Configuring your SSD for Windows 7 (how to guide)

Thanks weird_dave.
How come it takes so long to shut down though.
I thought it had frozen when I left it for 3 minutes before getting impatient and restarting it manually. Doesn't seem worth it to me.
 
It usually shuts down instantly. This is a fresh windows 7 install, system managed page file.
I have no idea if it would ever have shut down. I didn't have the patience to wait :)
 
I won't be applying any of these tweaks but thanks for taking the time to write them. The way I see it is you buy an SSD to speed up your OS, so why move every OS related command to a mechanical HDD? You want it all on the SSD or you won't notice the perfomance advantage. TRIM will sort out the slow down from use. Also your before and after benchmark is insignificant of a true result due to the nature of SSD benchmark results always changing anyways. In 5 years time you won't care your SSD is dead because it will be junk.
 
Nate Silvers said:
I won't be applying any of these tweaks but thanks for taking the time to write them. The way I see it is you buy an SSD to speed up your OS, so why move every OS related command to a mechanical HDD? You want it all on the SSD or you won't notice the perfomance advantage. TRIM will sort out the slow down from use. Also your before and after benchmark is insignificant of a true result due to the nature of SSD benchmark results always changing anyways. In 5 years time you won't care your SSD is dead because it will be junk.
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+1

IMHO the best post in this thread.
 
I was getting real paranoid when i first started reading this thread.

Im building a new PC and the only HD is a sammy 125GB SSD (PB22-J 128GB), so just to be clear i can install W7 and the OS and the SSD will take care of themselves and i don't need to worry about TRIM and stuff.
 
jimmy321 said:
I was getting real paranoid when i first started reading this thread.

Im building a new PC and the only HD is a sammy 125GB SSD (PB22-J 128GB), so just to be clear i can install W7 and the OS and the SSD will take care of themselves and i don't need to worry about TRIM and stuff.
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Most Samsung PB22-J's have GC which cleans the drive during idle periods (independent of the OS). AFAIK Samsung have still not provided a way for users to update firmware to support TRIM.

So no, nothing to worry about just install it as you would a normal SATA HD, under AHCI mode if your motherboard supports it, and you might want to check that defrag is disabled when done. Otherwise just enjoy :)
 
Nate Silvers said:
I won't be applying any of these tweaks but thanks for taking the time to write them. The way I see it is you buy an SSD to speed up your OS, so why move every OS related command to a mechanical HDD? You want it all on the SSD or you won't notice the perfomance advantage. TRIM will sort out the slow down from use. Also your before and after benchmark is insignificant of a true result due to the nature of SSD benchmark results always changing anyways. In 5 years time you won't care your SSD is dead because it will be junk.
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The thing of it is, most temp files really don't need to be on an SSD, the things that speed up your system, boot if you really care about a few seconds quicker, well that will happen with your OS on the SSD, your most used most important games on the SSD will give you faster loads and possible less chugging in certain games with lots of texture loading(mmo's maybe?) and instant opening of most apps you have installed on the drive.

Having cache files for the internet on the OS, might be making tonnes of writes for cache for sites you'll never visit again, for sites you visit regularly but update regularly so cache isn't do that much and for a few other reasons. Frankly I can't see any speed difference with cache on a mechanical hdd, I keep one mechanical hdd on most of the time for downloading to and for any games I don't play that often or really don't have any performance issues to speak of anyway. Most games really don't load much quicker at all or offer any benefit being on an SSD, if you have temp files on a backup drive that you let powerdown often then obviously any app using it now and then will need to wait for it too spin up, if not its not a big deal.

MS's suggestion that theres not a better place for pagefile than on an SSD is accurate, because they are faster, the question is, does much of anything you use really use or need the pagefile? Thats the problem, most problems dump junk data they probably won't need in pagefile, most programs work fine and better without it with everything stored in memory which is FAR faster. Its a catch 22, really windows should be set to work perfectly without a page file storing everything you normally would still in memory. Unfortunately its made so people with 512mb memory, can still run an app that needs 8gb memory so can offload it into pagefile. I really can't be bothered moving pagefile anymore, its too much effort and can create problems of its own, I'd disable it but the odd rare app flips out without it available.

For someone with 512mb of mem trying to run Crysis at uber high settings, pagefile being massive and on an SSD over a mechanical drive will make a humongous difference, performance will still be worse by far than a system with 8-12gb memory and pagefile on a mechanical hdd, which will be almost identical to the same system with the pagefile on the SSD.

Remember the massive massive majority of Win 7 systems will be 2 and 4gb machines sold to mums who use e-mail and people who surf the net and the like, MS advice will always be broad and generalised to give the best performance for everyone. Just because they say it will be best on an SSD, doesn't mean for those with plenty of mem it will be slower disabled or on a different drive.

Its pretty simple though, smack your pagefile on another drive for a few days, see if you can notice any difference at all.

Personally I do want to save as many writes as possible, because while I'm sure I'll have 1-2 new sdd's, heck, even next year, the longer these last the more backup systems, mum's laptops, brothers gaming comps they'll go in and be useful for. The difficulty being whats worthwhile, what helps, what doesn't and the fact very little testing/calculating/reviewing has been done in this area. Does IE/ff/pagefile/os temp files make 20gb of data writes a day and 4 million separate writes and 1million erase cycles, or does it in total do 1gb of data, and 20 writes, 3 erase cycles. Its probably somewhere inbetween, but where and do any specific apps overuse writes, temp files or constantly write when not necessary, no one really knows.
 
Not really, just make sure AHCI is enabled and ensure Windows has disabled scheduled defrag on the drive, other than that there's no special treatment for SSD's.
 
For the amount of things you're doing, it seems pointless for a very little speed increase. I left most things at default, except for hibernation since I don't need that (turning on and off the PC is very quick now anyway).

Pagefiling doesn't seem to affect the lifespan of the SSD much either nowadays, so I tend to leave it on. Plus some of the software I'm using refuses to load if pagefiling is diabled, and I don't want to shove it to my slower 5400rpm drive...

If I feel paranoid however, I can just create a RAMdisk to use for cache instead.

EDIT: Sigh... just saw this thread was made in 2009... back from the dead I see :rolleyes: Well, most of it isn't relevent anymore, SSD technology has improved a lot these days. Just set AHCI in the BIOS and you're pretty much set.
 
Some of them are still ok for improving the lifespan and it's worth checking that Win7 has made the correct changes (defrag etc...)


Orcvader said:
Pagefiling doesn't seem to affect the lifespan of the SSD much either nowadays, so I tend to leave it on. Plus some of the software I'm using refuses to load if pagefiling is diabled, and I don't want to shove it to my slower 5400rpm drive...

If I feel paranoid however, I can just create a RAMdisk to use for cache instead.
Click to expand...

How much RAM do you have? I've got a RAMDisk with my pagefile on it to overcome this very problem :) I also have all my temp/cache there.
 
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