SSD optimizations still needed?

I just put a Samsung 830 in my dv6 7000. And was wondering if optimizations are still needed with these new drives? I have defrag disabled of course but what about other things like prefecth? A lot of websites say no more optimizations are needed with newer drives. What do you guys think?

 

See post #8 by Davepermen. http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...644988-there-any-recommended-tweaks-ssds.html
Personally, I move the page file to another drive (if you have only 1 physical hard drive & sufficient RAM you could reduce the size of the page file). Also I do not use hibernation so I have that disabled as well.

 

'tweaks' are there to affect the user, not the drive.



i really don't see the point of disabling features; its like buying a more gas-efficient car and then leaving it in the garage.

 

The only tweaks i personally did were disabling hibernation and shrinking the page file, but that's because i have 16GB of RAM so hiberfil.sys + page file were taking up 32GB on a 128GB SSD which is a lot. I wouldn't have done it on a 256GB SSD.

 

The only things I do are to shrink the pagefile (2gb is a nice size if you're using 8-16gb of RAM) but still leave it on the SSD, and disable defrag if it's not disabled already.

 

What OS? Win 7? Did you run an install while the drive was installed (and AHCI enabled in your BIOS, if your lappy allows)? If so, the system most likely has the majority of settings already configured.

You can do some extra things like disable hibernation (if you never use it), and things like that, but for the most part, it should already have been properly configured by a fresh install.

Also, since you have a Samsung, install / run the Magician software. From what I've seen posted on the forums it has extra utilities that can also help configure the system to your SSD.

However, if you insist you want to go deeper, I recommend starting at post #7 on the thread posted by JOSEA.

 

Windows 7 ultimate minimal install through the recovery disks. What I've gathered so far is most tweaks are pointless and everything should be good to go at the beginning after you install. The one thing bothering me is the Samsung magician software says I'm in non-achi mode...

 

Double check you BIOS setting to see if it is AHCI mode for your 830
(Press the appropriate key after power on - del, F2, F8, F12 (I am not sure which one)

 

Recovery from what? An image from a platter based drive? AHCI was also disabled?

If so, you'll want to double check your configuration as restoring from an image/clone will still keep your system configured as when it was in the original image - with a platter based drive, not an SSD. Also, if your BIOS supports AHCI mode, you'll want to turn it on in BIOS and also find the tweaks required to enable AHCI mode within Win 7.

Due to things like this, I always like to mention a fresh install. Yes, it is a pain to get your data / apps back up and running, but you know the system is configured correctly. So it is a trade-off for ease of system configuration vs. time it takes to do a full reinstall.

 

Hmmm.... Are you suggesting I scrap my install and do a fresh install from windows 7 disks?

 

In general, not necessarily. With technology, there is always more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. When restoring a platter based image onto an SSD, it is really up to the end user. How they get from point A (platter based HDD) to point B (SSD).

I'm merely pointing out, if you have the BIOS setup correct with the SSD installed, a fresh install will configure almost everything up front. Alignment, AHCI, different drivers (if other hardware has changed), Scheduled Tasks, Trim, etc. There is no need to jump through all these tweaking hoops... checking this, and checking that. However, it can be a MAJOR PAIN to restore your data and reinstall apps. Time is money as they say.

On the other hand, going through tweaking guides, changing AHCI in BIOS and then making the correct Windows registry setting can resolve all these problems. But it will take a little bit of research to find and go through these steps. However, that may be less time than a full reinstall for those comfortable with changing the registry, running command lines, etc.

You have to weigh what is more important, and then you, and only you, can decide if you want to configure things by letting Win 7's installer do it, or find / make any changes yourself. The decision is yours.

 

I agree with just about everything said here. You can gain space by disabling Hibernation, if you don't use it. You can gain space by shrinking the page file, especially if you have a lot of RAM. But I think the most important things for you if you cloned an image are to make sure the alignment is correct and make sure defrag is disabled (which I see you did).

As JC said, almost every time you clean install now, the correct settings will be enabled. And use the proprietary software for the SSD. I use mine, and it optimizes the SSD for me. I have not used Sammys, but they have the Magician sw, so make sure you use it.

My Intel SW disables defrag and prefetch for me, so they think it is important. Sammy may not. I would follow the recommendations of the manufacturer.

Of all my SSD's, the least amount of writes any has is 389 TB's. All are still reading 100% life. So as long as you just let Win7 and the manufacturer's SW do their job, they will outlive your lappy, most likely. Have fun, enjoy it and put it into your next laptop. And you have a great SSD!

 

Samsungs SSD Magician can do that also for you.
It doesn't do that automatically, but you have the choice:

Source: Samsung 830 Series SATA 3 512GB SSD Review - Amazing Performance and an Unbeatable Toolbox - The SSD Review
and personal experience

 

IIRC, both the Intel Toolbox and SSD Magician completely disables defrag, which means if you are running a multiple drive machine with both an SSD and one or more mechanical drives that the mechanical drives will have to be manually defragged.

Also, one or both of those tools also disables the virtual disk service. This is no big deal if you don't need it, but it is a bit of headache when you attempt to do some things that need this service as it is not always apparent what the problem might be when the service is not running. The virtual disk service supports managing logical volumes, shadow copy services and managing virtual disks. It is being phased out by MS and its tasks taken over by other apps/services but still I cannot thing of a single reason why this service should be disable for SSDs. I'd appreciate anyone who knows more about this service to enlighten me if there is something it could do to an SSD.

imho, it makes no sense for either of these tools to do these tasks. What they should do is verify that any SSDs are not on the list of drives to be defragged and should provide you a direct method to remove SSDs from that list. Disabling defrag and the virtual disk service is overkill. I think the best way for this to be handled would be for MS to release a Windows update that would not even allow Windows defrag to be ran against an SSD via the GUI - make it a manual/command line process to defrag an SSD and then this would be a non-issue.

 

I don't think that necessarily helps in this case. Since <strike>restoration</strike> cloning from a platter based drive to an SSD would result in the SSD possibly still scheduled for defrag, it would most likely end up in the list of drives to manually defrag as well, since Win 7 would still be using info that the drive was platter based.

 

You've probably read this from me before - but I've done four HD to SSD restorations and everytime, without fail, Windows removed the SSD from the list of disks to defrag. I accept that this is probably not the case for a clone image, however...

It is hard for me to accept that MS could not come up with a way to determine when defrag automatically launches that it would first examine each disk and verify it is not an ssd before running defrag on it.

 

Sorry, I misspoke in that post. I'm referring to cloning. This was proved here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-storage/642492-ssd-advice-2.html#post8346789. The above post has been edited.

 

I just checked and VDS is not disabled on my lappy. It does show for System Tuner in the Intel Toolbox that it detects dual drives, so if your not sure how to, you can just click help to shedule defrags for the HDD.