• AHCI mode

To perform its functions, the system requires the SATA controller to operate in AHCI mode. To do this, you need to find the SATA configuration menu in the BIOS (Cohfigure SATA As). Typically, these configurations are located in the Main section, and switch them to AHCI mode. You can check the system in a simple way: “Start Menu” – “Control Panel” – “System” item. Select “Device Manager” and find the item IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers there. If this item is present, then expand it and find controllers with AHCI in the names in the lists. If we find AHCI names there, then our system operates in the mode we need. If there are no such names, then the system is not switched to work in AHCI mode. Naturally, it is necessary that the BIOS itself supports operation in this mode.

• TRIM command

After we have made sure that the system is switched to AHCI mode, we need to check whether the TRIM command is enabled. TRIM improves system performance on solid-state drives by telling operating systems which blocks of previously written data are no longer needed because the data in them has been deleted or formatted. Simply put, the TRIM command “removes garbage” and significantly speeds up the operation of an SSD drive, being a replacement for defragmentation on conventional HDDs.

Notes:

* For SSD operation in the Windows 7 operating system, it is best to combine SSD and HDD on computers. This will allow us to combine improved speed performance with HDD reliability.

* It is, of course, preferable to install the operating system on an SSD, like all major programs

* It is advisable to leave about 20 percent of the total volume of the solid-state drive unallocated when installing the operating system. With natural wear and tear, the SSD will take clusters from there for its work.

Optimization in Windows 7 for working with SSD

• Disabling system protection

To limit unnecessary write operations and return available space to the SSD, disable the “System Protection” function as follows: right-click on the “My Computer” icon and select “Properties” from the drop-down menu. In the window that opens, find the “System Protection” tab and go to it. Click the “Configure” button and select “Disable system protection”.

Some experts warn that System Protection may degrade the performance of the SSD over time and negatively impact the TRIM function due to its data recording nature.

• Disable disk indexing

Due to the high performance of SSDs, the disk indexing function is not useful to us, because Disk indexing was designed specifically to speed up work on HDDs. To do this, on the “My Computer” icon, call up the drop-down menu with the right mouse button and select “Properties” again. In the “General” section, uncheck the box next to “Allow the contents of files on this drive to be indexed in addition to file properties.”

• Disabling the page file

If you have a 64-bit operating system installed and the amount of RAM exceeds 8 Gigabytes, it would be advisable to disable the Paging File function. To do this, call up the drop-down menu again by right-clicking on the “My Computer” icon and select “Properties”. In the “Properties” window, find the “Advanced Settings” tab, then the “Performance” item, then the “Options” item, select the “Advanced” item and find the “Virtual Memory” section. Check the “No paging file” option and click “Set”. When working with the page file, be aware that some applications that use a large amount of RAM resources may experience difficulties when the use of the page file is turned off.

• Disabling hibernation

Hibernation was created so that the work you were doing on your computer could be resumed almost instantly. So, when the hibernation function is enabled, the entire contents of the RAM are reset to the hard drive, and then, upon awakening, they are immediately read. When working with an SSD, this function is not necessary, since the resumption of work is already quite fast. This way we save precious space on our SSD.

We disable the function like this: in the search bar in the Start Menu, type cmd and call the command line utility. After which in command line type the command: powercfg –h off and press the “Enter” key.

It is worth noting that it is not always advisable to disable hibernation. For example, on laptops, disabling hibernation will result in the computer having to be restarted every time it is closed.

• Disabling Memory Management

When enabled, Superfetch caches frequently used data, while Prefetch preloads frequently used applications. In the case of working on an SSD drive, due to the high speed of data access, we will no longer need these functions and we will be able to free up memory and let our drive work only when needed. To disable, perform the following steps: in the “Start Menu” in the search bar, type the command regedit, thereby opening the window for working with the registry. We consistently search for and select registry items: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters. Then, with the right mouse button, call up the submenu on the EnableSuperfetch and EnablePrefetcher items one by one. Select the “Change” item and change the values ​​to zero.

In the same way, we change the values ​​to zero in the ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCache parameters. The LargeSystemCache setting specifies the size and frequency of flushing the cached page to disk, and the ClearPageFileAtShutdown setting clears the page file when the PC is shut down, which results in additional writes that we no longer need. Path to parameters: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management. Select the ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCache items, go to their menu with the right mouse button and, selecting “Change” in each item, set the parameter to zero.

After this, reboot the computer.

• Disable Windows write caching

Since SSDs are much faster than traditional HDDs, the enabled write caching function does not give us any special speed advantages, so you can deactivate it. But, in turn, SSD manufacturer Intel warns that the refusal of this function will negatively affect the operation of the solid-state drives they produce. Disable caching feature Windows entries We can do this as follows: in the root folder of Explorer “My Computer”, right-click and select “Device Manager” through the “Properties” item. Select the “Disk devices” item and right-click on our SSD, thereby calling up a submenu. In the submenu, select the “Properties” section and in the properties window on the “Policies” tab, uncheck the “Allow caching of records for this device” checkbox. Then press the OK button.

• Disable Windows Search

Windows Search creates indexes of individual files, documents, and folders on your hard drive. The index is stored in a separate Search folder on drive C and takes up to 10% of the volume of indexed documents, so that when searching, part of the index is loaded into memory and significantly speeds it up. In the case of an SSD, again, this function will not give us a noticeable increase in speed. But indexes take up space on the solid-state drive, and enabling this function can really negatively affect the operation of the SSD. Therefore, we disable the function Windows Search as follows: in the search bar in the Start Menu, type services.msc and press Enter to bring up a menu with a list of local services. Find Superfetch in the list and right-click on it to bring up the service menu. In the Startup Type drop-down menu, select Disabled and click OK. Then find the Windows Search service and right-click on it again, select “Properties” and click on the “Stop” button, and then in the “Startup Type” menu also select the “Disabled” option and click OK.

• Transferring TEMP folders

To free up additional space on the SSD and avoid unnecessary overwriting, we move folders with temporary files to another drive. To do this, go to the “Control Panel”, select the “My Computer” icon, then the “Advanced system settings” section and in the “Advanced” tab go to the “Environment Variables” menu, where we click the change button, and change the final addresses of the folders with temporary storage data for new ones.

• Transferring user folders

To perform the same task as in the previous paragraph, transfer all user folders to another drive (including the “Video”, “Audio”, “Downloads”, “Favorites” and others) folders. We create a separate user folder on another drive and in “Folder Options”, which we call by right-clicking on the selected folder, on the “Location” tab, click the move button and set a new location for the folders to be moved.

• Disable NTFS journaling

You can also disable NTFS system journaling. To do this, in the Start menu, in the search bar, type cmd and open the command line. In the command line, type the command: fsutil usn deletejournal /D C: and press “Enter”.

• Disable regular defragmentation

As mentioned above, the defragmentation function is intended to work with HDDs and we do not need it when working with SSDs. Therefore, we disable it as follows: in the “Start” menu, in the search bar, type the word “defragmentation”, select the found disk defragmentation program, find the “Schedule” tab and uncheck the “Run on a schedule” checkbox.

• Setting Energy Consumption

To get the best performance from your SSD, you need to manually configure its power design. To do this, call the “Control Panel”, find “Power Options” there and set the following parameters: in “Setting up a power plan” in the parameters, select “High performance” and click “Apply”. Go to “Setting the power plan” and in the “Change additional power settings” item, select the “Hard disk” item, the “Turn off the hard drive after” sub-item and set the “Never” option, that is, “00 minutes”.

Optimization in Windows 10 (8) for working with SSD

When working with the Windows 10 (8) operating system, it is best to complete all the points related to Windows 7. The fact is that “Ten” independently makes some changes when it detects a solid-state drive. Here is a list of standard automatic system optimizations:

• Disable defragmentation;
• Connecting the TRIM function;
• Disable ReadyBoost feature;
• SSD power optimization;
• Enable the Superfetch option.

All other optimization items will have to be performed manually. You can proceed according to the scheme with the Windows 7 operating system that we proposed above.

There is another option. You can download free utility SSD Mini Tweaker, launch it, check the boxes required to complete it and apply the changes. It is recommended to check all the optimization menu options offered by the SSD Mini Tweaker program.

Notes:

*For maximum performance when using an SSD, it is recommended to connect it to SATA 3 ports operating at 6 Gigabits per second.

* Don't forget to periodically check your SSD manufacturer's website for firmware updates and install them.

As we can see from the article, optimizing the system for working with a solid-state drive requires some settings. And if Windows 7 has to be carefully configured manually, then in operating Windows systems 10 and 8, some settings are applied automatically when the system detects a solid-state drive during installation, and adjustment for working with an SSD drive in the system can be done using the free SSD Mini Tweaker utility specially designed for this.