Windows 7 SSD optimization?

Just got a Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD for my Alienware m17x-R2. I clean installed Windows 7 x64-Ultimate and everything else fresh. Speed & performance are not the issue. Drive is plenty fast for me. I worry that Windows 7 has not recognized my SSD as an SSD though.
In other threads I've read, Windows 7 should enable/disable certain services in response to the SSD being present (TRIM enabled; Indexing, Superfetch, Prefetch, etc., Disabled).
Well, TRIM is enabled, but so is indexing and all the other services, including Disk Defrag. I disabled Disk Defrag in Services and turned off the Defrag Scheduler. But I wonder if there's something that I did not do to make Windows recognize my SSD for what it is. Here are my current settings:

BIOS Mode set to AHCI
Drives installed: Kingston SSD (C:\), WD HDD (D:\)
TRIM Enabled
Disk Defrag was enabled, but I disabled it
Superfetch Enabled
Prefetch Enabled
Indexing was enabled but I disabled it under the C:\ Local Disk Properties (unchecked Allow File Contents Indexed)

My WEI score for the drive is 7.7, and I am not using any 3rd party drivers for the drive (other than Intel RST).

Let me know if I've got something wrong or haven't done something to Windows that you're supposed to do with SSDs.

radugb out

 

WEI means nothing.

First run either AS SSD benchmark or CrystalDiskInfo and get your speeds. If they are on par with the drive and the controller it is hooked up to, you have nothing to worry about.

Guide * Windows 7 Ultimate Tweaks & Utilities *

There is just some information for you.

And I'm confused as to your actual question. You think Windows doesn't recognize it's a SSD? Run the benchmarks above and see your speeds then reference this or this thread.

 

I believe the max WEI score for rotating hard drives is 5.9, so Windows seems to have recognised your SSD. Defrag should still be able to be opened if you have an SSD drive, but if you click "Configure schedule" and click "Select disks," your SSD drive letter should not be listed. Defrag should still be enabled for your 'D' drive.

 

C drive is listed under "Select Discs". I downloaded and ran CrystalDiskMark and its speeds were similar (albiet slower on the 4K) to what others m17x-R2 owners are reporting with their SSDs. I think my speeds are what their supposed to be. I worry that Windows is treating my SSD as if it were a regular HDD as far as the services it is supposed to turn off when it detects an SSD.

 

I have to disable a bunch of services (defrag, etc) whenever I have installed my Samsung 830 (three times now). As long as you manually disable them you should be good.

 

Is your Kingston Drive SATA-II or SATA-III ? I was under the impression that the M17x was only compatible with SATA-II...I very well could be totally wrong..but I thought I read somewhere in the AW forum about Dell not recommending SATA-III because of instability issues....hopefully I'm wrong!

 

SATA 3 is backwards compatible so a SATA 3 drive would work on a SATA 2 controller.

As far as instability is concerned, I think they are just blowing smoke.

 

Okay...cool...hope you're right!

 

There are a infinitesimal amount of SATA 2 laptops that don't like SATA3 drives, however, yours isn't amongst those. I'm currently running a SATA3 M4 on a SATA2 controller in my G73 and everything is peachy.

 

Yeah, I did some more searching and found that as long as Windows enabled TRIM, I should not worry. I disabled Defrag, and unchecked "Index Contents" in the Drive Properties Box, but am unsure of what other services I should disable. There is a thread in the forums that discuss how SSD users should leave prefetch/superfetch enabled since the gains outweigh the wear to the drive. What else would all y'all recommend I enable/disable to get the most life out of my SSD? I'm not worried about increasing my performance with registry tweaks since Dell (reluctantly) gave me this SSD as a warranty replacement since they were out of 500 GB 7200RPM HDDs in December. I just want to make this drive last longer than its predecessor, which was 13 months.

And to answer the question of drive reliability, this drives seems extremely reliable. It came with the latest firmware which was released in late Nov, and according to reviews that seemed to have fixed the BSOD and stability issues...so far. The only thing I don't like about this drive is that it makes no noise so I cannot tell how hard it is processing except by the flashing "alien eyes". It will take me a while to get used to the SSD's silent but deadly attributes.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...644988-there-any-recommended-tweaks-ssds.html
Please read the posts by davepermen especially, I did a lot of tweaks initially but his very well put explanation has made me change my mind.
I have a 500 Meg page file on the SSD, have disabled disk defrag & system restore, and hibernate and am finally happy with the overall day to day performance.

 

Wow. Yes, Daveperman does know Windows...(he seems a bit angry to me). My page file is still system managed and is 8180 MB. Think that is too big? I disable system restore right after Windows is finished installing since it has never worked for me. Disk defrag is now disabled in services, and I used a registry edit to disable hibernate since Alienware CCC has been known to do its own funny performance tweaks without warning. I decided to leave prefetch & superfetch going after reading this tread about SSDs & Superfetch.
Just to amuse myself, I ran the WEI tool again and the SSD scored 7.7 again. This time, though, I opened up Disk Defrag, clicked on configure schedule, then select disks, and "C:\" was not listed now. Hmmm? Maybe it just didn't take the first time I ran WEI. I'm not going to worry about it anymore. Despite all the recommendation is the forums, I won't try anymore registry tweaks to alter the Intel PPM states and whatnot. The first registry hack I tried that was recommended to me (since I have an i7 920-XM) caused my core temps to shoot from their normal 46-52 C to 60-68 C!! I'd rather not have the MB put out more heat just to damage the SSD faster than it should be.

 

Yes, the advice is easy to follow for those who can run a fresh install. For me this was a lot easier than messing with an entire system restore, and then checking a whole bunch of settings afterwards.

Then after the install, if one wants, they can tweak if needed to really get what they want from their system. For example, I never, ever hibernate. So, I disabled it (but not with a reg hack), but by running "powercfg -h off" from an admin command prompt.

That all depends on memory, the apps you use at any given time, and the amount of memory consumed by all those apps. The general rule of thumb is about 1.5 * amount of memory. So, for a 4GB RAM, 6GB pagefile. 8GB RAM, 12GB pagefile. 24 GB RAM, 36 GB pagefile. But as the amount of RAM goes up, odds are you may not even kick into needing virtual memory if all you do is run a browser, a word processor, or one game.

HTH

 

I agree with disabling hibernate, as I never even put my laptop to sleep...when I'm done I just shut it off. I ran the registry hack because it was the first choice that popped up in my google search. As long as it gets the job done, right? I have 8GB of RAM, but I do not run games on my system (I think the last Windows game I bought was Star Trek:SFC3). I use my system mostly for MS Office, AVS Video Converter, and Photoshop. I don't think it should need more than an 8GB pagefile, but I could be wrong.

 

If you are willing to spend some time monitoring, you can probably reduce your page file size.

Set a manual page file size with a specified minimum/maximum. In your case, set the minimum to 512MB with maximum 8180 MB. That way you will still have the 8180MB available during your "test phase."

Periodically during your session, look at the size of the pagefile.sys to see if it has increased above 512MB. Actually you can just look once -- just before you shutdown or reboot because, if at any time during your session Windows needed more than 512MB, it would increase the pagefile.sys size accordingly. It will NOT reset it back down to 512MB until a new boot/reboot.

If you never see the pagefile.sys above 512MB, then that means Windows doesn't need more than that, and then you can safely set the maximum to something lower, like 1024MB, or even 512MB, and free up valuable space on your SSD.

FWIW, I went through the above process on my desktop computer with 8GB RAM and an SSD. I eventually lowered my page file on C: to 128MB min/512MB max. On my notebook, where I don't have an SSD and have ample HDD space, I have 128MB min/4096MB max. On neither computer have I seen more than the minimum 128MB file size.

The only reason I don't turn it off totally on my C: drive is that some applications are written to not install and/or not load if they don't detect a page file. A tiny one seems to suffice.

On my desktop system, "just in case," I have a second page file on a HDD where space is not an issue.