Are there any recommended tweaks for SSDs?

Just got one and i'm curious if im missing anything besides no hibernation, no defrag, turn off indexing and no search. Thanks!

 

Install intel's latest IRST drivers is recommended, if you want to go further, try these tweaks: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-intel-series-4-5-965-chipsets-jjb-tweak.html

 

Thanks! Are intel drivers recommended over windows ones? I knew i was missing something (or maybe windows update got it...).

 

Yes, intel's drivers are preferable. Check if you have already IRST installed, if you did, make sure it's up to date on intel site. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...duct=Intel®+Rapid+Storage+Technology&lang=eng

 

I have used a Kingston SSDnow 100 for a year without any tweaking except disabling defrag, I had a wonderful experience and have boxed it for future use as I have moved on to a Samsung 470.
The technology moves at an exceptional speed, all I can do is just enjoy whatever available at the moment without worrying about tomorrow. BTW, this was the advice given by another member TommyB and he was absolutely right.

 

My Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers are 10.0.0.1046, so I've tried installing the newer drivers from the link above. But I get an error message telling this computer doesn't meet requirements for installing the drivers. Everything is working okay with the current drivers, but now I'm curious to know why I can't update the Intel drivers?

 

Opinions vary... Here's a guide that had some useful tips - SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

 

don't do anything at all except enjoying it after a clean installed proper windows with all the actual drivers from the manufacturers == best "tweak" ever.

 

As jclausius said, opinions vary, i don't see any reason to turn features like indexing, search, superfetch off. I only disabled hibernation and moved the page file to gain some space, that is all.

 

important is to understand that the drive is made for all of those things. so disabling them will not make your drive do any better per se. it'll do just fine with everything enabled. and the os will thank you with additional features.

 

I think Tom's had an awesome article that will help you out: Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD? : Optimizing Precious Solid-State Storage

It's a great read...let me know what you think.

-kshub

 

Point 2, enabling AHCI (or verifying it is enabled, what ever) is good. anything else is not good, as it redruces the feature set of your os.

sure, if your only storage is a 40gb ssd, you want to do stuff as removing pagefile, disable hibernation, turn off system restore, etc. but typically, you should buy an ssd big enough to make you never care about that tiny bit of storage.

 

Exactly. I don't want / need to features within my OS, and don't want to waste one bit of resources running something I'll never use.

For example:

Hibernation - useless functionality - I've not used it once.
Disk indexing - useless functionality - I've not needed it once.
Default Power settings - useless functionality - it powers down my system during long running processes.

However, that is why I said, 'opinions vary.' I turn these things off as it affects *my* work flow, but it may fit better with *your* workflow. Telling others "don't do anything at all" after a clean install is not the be all and end all for running a system at optimal levels.

 

so you fail to understand the gains of those features, and then castrate your os for it.

and no, they don't hurt at all.

how about, instead, starting to explore the stuff and learn how it enhances how you can use your system, improve your workflow and all?

why are people afraid of improving themselves, learning new stuff, evolving? just, .. why? i really will never understand that way of thinking.


and yes, a clean installation that does not get messed around with is the optimal way to have the system. that's the way everything gets made for. apps, drivers. patches. security fixes. etc. Everything is made for exactly that configuration. Simple example: some apps don't run properly if you have disabled a pagefile. they shouldn't. but they do.

and tons of questions we get in these forums are about issues that would have never happened if people would not mess with their systems instead of actually using them.

 

And what are those gains? How does having indexing enabled enhance the user experience when an SSD is in play?

If you never use hibernation, it hurts that a noticeable percentage of your storage space is being occupied by it.

 

I agree with hibernation since i never use it, but that one is more personal preference/user needs that anything, i have a paging file on my HDD to avoid problems from a missing page file, but it never gets used anyways. Regarding indexing, if you have a HDD to gain more storage space, it actually slows down search in your libraries and such provided they are on the HDD so it stays on on my machines, it also serves pretty much no purpose to disable it as it doesn't mean life or death for the NAND so why bother to actually it. Same for system restore, i limit the amount of space, but i still leave some in the event that i'd need to restore my system and i actually used it recently so i was glad i simply didn't disable it. Same thing with superfetch, the writes it does is minimal so again, no reason to turn it off and it still helps load programs that are on the HDD faster.

 

+1 Kshub - I was going to post a link with very similar tweaks. If you have 2 drives in your machine why not utilize both for the OS? Not everyone can affort 200 + GIG SSD's and just want a reliable machine. (the less the SSD is used; my GUESS is that the longer it will last)
OP make sure Trim is enabled and install any software that the manufacturer provides such as the intel toolbox.

 

Ty,Josea. Here's another great article: The SSD Optimization Guide - The SSD Review

I have 2 ocz drives on my desktop. I used the Tom's guide for my setup along with the SSD review article. Knock on wood never had an issue...

I'm curious as to what the OP is leaning to for their drive?

-kshub

 

davepermen,

I see the post was edited, so I don't know what originally was posted. Regardless, I'll answer these inline.

Sorry, you couldn't be more wrong. I *have* studied all of the aspects of these features, and I do know exactly how they work. I have explored, researched, tested, and devised the exact configuration that works for me. That is why I disabled them.

Don't hurt at all? In terms of what? These features require computing resources. And those *do hurt* from the standpoint of wasting resources that will never be used. For example, Hibernation DOES take away SSD space. Indexing DOES takes up RAM, and if the process's address space is swapped out to virtual memory in effect disk space, as well as require CPU cycles.

These resources are at a premium on my system. So, if I don't require hibernation (as I don't hibernate), and I don't need indexing (as I don't search for any files), they have been turned off to give my system more resources to throw at other computational problems.

Tying this to my "opinions vary" phrase, I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying EVERYONE should turn this off. I'm saying *I* am turning them off. A big difference.

No, a clean Windows installation installs with defaults just like other pieces of software. These defaults were decided upon by software programmers who try to "guess" at the best way a system should be installed - eliminating problems for the vast majority of people. That is all a clean install is. As there are many different computer users, these defaults do not apply in *all* cases.

That is an over-generalization. I can safely say from first hand experience that "everything" is NOT made for any kind of default configuration. A good piece of software tries to account for every different configuration, and handles the errors gracefully when something breaks down. This is a "goal", but sometimes due to the vast number of combinations for virtually every different kind of configuration, an algorithm in software can go bad.

This is inconsistent. First it is stated, "why are people afraid of improving themselves, learning new stuff, evolving", but isn't that what system tweaking is about? Improving one's knowledge? Learning new stuff? Evolving? How can you suggest they do that, and then turn around and say people should NOT be doing these things by messing with their systems.

 

Wait why turn off hibernation? I'm not sure I've read that anywhere and I've had mine on the whole time (despite not using it yet afaik)

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Hmm, because you have a 64GB SSD and 16GB of RAM for example, so that's 16GB of hiberfil.sys right there and 16GB of page file too so you just lost more than half of your drive's capacity to hibernation and pagefile. So 59GB of usable SSD space - 32GB - 12GB (for the rest of windows and drivers) = 15GB, that doesn't leave much space to install your programs considering you probably have 5GB or more worth of stuff you want on the SSD and that it would be a good idea to leave at least a little bit of free space for TRIM and GC. Turn off hibernation and shrink the page file to something like 2GB and you just gained 30GB of space back for example. The same math applies to any SSD of course, but the effect is more drastic on 64GB.

Obviously, not everyone has 16GB of RAM and a SSD so small, but you may have more programs and data you want to put on the SSD.

 

Hibernation takes your precious SSD space(assuming you install your OS on your SSD), which equals to the amount of RAM in your machine.

If you never use hibernation, there is no reason not to turn it off.

 

Okay and what does the page file do?

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Ferrari the page file (AKA swap file or virtual memory) is needed for certain programs to function properly.
If you have a minimal amount of RAM Windows will use the swap file when RAM is full, thus slowing your machine.
Bottom line if you have 6 GIG RAM or more it can be turned off, or at least made much smaller than the windows default setting in many cases. I have 8 GIG ram, and have moved the swap file (1 GIG) to the HDD, and have encountered no issues.

 

Please read the Tom's Hardware link that I posted in this thread, then you will have read it in 2 places (in the link and in this thread)

What others have said about the hibernation is true, if you don't use it, then you are wasting disk space, period.

-kshub

 

The main idea is correct and serves its purpose here, but the description is a bit inaccurate.

For those interested...

Spoiler

This post is not *exactly* how Windows uses virtual memory, but rather a theoretical discussion on how virtual memory works. The concepts in here do occur within windows one way or another. With that said...

Each running process will allocates / frees memory. Also, each process within Windows can allocate up to a certain limit of memory - generally, when no fancy memory allocation is implemented, this will depend if the process is 32bit vs. 64bit (as that determines how much memory can be addressed - memory is stored in bytes, and each byte has an address where it can be located). In any case, when a process allocates more than what is physically available, with virtual memory a chunk of the memory (that is usually the least often accessed) is sent to disk, and that physical memory is mapped over with a new virtual memory address.

Also note, this goes on with each running process, which can be many if you look at task manager. But since there is only physical set of RAM addresses available, each process has to contend for use. If a process's working set (or allocated virtual memory) is large, and a context switch occurs (which is time spent on the CPU), portions of that memory must be brought back from the page file while another process's working set must be preserved and is sent out to the page file.

What this means if you have tens of 1000s of processes each allocating some memory, the virtual memory page file is used to store memory from a process which is not currently running on the CPU.

When you have a lot of swapping of virtual memory in/out of the physical RAM, this can slow down the computer as disk access is less than that of RAM (even at SSD speeds). In any case, this performance hit is known as disk thrashing.

I've probably done a substandard job at explaining things, but if anyone wants more info they can read up on this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging

 

I understand it now thanks for the explanation! What does that have to do with the ssd though? And if I got 16gb of RAM, would I need a page file at all? Haha

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Since most folks use 60-128 GB SSDs as their boot drives and have a mechanical drive for data/program storage, they will often move the pagefile off the SSD to conserve space.

Not necessarily, but some programs do require one be present in order for them to function properly. In that case, you can create a small one (1-2 GB max) and be covered. By default, Windows creates a page file equal to the amount of RAM you have. With 8-16+ GB configurations common, that's a lot of space on a small drive.

 

This is going to sound condescending, but it is not intended in that way...

If you do not know if your system runs enough processes that allocate more than 16GB, thus requiring virtual memory, then odds are you don't require a page file, and can significantly reduce the size of your page file as saturnotaku mentioned. However, eliminating it is something you can do at your own risk - as opinions vary there as well.

 

As said opinions vary, but for example, Dawn of War II requires a 1.5GB page file to be present regardless of whether you need it or not. Older versions of Adobe CS also dislike having no page file. I prefer the middle man option and shrink it or move it off to the HDD if you have one to go along your SSD. That way, you can gain some space and don't get trolled by older programs that "require" a page file because they were coded when memory available was more scarce than it is now.

 

This was what I did to optimize my SSD (64GB Samsung 830). This is mainly to minimize writes.

Deactivated
Prefetch
Superfetch
Defrag
Hibernate
Readyboost
Readyboot
Indexing
System restore

Activated
ACHI
Over provisioning (10%)

Moved
Pagefile to HDD
IE9 temporary files moved to HDD

 

Too bad you don't have more space for the pagefile. The SSD is a perfect spot for it. I've seen a modest performance gain with large memory apps when the pagefile is located on the SSD.

See "Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?" - Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs


Were superfetch and defrag enabled before you turned it off? Was TRIM enabled? Did you do a fresh install, or restore an image taken from a platter based HDD to the SSD?

 

That's how I have mine set up (as can be seen in my signature)
Is AHCI better than RAID? And what is over provisioning?

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RAID is for pairing identical hard drives to either boost performance or have data redundancy (or both if you have 3 or more hard drives). For optimal performance, your motherboard needs to support this feature, or you need to have an external controller card. Over-provisioning refers to an SSD having addition memory cells "locked out" from the user so that when cells that are used wear out, you don't lose capacity or performance.

Do a Google search for more in-depth explanations.

 

We'll Im pretty sure the m17x comes in raid mode anyway even if raid isn't set up, so what does changing it to achi achieve over raid?

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I want to chime in that there is absolutely no noticeable benefit to disabling indexing, while there are quite a few detriments.

With indexing disabled, you cannot search from the start menu. Sure, we can search from the "search" in explorer, but I much prefer to press Start button and type what I want. Also, indexing is capable of cataloging file contents to allow for more detailed search results.

The size of the indexing file is a small fraction of a percent of the overall volume of an SSD. It is extremely improbable for the indexing service to actually impact the life of an SSD in any way.

Seriously... it's like buying a gorgeous, comfortable piece of furniture and then putting a plastic cover on it. Sure, it won't get dirty. But now, no one gets to see how comfortable it is to sit on.

I'd rather have a well functioning system vs. an SSD that sits on high and never gets any use out of it other than fast boot times, which happen less than once a week.

 

I am going to get a new Sager in the near future, and was wondering about this tweaking of win 7. I am not arguing this point but ???

 

I couldn't have said it any better. This idea that indexing should be disabled for SSDs is sheer idiocy, plain and simple. There is no reason to turn off indexing on an SSD anymore than there is doing so on an HD, meaning, none. There is no performance or wear impact, but a significant loss in functionality.

As an aside, I just installed a Samsung 830 in one of my laptops, and I saw that, as part of the "OS Optimization" function in their Magician utility, they offer to turn off indexing, too. I would say that, for a manufacturer to subject their potentially computer-illiterate customers to this nonsense is near-criminal...

 

Exactly. That was my point. I don't do this, so it is disabled. Why would I want my system to waste any resources on this? For the average user, keep it on. But if you do not use any of those things, then it may be something to look at.

In regards to an SSD, about the only thing you would gain would be disk space. TBH, I haven't researched how much space this consumes, but my guess is it all depends on what is on your drive to begin with. In my case, the memory and CPU cycles are what are unnecessary.

Again, if you want to turn it off, turn it off. If you do not, then do not.

 

But what?

I just checked and my index file is about 215MB (0.28% of my 80GB SSD) and I have about 500GB of data that's indexed.

The ONLY reason drive indexing was included in the list of things to disable is because it's a process that does regular writes to the drive in a time were TRIM was uncertain and people were worried about the life of their expensive SSD's. They were looking for any discardable process, no matter how small. It's been sufficient debunked in that there is absolutely no negative impact on performance, resources, SSD life, and storage space.

jclausius, it's good that you don't see any need for the feature. For most other people, it's much more like shooting themselves in the foot... or an arrow to the knee.

 

On a hex-core i7 with 12 gigs of memory? You worry about the 0.00...01% or so that disk indexing "steals" of your CPU cycles while your machine is idle (and only then, mind you)?

Sure, I guess you could say that if you know you'll never use it, then why have it on. It's just that the percentage of people who never use it, knowingly or unknowingly, is very small. And if somebody turned on disk indexing for them behind their back, they would never notice a difference. But, yeah, maybe you are one of the people who don't need it, so feel free.

 

Yah. When you're compiling, profiling, and debugging software as much as I do, optimizing 100s GB to 1TB databases, or running 3-5 different virtual machines to QA a piece of software on different OSs, then yes, every byte of RAM, every block on disk and every CPU cycle counts.

I think should decide for themselves as turning it on/off is not detrimental to Win 7's overall main functionality - running applications. Besides, if things are slower, merely turn things back on. The data presented in Tom's article applied to my use case:

Actually, I boot on average about 3.25 times a day. W/ the SSD, there's no need to do otherwise (sleep or hibernate) as boot times are about 13 seconds.

Perhaps a suggestion would help. Instead of making absolute statements like:

"which happens less than once a week", "the idea that indexing should be disabled for SSDs is sheer idiocy, plain and simple." or "there is absolutely no noticeable benefit to disabling indexing, while there are quite a few detriments." you could say something like, "For the majority of cases" or "In general, indexing adds some nice functionality for those who need it", as I can understand that.

But when there are absolute statements made that affect *all* users or everyone's usage is exactly like this, so this is idiocy, that is where someone will step in and say, "no, that it is not always the case."

 

Sorry... I don't feel the need to always consider your atypical usage patterns in statements that I make about this and that. I spend the majority of my days speaking in non absolutes, either because that's the nature of my work or I'm trying to be considerate.

Thanks for being present for the past 18 months and for being a part of the SSD optimization debate process.

Thanks for implying that because 0.28% or less of an SSD's storage space (based upon 80GB) is 'significant to you' that it must be considered significant when speaking to others.

So, in other words... thanks for nitpicking.

 

There's really no need to consider special use cases and those with special use cases will know what to consider for their needs. The majority of forum members, while above average computer users, tend to have somewhat similar usage patterns.

So statements that appear as absolute are simply statements that cater to the grand majority. Much like common knowledge caters to that which is commonly accepted.

 

Can anyone help this guy out?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-64gb-very-bad-performance-4.html#post8323433

He is noticing massive slow down of one of our MyDigitalSSD 64GB mSATA drive.

We have also had the same report from 4-5 others. But we have sold well over 200pcs of this SSD since the 1st report of this happening.

One thing that has changed is we moved to 24nm flash or I should say forced to move to 24nm flash in this 64GB product. Performance did take a hit but the price dropped a lot as well and most people seem to accept that. I am am not sure if that is part of this problem or not just offering as much info as I can.

MyDigitalSSD

 

Don't mention it. And don't worry, if there are other posts with incorrect or invalid arguments as I've see here, which may also not apply to everyone, I'll be there to point to actual data to help others make informed decisions.

I've think this has quite finished this line on the thread, and I've proved my point as there's nothing left in anyone's argument. Probably the best thing to say is, "You're quite welcome."

 

so, post got deleted out of not being polite. points still stand:

if you have a system that you need to have constantly maxed out at 100%, then a) you don't need that or b) you have the wrong system. you always should have spare resourced everywhere.

and if you have an adequate system for your tasks, so don't require special messing around to just actually getting it to do what you want, then no tweaks should be applied. a system without tweaks is a system the way it's made to work. that's what everyone that worked on it worked for, optimized for, and designed it for. that's how it works best.

so no, you should not require your system to be at 100%. especially not while it's idling (that, no matter what, does not make sense. and if that means you let your cpu run all the time at 100% instead of cooling down, then you actually lose performance when you need it. just as info).

and yes, while there are always special cases, those cases should not be preached in here as "the way to go". the way to go is to NOT mess with the default, to NOT tweak "for your ssd to reduce writes", that is just utter nonsense. it's a missinterpretations of facts that do exist, and, as a result, a lie to everyone who does not know yet how to handle an ssd.