Configuring your SSD for Windows 7 (how to guide)

[Xerai]

Configuring your SSD for Windows 7 (Tweak List)

WARNING: This is not a definitive guide! There may be other tweaks out there in the world that I havent listed - apparently this needed to be stated...

WARNING: This list of tweaks is not meant to be followed blindly! If you dont know what a tweak does, then look it up in Google. All are "safe" to do, but some might loose you some functionaly. Turning off Hiberbate will prevent your system from hibernating, surprisingly...

This post is relevant to: People that have just got an SSD and want to tweak Windows 7 so it doesn’t write unnecessarily to the drive degrading its performance and shortening its life. Application of these tweaks may also speed up your drive slightly.

There are many guides around the net about how to tweak your OS for your SSD, but you will find yourself visting many sites to collect them all. Now, Im not claiming these are "all" the tweaks, but I spent the last two days reading all the articles and forum posts I can find on the net about SSD tweaks and this is all the ones I could find. Yes, there are some tools you can use to do the tweaks automatically, but I prefer to do it manually

Assumptions:

1. You are using an SSD as your primary HDD.
2. You also have a platter drive in your system.
3. Your drive is using NTFS format
4. You are using Windows 7 (although much of this can be applied to other MS OSs)
5. You already know how to use regedit, enable/disable services and generally root around in the innards of your OS (If not look elsewhere for guides).

NB: When editing your registry the “before value” may differ in some systems, but the value you should set it to is still correct (I only included the before values in case you want to reverse the change later).

You dont have to set all of these tweaks, but at least you can see in this list what there is available and relevant for your SSD drive. Pick and choose, or set the lot - its up to you.

DISABLE PREFETCH
Hkey_local_machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Change Enableprefetcher value from 3 to 0

ENABLE CLEAR PAGEFILE AT SHUTDOWN
Hkey_local_machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
Change clearPageFilesAtShutdown from 0 to 1

ENABLE LARGE SYSTEM CACHE
Hkey_local_machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
Change LargeSystemCache value from 0 to 1

DISABLE 8.3 FILENAME CREATION
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
Change NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation value from 0 to 1

NTFS MEMORY USEAGE INCREASED
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\FileSystem
Change NtfsMemoryUsage value from 1 to 2

DISABLE DATE STAMPING
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
Change NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate value from 0 to 1

DISABLE SUPERFETCH
Hkey_local_machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Change EnableSuperfetch from 3 to 0

DISABLE SUPERFETCH 2 (optional)
In computer management services set service Superfetch to Disable

DISABLE WINDOWS SEARCH
In Computer Management > Services set Windows Search to Disable

DISABLE DEFRAG
In properties of SSD drive (my computer) open the defrag service and go to the defrag scheduler
Un-check schedule defragmentation for this drive

DISABLE DEFRAG 2 (optional)
In Computer Management > Services set Defragment to Disable

DISABLE PAGEFILE
System Properties > Advanced, turn off for SSD. Set up for 512min/512max on your second platter drive (if present).
NB: Value is just my preference, feel free to experiment. Having no pagefile at all can cause problems with some games.

DISABLE HIBERNATION
Type CMD in search, right-click Command Prompt or Cmd.exe, and click Run as Administrator. Type "powercfg.exe -h off"

WRITE CACHE ENABLE
Right click My Computer, properties, device manager. Enable write cache and advanced in policies for the SSD drive
Set Write cache + Advanced performance to Enable

DISABLE DRIVE INDEXING
In My Computer, in the properties of the SSD drive disable drive indexing (untick the box)

DISABLE SYSTEM RESTORE
Start Menu > Right-Click Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > System Protection Tab > Configure > Turn off system protection

MOVE ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES TO PLATTER DRIVE
System Properties > Advanced, move TEMP and TMP to a platter drive
Also move the User TEMP and TMP to a platter drive

DISABLE ReadyBoot
Launch the "Performance Monitor" program (via Administrative Tools). Then on the lefthand side of your screen click "Data Collector Sets", and underneath that heading click "Startup Event Trace Sessions". Now on your righthand side you'll see a list that includes ReadyBoot, and you'll see the word 'enabled' beside the word 'Readyboot'. Double clicking the list item brings up the ReadyBoot Properties dialog. This dialog has a number of tabs. Pick the "Trace Session" tab. Finally, uncheck the "Enabled" checkbox on that tab

MOVE USERS “SPECIAL” FOLDERS TO PLATTER DRIVE (optional)
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1832114&SiteID=17
This refers to moving My Doc, My Pics, Downloads etc. that are usually inside Users folder on the root of your boot drive to your platter drive.

MOVE WEBCACHE FOR MS IE TO PLATTER DRIVE
Open IE > Internet Options > Tools > Internet Options > General Tab > Browsing History. After this has been done you will need to log off and back on again for the cache to be moved

MOVE WEBCACHE FOR FIREFOX TO PLATTER DRIVE
Type about:config into the address bar. Click OK to the warning message. Right click somewhere on the opened age and go to new -> String. Enter browser.cache.disk.parent_directory into the first dialog box and then the location you would like the cache in the second. Restart the browser and then this should now be moved. To check type about:cache into the address bar and all the info about the cache will be displayed

MOVE APPS DATA FOLDER TO PLATTER DRIVE
I haven’t yet attempted this step, but there is some information here: http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/95/1/How-to-move-the-special-folders-in-Windows-Vista.html

TWEAKS OMITTED DELIBERATLY
I haven’t included the L2 CPU cache tweak (mentioned on the OCZ site), as I don’t understand/trust messing with it.

As you can see there is a slight increase in performance after making these changes. Myself, and I suspect many of you will be making these changes primarily because you don’t want to wear out your drive early and so getting a speed boost as a by-product of these tweaks is a very nice side effect

Hope someone finds this post of use, feel free to ask questions and tell me where you think I have gone wrong or missed something out.

 

[Xerai]

Hi ChileanLlama, maybe thanks for your thoughts and suggestions

Good stuff, but I think you need to put more of an explanation as to why you are disabling things.

I would have done that, only it would have taken me all day instead of couple of hours to write up this post
I assume most people that find this post useful will either already know about most of the tweaks (in which case no explaination is needed) or will want to go a check its actually worth doing before changing it (as I would). Im just trying to bring a lot of the tweaks together in to one list instead of them being on multiple websites you have to go searching for.

Pagefile. Leave it on the SSD (if you're going to run one). Read the MS Blog as to why, but it seems SSDs are the perfect drive for pagefile.

Not sure what your source is for that info, but I believe putting the pagefile on your SSD is one of the worst things you could do. Unless you have low system RAM, in which case go buy some more RAM!

Hibernation. Of course if you want to keep the feature, you can't turn it off! Ditto System Restore.

True, True. Im just trying to list all the useful ones, people dont have to set them all if they dont want to.

Indexing. Consists of largely reads so isn't going to wear out your drive, it's a fairly moot point as the drives are that fast to search on the fly it's not really needed either.

Agreed, but turning it off is listed in several places as a way of speeding up your SSD system (although only slightly)

Moving webcache...where to...and why?

Ops, yes you are right. I meant move to a platter drive and the why is because its unnessasry writes to your SSD. I doubt you can notice if your webcache is fetching from your SSD or platter drive.

The figures you've quoted before/after are not conclusive. I've had bigger variances using CrystalDisk without making tweaks inbetween. And other than the 4k read they are too similar to call.

True, True, its just to show those who might worry messing around with this stuff might actually make your drive slower. From what I find its at least the same and probably faster. The 4k read as you mentioned is probably the only one that cant be discounted as just normal variances. The 4k read is also one of the most important indicators of the drives speed, so I still make the claim that these tweaks will speed up your SSD.

Overall some useful stuff, some of it is done by Windows 7 automatically (sometimes anyway!).

Yes, I think a couple of things are set automatically, but 95% of the list I gave was not done by my Win7 Pro install straight on to the SSD.

Anyway as I've said before, I'm not keen on moving things off the SSD to mechanical drives just for the sake of protecting my drives against wear (e.g. temp files, pagefile, webcaches, etc). It kinda defeats the purpose of having an SSD if key files are then being put/used on mechanical drives.

I agree to some extent, but when you look at the resource monitor and see the OS writting all kind of crap to your shiny new SSD that is slowly wearing it out and degrading its performance, personally I would rather disable those features.

So overall I'd avoid any tweaks that are geared around prolonging the life, reducing wear on SSDs. They will tend to have a negative effect on performance, and when all said and done the warranty is long enough on most drives for people not to worry about wear.

For some things that may be true, but lets take ReadyBoot as an example. This thrashes your HD after boot for little or no gain in boot up time next time you turn on the machine. Some report that their machine actually boots up quicker with this disabled. So I do agree with your point about not turning off services to prolong the drive at the cost of performance, however many of these tweaks actually speed up your drive as a result.

The moving of the enviroment and pagefiles to other drives being the exception, but if you want to fill up your SSD with crappy temp files please go ahead

I take onboard what you said and will try to add a bit more explaination to parts of the list, thanks

 

[Xerai]

Thanks for the reply again.

As I said before I'm not bothered about the drives wearing out, any tweaks that could otherwise compromise my system and user experience at the sake of saving a few writes is not worth it - if it fails within warranty it will be replaced,

My suggestion to you would be that perhaps others are bothered about their drives wearing out and getting slower due to being full of temporary files and web caches… Personally I don’t want to be wiping my drive clean often to return the performance.

Perhaps I am unusual in that I did not buy an SSD so I can load my cached web pages faster. This was not something I even thought about or feel I need. Most of the time when I visit a website and am waiting for something to appear it’s the speed of the net or the web server at the other end that causes a slow page, not how fast my browser can fetch files from its cache.

You say you have no mechanical drive in your system. If you look at my assumptions up at the top of the list I stated this list was for people who are using a mechanical drive as well as an SSD. Perhaps this is why you particularly don’t see this list as very useful to you. If you have a 30GB Vertex for example you might be looking for anything you can offload from the main drive to free up space.

One of the first SSD tweak lists I found, was on this forum (shown below). Even though it has no detail at all I found it very useful as a starting place to go off and check what can be tweaked. I didn’t see anyone criticising that post for lack of pros and cons about each entry. I even found that same list copied and pasted in to guides on a couple of other websites.

• Superfetch set to disable.
• Prefetch set to disable.
• Enabled clear page file at shutdown.
• Enabled Large system cache.
• Ntfs disable 8 dot 3 name creation set to disable.
• Ntfs memory usage increased.
• Defragment set to disable.
• Pagefile set to off. (Have 6g of ram but using 4 due to duff module.)
• Hibernation off.
• Write cache enable.
• System restore off for SSD drive and move to SATAII drive.

I do take on what had been suggested by your replies, I did change the wording on the original post after your original comments, but maybe you didn’t notice? That said I have just added something to make it even more clear it is not meant to be a definitive list and not to set everything blindly and lookup the tweaks you don’t understand.

BTW: I still don’t agree on the pagefile issue. I have read on multiple sites not to put a pagefile on your SSD. M$ might say you can do it, but I believe what others say and prefer to offload it to a platter drive, but make sure you have plenty of RAM. If you have 12GB RAM already and are regularly needing to use your pagefile, then YES I can see it makes sense to put it on your SSD. But how big is your pagefile, 1GB? If your performance in this respect is so critical, you should add more RAM.

 

[Xerai]

As I stated quite a few times this is a list of tweaks gathered from around the net. Im sorry you have taken my post as a scientific paper on the perfect tweaks for an SSD drive, this was not my intention. I also have changed the wording of the original post (twice) to make it more clear that people should pick and choose what they might want to use or ignore. Im not going to defend what and why tweaks are on this list, since I didnt come up with them in the first place anyway. However, if you do a web search you will find they are all suggested as SSD tweaks on the net (none have been made up by myself).

Someone, somewhere may have got it wrong, but this is not my problem. Anything you read on the net could be wrong, I think most people know that, but if you read the same thing over and over in several places it becomes more probable that its true. Thats my view anyway. Im sure you can write pages on why just because a tweak appears on several sites that doesnt make it a good tweak, but that applies to most posts on this board so you would be very busy if you tried to pursue that course.

Again, all I am doing is listing the tweaks not saying this is a definitive list or that it should be followed blindly. I have applied this entire list to my computer and it works perfectly fine. My drives get a score of 7.8 (out of 7.9) in Windows 7 experience. I dont notice any slow down as a result of the tweaks made (quite the oposite) and I feel happy knowing that windows isnt writting useless rubbish all over my drive in the background.


Just one last word on the pagefile issue: The majority of the sites I visited recommend disabling the pagefile completely if you use an SSD. The only reason I listed the pagefile should be moved from the main drive is because of two sites that mentioned there could be problems with some games if you have no pagefile at all. I am not saying the MS article you linked to is wrong, just that it can be intepreted in several ways. If you want your pagefile on your SSD then good on you, but I feel 1) I dont need a pagefile at all and 2) If its something I dont need (except on rare occations), I am going to stick in on my platter drive.

Peace...