Windows 7 ssd optimization

[shwick]

I looked around for some Windows 7 optimization tweaks for my upcoming rig with a crucial m4 128GB ssd and will share what I found.

-installing onto different drive, then restore image onto ssd? worth trouble or no?
-1gb ramdisk for pagefile or 1gb on ssd?

-update firmware
-disable superfetch, prefetch, bootfetch
-reduce logging
-disable hibernation
-disable defrag on the ssd
-disable system restore
-disable windows reliability monitor
-do not disable indexing

http://superuser.com/questions/137817/best-ssd-tweaks-for-windows-7
http://www.overclock.net/ssd/700470-tutorials-real-world-windows-7-ssd.html

 

[postmortemIA]

-disable superfetch, prefetch, bootfetch
-disable defrag on the ssd
Windows 7 does these 2 automatically for you. AFAIK if you don't do anything you will still be fine

 

[RU482]

-disable dogfetch

Assuming you have sufficient memory, I'd change the pagefile size to variable, with 256MB (or whatever min value it lets you enter) min and your memory size max. Yeah, and disable hibernate if you don't use that.

yep, update to the 0009 firmware, just cause it gives a speed bump

enjoy!

 

[Coup27]

-disable superfetch, prefetch, bootfetch
-disable defrag on the ssd
Windows 7 does these 2 automatically for you. AFAIK if you don't do anything you will still be fine

Windows 7 is supposed to do these but I have installed an X25-M, and 3 320's series drives all on genuine Windows 7 x64 and none have disabled these and I have had to do it myself in the registry.

Installing first onto a HDD then imaging onto the SSD is a daft idea. Can't see any benefit and will take you a lot longer. Do a clean install onto the SSD, make your partitions in the installer editor to ensure they are alligned, make those optimisations and enjoy the speed.

 

[jhansman]

Windows 7 is supposed to do these...

Not sure where you got this, but the last two SSDs I've installed Win7 +SP1 on had all the stuff listed by the OP enabled, and then some. Perhaps one day we'll have a version of Windows smart enough to know it's going on an SSD and disable counter intuitive services, but these devices are still too new and M$ too cautious.

 

[Coup27]

Around the time when W7 was coming out I remember reading multiple articles, some from MS about how W7 would be smart enough to detect an SSD and "optimize" W7 settings for it. I have tried to find some of those articles but now the net is full of how to disable those settings manually.

Either way, as you say, whatever they did didn't work as I've had them all enabled by default as well.

 

[Voo]

Not sure where you got this, but the last two SSDs I've installed Win7 +SP1 on had all the stuff listed by the OP enabled, and then some. Perhaps one day we'll have a version of Windows smart enough to know it's going on an SSD and disable counter intuitive services, but these devices are still too new and M$ too cautious.

So how exactly did you check whether the services were actually running on the SSD?

First of all it's not at all clear why superfetch would be counter intuitive - wasting memory doing nothing although it's orders of magnitudes faster than an SSD doesn't seem that clever to me. And reducing logging, reliability monitors disabling? To avoid writing a few gb per year more data to a drive that can take several hundreds TB at least? Absolutely necessary! Sure if you ever have some problem you'll have a harder time figuring out what is wrong - but oh well.
Other stuff (system restore) may make sense on a small SSD since they take rather a lot of space, but again disabling it by default has rather large drawbacks and people who need the additional space can disable them easily.

And the defragging? Well disabling the service is great if you don't want it to run anywhere including all your HDDs, I personally just let it at the default and live with the fact that Win just doesn't run on SSDs by default. Yep "M$" (that's so sweet) really should learn what they do.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

We get one of these threads at least once a week...

Update SSD firmware (if needed)
Install Win7 from scratch, create partition with installer
Disable hibernation (if desktop)

Anything else is just a waste of time, and some of it can actually degrade performance or cause you headaches long-term.

Seriously, we have a sticky for this.

 

[jhansman]

Yep "M$" (that's so sweet)

Feel better? And yes, there is a sticky for all this.

 

[shwick]

Lol this sticky is hilarious http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2069761

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Feel better? ...

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic...