SSD Tweaks Ver 1.2

[Schwanke78]

CAUTION: Use these tweaks at your own discretion. Not all operating systems will need ALL of these tweaks. For example, Windows 7 is optimized for SSDs, so some of these features will already be changed as Win 7 recognizes an SSD is being used. If you are unsure of what these settings do, simply don't use them. Win 7 is your friend.

SSD Cheat Sheet Ver. 1.2:

Laptop BIO's Reset: Remove the battery and unplug the AC adapter from the laptop then hold down the power button for at least 30 seconds.

Enable Wiper/Trim for NVIDIA Nforce Boards: Go to \My Computer\\Properties\\Device Manager\\IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers\\NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller\ go ahead and Update Driver Software. Then click on ?Browse My Computer for Driver Software?, Choose ?Let Me Pick from a List of Device Drivers on My Computer? and pick 'Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller' and hit ok.

Hibernation disable: Start new search then type and then hit regedit.exe in the search results list. At the command prompt, type ?powercfg.exe -h off?, and then press enter, then type exit and enter.

Write-cache enabled: Right click on the SSD Properties in device manager, go to policies and enable ?Write Caching on The Disk?. There is no need for the quick removal option as the SSD will never be removed from the computer checked and enable ?Advanced Performance?.

Temporary Internet Folder: Under Internet Explorer go to the ?Tools?, then to which will bring up Internet Options, then go to Browser History and hit ?Settings?, Go to Current Location and hit ?Move Folder? then proceed to move the folder to your alternate location, IE secondary Drive or a None SSD or OS drive.

Defrag disabled: Right click on the SSD drive \Properties\\Tools\\Defragment\ and un-check ?Schedule Defragment This Drive?.

Boot Defrag disable: Start add search entry under Run then type and then hit regedit.exe. Go to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\ SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Dfrg\\BootOptimizeFunction\\E nable\ modify then type N and click OK.

System Restore disabled: Right click \My Computer\\Properties\\Advanced System Settings\\System Protection Tab\ and un-check C drive and follow on screen instructions.

Search Indexing disabled: \Start\\Control Panel\\Administrative Tools\\Services\ then scroll down to ?Windows Search? and right click\ properties and change startup type to disabled.

Drive Indexing disabled: For both ?SSD and RAM Drives? My Computer then right-click on the SSD drive properties and un-check ?Drive Indexing?. Follow the small wizard guide and wait for it to finish.

Superfetch disabled: Start new search entry under Run, then type and then hit regedit.exe. Go to \Hkey_local_machine\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Co ntrol\\Session Manager\\Memory Management\\PrefetchParameters then right click EnableSuperfetch. Hit modify and change 3 to 0 and hit OK, Also this can be done through \Start\\Control Panel\\Administrative Tools\\Services, then scroll down to superfetch and make sure it?s "disabled" on startup.

Prefetch disabled: Start new search entry under Run, then type and then hit regedit.exe. Go to Hkey_local_machine\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Con trol\\Session Manager\\Memory Management\\PrefetchParameters then right click Enableprefetcher then hit modify and change 3 to 0 and hit OK.

Pagefile disabled: Right click \My Computer\\Properties\\Advanced System Settings\\Advanced Tab\\Performance\\Settings\\Advanced Tab\\Virtual Memory\ and then hit change, un-check "Automatically Manage Paging File for all Drives" then check "No Paging File" and hit set.

Moving the Pagefile: Go to ?System Properties?. Click ?Advanced System Settings? there on settings under ?Performance?. Hit the ?Change? button under ?Virtual Memory?. The Virtual Memory window opens and it will display all drive partitions on top and the size of their paging files. Select your Solid State Drive and check the ?No Paging File? entry. Click the Set button to set the new preferences. Now select another hard drive and assign the pagefile to that drive if you have more than two drives

Move the ?Temp and Tmp? files: Go to \My Computer\\Properties\\Advanced\\Environment Variables\, then highlight the "temp or tmp" depending on which one you?re working on, pick the variable, click edit, and Change the path to another hard drive if they are located on the Solid State with the ?Variable Value Field?.

PIO Mode: Make sure the SSD is not running in PIO mode. To verify that go into the Device Manager, open IDE ATA / ATAPI controllers and double-click all Primary and Secondary IDE Channels. Verify that there are no signs of PIO Mode under the Current Transfer Mode entry in Advanced Settings. It should list Ultra DMA Mode 5 by default on there.

Symbolic Linking: Type "mklink? in command line to allow placing some additional folders on the any other array. Sample ?mklink /J D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv E:\Games\sid meier's civilization iv?

Example:
C:\Windows\Temp
C:\Users\(Username)\AppData\Local\Temp

Example that is linked:
J D:\Windows \ Temp E:\Temp
J D:\ Users\(Username)\AppData\Local\Temp E:\AppData\Local\Temp

[razzlejon]

thanks, for the tweaks. If I may add another tweak pertaining to the Firefox broswer, since it's the one I mostly use:

FIREFOX CACHE TWEAK

You will need to add a single command string into firefox to make it store temporary internet files and all cache data to the another drive/location.

1. Open up firefox. In the address bar type about:config
2. Click the “I’ll be careful I promise” button.
3. Right click anywhere in the values in the lower portion of the screen and choose NEW>STRING.
4. into the “Preference name” field, type in

browser.cache.disk.parent_directory

5. Click NEXT.
6. In the string value, type in

D:

(where "D:" is the example representing the partition/location you want to move the cache to)

7. Click Ok
8. Close Firefox to save settings

The next time you open Firefox, a folder named "cache" will be created at the location you specified. (you must have "show hidden files and folders" enabled in Folder Options to view the hidden cache folder.)

I found one bug though. When you have to reinstall Firefox like when upgrading to a newer version, it doesn't keep this setting properly. You have to uninstall Firefox, delete the cache folder, install Firefox and follow steps 1 through 8 to get to work properly again.

[GSKILL TECH]

Very nice. Deserves to be stuck. =) Thank you Schwanke78

GSKILL SUPPORT

[ptah]

Hibernation disable: Start new search entry under Run, then type and then hit regedit.exe in the search results list. At the command prompt, type ?powercfg.exe -h off?, and then press enter, then type exit and enter.

i think i detected a slight mistake with this one. in the search entry you type "cmd" and run as administrator. regedit is not needed, totally irrelevant. think you accidentally added this on. the next part's okay though

[Schwanke78]

Guess I did add an extra step that was not necessary, thanks for the feedback ptah will I fix it. Everyone else thanks for the props I hope these tip can help anyone out and as always good to have rock solid G.Skill products pushing the PC market to the next edge!

[deephouse]

Hello there, let me just make sure I'm understanding this right.

You can speed up the drive by disabling and moving the pagefile to a different drive?

I am running Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise, and I plan on running Ableton 8 music production software also.
Would this still apply?

Thanks for your time, it's been a while since I've treated myself to a new computer build, trying to get up to speed as fast as i can but there's so much out there!

BC

[TwoCables]

Hello there, let me just make sure I'm understanding this right.

You can speed up the drive by disabling and moving the pagefile to a different drive?

I am running Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise, and I plan on running Ableton 8 music production software also.
Would this still apply?

Thanks for your time, it's been a while since I've treated myself to a new computer build, trying to get up to speed as fast as i can but there's so much out there!

BC

It's more about trying to keep the Writes on the SSD to a minimum. That's why you should either disable the Page File (that is, if you have enough physical memory, like 2GB or more), or move it to a hard drive instead of the SSD. It's also why the temporary files are moved as well as saved games.

Or you can think of it as trying to maintain the highest level of control over when any writing is done to the SSD. I've seen people say that once the capacity of the SSD begins to exceed 50% full, the performance takes a noticeable hit. But I forgot if that's just in benchmarks, or if that's in real-world performance.

I have Windows 7 x64 build 7100 on the 64GB Falcon. I did all of the tweaks in this thread, but I am unable to use wiper.exe for some reason. To my slight surprise, I haven't noticed a decrease in performance yet in benchmarks nor have I felt a decrease in performance. I'm guessing and hoping that it's because I'm doing everything right. I'm also hoping that partly thanks to Windows 7.

Now, I don't know if the following applies, but I have also utilized Black Viper's website to tweak Windows 7 even more. Here's that page:

http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm

You'll see a table a little further down the page. I just clicked on each service name in the far-left column and read anything he personally wrote about it in the "Additional Information" so that I could make up my own mind on what to do with the service. I did that for each of them, but where he didn't write anything down, I just gave it my best judgment call using Microsoft's description.

After doing that, I ended up getting my processes down to 27-28 with nothing else open but Task Manager. So when I have nothing open at all, it's 26-27 processes.

Ultimately, I recommend using either two or more SSDs, or combining the SSD with a high performance hard drive such as the Western Digital Caviar Black, or the faster VelociRaptor. The reason is because you can put all of your "My Documents" (or "Documents", rather) on the hard drive. This would include saved games, setup files, driver setup files, and anything else that's just storage that you would likely keep adding to once in a while. So, you would tell certain programs to keep all of your data on the hard drive instead of the SSD. That way you can further minimize the amount of writes to the SSD.

I currently have a 150 GB VelociRaptor as my storage drive, and I am planning on replacing it with either two 64GB SSDs, or one 128 GB, depending on whether or not this apparent issue with 128 GB SSDs gets fixed. My BIOS runs through the POST much quicker without any hard drives attached, and quite naturally, the entire system is just faster in general. After all, there are no mechanical, relatively-lethargic moving parts! So, I absolutely cannot wait to do that.

[deephouse]

Thanks so much for the detailed info! I'm starting to go through all these threads now (tedious) but i'm slowly getting the idea.

thanks for the help,
BC

[TwoCables]

Thanks so much for the detailed info! I'm starting to go through all these threads now (tedious) but i'm slowly getting the idea.

thanks for the help,
BC

It's a pleasure! And you're very welcome.

[djmorgan]

There is another service that continualy writes to the primary and it's called ReadyBoot not to be confused with ReadyBoost.
Even though prefetch and superfetch are turned off this service will continue to run, it is designed to optimise the boot up process but with an SSD this may not be needed.

Here's how to disable ReadyBoot (not readyboost) in Windows Vista. Launch the "Reliability and Performance Monitor" program (via Vista's Administrative Tools or via any of the other routes to launch this program). 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.

According to Microsoft, ReadyBoot decreases boot time by up to 20%. The price paid is it causes annoying grinding on the hard disk at times when the OS thinks the computer is idle.

[sirius69]

annoying grinding with a SSD ? yeah sure.. I'd forget about this readyboot thing, if you can ever find it in win 7 anyway... I don't think that we've bought a SSD to disable everything that could write on it...

Moving page files, temp files is fine but I would not disable everything that it said up there.

anyway since we have lost so much speed with this latest firmware , you might not have to do all of those tuneup tricks. Keep the Search Indexing, Drive Indexing to make the windows search viable. After re-enabling some services, nothing has changed about with my SSD speed and if it fail because it simply do what is supposed to do, the garbage bin is not far away..

after all, as Schwanke78 said : always good to have rock solid G.Skill products pushing the PC market to the next edge!

so if it's rock solid, why preventing everything from writing to it !

[TwoCables]

annoying grinding with a SSD ? yeah sure.. I'd forget about this readyboot thing, if you can ever find it in win 7 anyway... I don't think that we've bought a SSD to disable everything that could write on it...

Moving page files, temp files is fine but I would not disable everything that it said up there.

anyway since we have lost so much speed with this latest firmware , you might not have to do all of those tuneup tricks. Keep the Search Indexing, Drive Indexing to make the windows search viable. After re-enabling some services, nothing has changed about with my SSD speed and if it fail because it simply do what is supposed to do, the garbage bin is not far away..

after all, as Schwanke78 said : always good to have rock solid G.Skill products pushing the PC market to the next edge!

so if it's rock solid, why preventing everything from writing to it !

The purpose of these tweaks isn't to make an immediate difference. It's actually to help reduce performance degradation over time. So, to even see the differences would require 2 different and identical machines doing exactly the same thing every day. But one system would be using these tweaks while the other would not After a few months, a benchmark would be done to compare the results in order to see if these tweaks were of any benefit.

So, I made these tweaks anyway even though I have 1571 and can just run Wiper regularly.

[Masika]

This guide suggests to activate writing cache... all other guides suggest deactivating.

What is the correct one?

[ace-a-rue]

i am leaving the the write caching enable for now.

[BrownChiLD]

Are all these tweaks also good for Phoenix / SandForce based drives?