For many users, replacement hard drive An SSD is the most effective PC upgrade. In terms of reading information, an SSD drive is many times faster, therefore, the performance of the computer significantly increases. But they have one drawback - the limitation on the number of rewrite cycles, characteristic of flash drives.

SSD setup under Windows 7 is necessary because you need to minimize unnecessary write cycles to flash memory cells in order to increase the life of the solid-state drive.

If you have Windows 10 installed, then it already automatically detects SSD drives and makes adjustments to their operation to achieve maximum performance. Therefore, on Windows 10, setting up an ssd is not so important and is done at the level operating system.

During the defragmentation process, logically interconnected data blocks that are scattered throughout the media are arranged in a single sequence. SSD drives do not need to be defragmented. If for HDD hard drives defragmentation can increase efficiency in reading speed and thereby speed up the PC, then in the case of SSDs this process can only do harm.

Disabling Perfetch and SuperFetch

The Perfetch folder is designed to speed things up Windows boot and launching programs. The folder contains information about frequently used programs on the computer and stores them in the initial (system) part of the hard drive.

The SuperFetch service monitors programs that you frequently use and loads them into random access memory (RAM) when you start your computer, so they start faster when accessed. Thus, when you run a program, the computer begins to read its files faster from RAM than from the hard drive.

But considering high speed reading solid-state drives, these functions are superfluous.

To disable them, go to the editor Windows registry with administrator rights.

In the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” directory, find the “SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/SessionManager/MemoryManagement/PrefetchParameters” key and change the “Enable Prefetcher” and “Enable Superfetch” values ​​to “0”.

Disabling ReadyBoot

ReadyBoost speeds up Windows operation and work together with the SuperFetch service. While SuperFetch loads program files into random access memory (RAM), ReadyBoost uses the flash drive as a cache for the slow hard drive.

To disable ReadyBoost you need to do the following:

• Start;
• Control Panel;
• System and security;
• Administrative tools;
• Performance Monitor;
• On the left side, expand the Data Collector Groups section and select Startup Event Tracking Sessions;
• double click on “ReadyBoost”;
• Tracking sessions;
• Uncheck the box next to “Enabled”.

Disabling or moving the paging file to the HDD

The page file increases the size of your computer's cache. In the case when there is not enough physical RAM memory, the operating system Windows system moves some data out of RAM and thus prevents errors software or systems.

If the computer is equipped with a small SSD and a traditional HDD, then the page file can be placed on the SSD. If you have Windows x64 installed, the page file can be disabled.

TRIM function

In the Windows 7 operating system, it is important to check whether the TRIM function is enabled. Note that this function informs the SSD drive which area on the disk is no longer in use and can be cleaned. If the feature is disabled, it may reduce the performance of the SSD.

To check:

• go to the command line as administrator;
• enter the command “fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify”;
• if DisableDeleteNotify = 0 appears after execution, then the service is enabled.

Disabling sleep mode (hibernation)

The hibernation feature clearly reduces the time it takes for the Windows operating system to start from the hard drive. Compared to hard drives, SSD drives are much faster in terms of readout time, which makes the startup process much shorter. Therefore, hibernation mode in computers with SSD does not bring tangible benefits and can be disabled.

When entering sleep mode, all data from RAM is saved to hard drive in the hiberhil.sys file, which is quite a decent size. This is especially true for small SSDs; disabling sleep mode frees up valuable space on the SSD drive.

To disable, use the Win+R keys to launch a command prompt as administrator and type the command “powercfg -h off”.

AHCI mode

For full operation of the SSD drive, including using the TRIM function, you need to enable AHCI mode in the BIOS. If you simply change the mode, then after turning on the Windows boot process may be interrupted by an error (blue screen).

To fix:

• go to the Windows Registry Editor as an administrator;
• find the entry “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Msahci” or “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/lastorV”;
• Click twice on “Start” and change the value to “0”;
• restart your computer;
• change the mode in BIOS SATA controller on AHCI.

So, you got a brand new SSD. You installed the system on it, armed yourself with an optimization guide you found on the Internet, and after a couple of hours you did everything possible to... slow down your work in the system!

Don't believe me? Think about what makes for high performance. Advantages SSD speeds you can feel in three categories:

• system, for example, the speed of its loading and operation
• programs, including web surfing and working with documents, images and media files
• your actions, including disk navigation and copying/moving files

How myths are born

I'm pretty sure your SSD tuning measures negatively impacted at least one of these components. Later you will find out why this happened, but first about the reasons for such optimization.

If you read the inscription “buffalo” on the elephant’s cage...

There are plenty of guides and even tweakers online for optimizing SSDs. In fact, the same information is used everywhere, and:

• outdated, since it is aimed at saving disk space and reducing the number of rewrite cycles, which is irrelevant for modern SSDs in home PCs
• useless, because Windows itself takes care of what it offers to configure
• harmful, because it leads to a decrease in the speed of work - yours, programs and system

Look critical on your guide or tweaker and think about which items fit into one of these categories!

There is another problem - unsuccessful presentation of information, including incorrectly placed accents.

If you have a HDD along with an SSD, measure the speeds of both drives and keep the picture in mind. I will return to her, and more than once!

Special Notes for Dissenters

After publishing the material, I decided to specifically clarify several points so as not to repeat them regularly in the comments when responding to opponents.

In this article:

1. All myths are considered solely from the point of view of speeding up the system, programs and user. If a measure is declared useless or harmful, this means that it does not contribute in any way to speeding up work.
2. Reducing the volume of disk writes is not considered as an optimization measure due to the irrelevance of this approach. If this is your goal, myths 3 - 11 are for you, as is storing an SSD in a sideboard.
3. Using a RAM disk is not considered as it is not directly related to SSD optimization. If you have excess RAM, you can use a RAM disk regardless of the type of drive installed in your PC.
4. All recommendations are given with a wide audience in mind, i.e. to the majority users. When analyzing advice, keep in mind that they may not correspond to your tasks, work skills and ideas about the optimal and competent use of the operating system.

Now - let's go! :)

Myths

1. Disable SuperFetch, ReadyBoot and Prefetch

This advice: controversial, can reduce the speed of program launch, and also in Windows 10 - increase the amount of writing to the disk and reduce the overall performance of the OS if there is insufficient RAM

Speed ​​of launching programs from the hard drive

When each program is launched, the prefetcher checks for the presence of a trace (.pf file). If one is found, the prefetcher uses references to the MFT metadata file system to open everyone necessary files. It then calls a special memory manager function to asynchronously read from the trace data and code that is not in memory on at the moment. When a program is launched for the first time or the startup script has changed, the prefetcher writes new file trace (highlighted in the figure).

It is unlikely that SuperFetch is capable of speeding up the launch of programs from an SSD, but Microsoft does not disable the function, given the presence of hard drives in the system. If the SSD manufacturer's proprietary utility (such as Intel SSD Toolbox) recommends disabling SuperFetch, follow its advice. However, in this case, it is more than logical to keep all programs on the SSD, which will be discussed below.

Memory compression in Windows 10

This aspect is discussed in a separate article: The nuances of disabling the SysMain service in Windows 10. Earlier on this page there was a fragment from it published impromptu.

2. Disabling Windows Defragmenter

This tip: useless or harmful, may reduce disk performance

One of the functions of the CheckBootSpeed ​​utility is to check the status of the scheduled defragmentation job and the Task Scheduler service. Let's see how relevant these parameters are for the latest Microsoft OS installed on an SSD.

Windows 7

Windows 7 does not defragment SSDs, which is confirmed by the words of the developers in the blog.

Windows 7 will disable defragmentation for SSD drives. Since SSDs perform superior at random reads, defragmentation will not provide the same benefits that it does on a regular drive.

If you don't trust the developers, take a look at the event log. You won't find any entries there about defragmenting the SSD volume.

So, when the SSD is the only drive, the scheduled job simply doesn't run. And when the PC also has a HDD, disabling a task or scheduler deprives the hard drive of worthy optimization by a standard defragmenter.

Windows 8 and later

In Windows 8, the defragmenter has been replaced by the disk optimizer!

Optimizing hard drives, as before, comes down to defragmentation. Windows no longer ignores solid-state drives, but helps them by sending additional a set of TRIM commands for the entire volume at once. This happens according to a schedule as part of automatic maintenance, i.e. when you are not working on your PC.

Depending on the SSD controller, garbage collection may occur immediately upon receipt of the TRIM command, or it may be delayed until a period of inactivity. By disabling the disk optimizer or task scheduler, you reduce drive performance.

3. Disable or move the swap file

This tip: useless or harmful, reduces system speed when there is insufficient memory

The hardware configuration must be balanced. If you don't have much memory installed, you should add more, since an SSD only partially compensates for the lack of RAM, making swap times faster than a hard drive.

When you have enough memory, the page file is hardly used, i.e. This will not affect the life of the disk in any way. But many people still turn off paging - they say, let the system keep everything in memory, I said! As a result, the dispatcher Windows memory does not work in the most optimal mode (see #4).

As a last resort, the swap file is transferred to the hard drive. But if suddenly the memory is not enough, You will only benefit in performance by having pagefile.sys on the SSD!

IN: Do I need to place the page file on the SSD?

ABOUT: Yes. The main operations with the paging file are random writing of small volumes or sequential writing of large amounts of data. Both types of operations work fine on an SSD.

By analyzing telemetry focused on estimating writes and reads for the page file, we found that:

• reading from Pagefile.sys takes precedence over writing to pagefile.sys in a 40:1 ratio,
• read blocks for Pagefile.sys are usually quite small, 67% of them are less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% are less than 16 KB,
• The write blocks in Pagefile.sys are quite large, 62% of them are greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% are almost exactly 1 MB

Generally speaking, the typical page file usage patterns and SSD performance characteristics fit together very well, and it is the file that is highly recommended to be placed on the SSD.

But in practice, the desire to extend the life of an SSD at any cost is ineradicable. Here is a blog reader fretting over his SSD, transferring pagefile.sys to the hard drive, although he himself can even see with the naked eye that this reduces performance. By the way, my netbook cannot install more than 2 GB of memory, and with a solid-state drive it became much more comfortable than with a standard 5400 rpm HDD.

Finally, don't forget that completely disabling the pagefile will prevent you from diagnosing critical errors. The paging file size can be flexibly adjusted, so you always have a choice between disk space and productivity.

Question for backfill: What was my page file size when I took the task manager screenshot?

Special Note

On the Internet (including in the comments to this post) you can often come across the statement: “A swap file is not needed if you have installed N GB RAM". Depending on your imagination, N takes the value 8, 16 or 32. This statement does not make sense, since it does not take into account the tasks that are solved on a PC with a given amount of memory.

If you installed 32GB for yourself, and 4-8GB are used, then yes, you don’t need FP (but then it’s not clear why you bought 32GB RAM :). If you have purchased such an amount of memory in order to use it as much as possible in your tasks, then the FP will be useful to you.

4. Disable hibernation

This advice: vague and harmful for mobile PCs, may reduce battery life and speed of your work

I would formulate the advice like this:

• stationary PCs - shutdown is normal, because you might as well use sleep
• mobile PCs - turning off is not always advisable, especially when battery consumption is high during sleep

However, people have, are, and will continue to disable system protection regardless of the type of disk, it’s already in the blood! And no, I don't want to discuss this topic in the comments for the hundredth time :)

6. Disable Windows Search and/or Disk Indexing

This tip: useless, slows down your work speed

Sometimes this is argued by the fact that SSDs are so fast that the index will not significantly speed up the search. These people simply never really used real Windows search!

I believe that it makes no sense to deprive yourself of a useful tool that speeds up everyday tasks.

If you have fallen victim to any of these myths, tell me in the comments if I managed to convince you of their uselessness or harm and in what cases. If you disagree with my assessment of "optimization", explain what the benefits of these actions are.

You can mark fragments of text that interest you, which will be available via a unique link in the address bar of your browser.

About the author

Vadim, in recent days I have bought myself 4 SSDs to install on all my computers. Let's just say... life has changed :-)

I also thought for a long time whether to buy a laptop with an SSD or with hybrid drive, the second one won, I chose 340GB + 24 SSD. What was surprising was that the standard installation of Windows 8 was on a 5400 drive, but not an SSD. After suffering for a long time, I moved Windows 8 to an SSD and was a little freaked out, because... There is about 3GB left on the SSD. Knowing that over time the W8 would swell and it would be necessary to fight for space, I returned everything back, transferred the TEMP and Page file to the SSD, plus installed frequently launched programs.

Still, you just had to buy a laptop with an SSD and not worry about it. They gave me an SSD for NG and now I’ll stuff it into an old netbook, install W8 and be happy.

Thank you for the articles about SSDs, our entire department reads them.

Alexey

You, Vadim, have done an excellent job of going through SSD myths; we can hope that there will be fewer fans of SSD perversions now. I have Win8 on an SSD, it works just the way I installed it, I’m happy and I don’t bother myself with all sorts of optimizations whose output is questionable.

PS: Answer to the question: 1Gb.

• Alexey, thanks for your response. You can’t put your head down on everyone, but I’m not trying to :)

  The answer to the question is incorrect. How did you come to him?

madgrok

Before buying an SSD, I read a mountain of forums, benchmarks, etc. And I came to the conclusion that all the tweaks are in the firebox.
Why do people buy SSDs for themselves? Of course it would be faster! :) And most optimization tweaks basically negate all the performance gains, which is what Vadim wrote about.
I use my Vertex 4 256 GB as a regular disk for the system. I bought it sometime in the fall. Excellent flight, 100% health
Excellent article, I will recommend it to all my acquaintances and friends to read so that they don’t suffer. :)
And in general, thanks to the author for an excellent blog. I really like the fact that he tries to “disassemble the topic to its bones.”

Andrey

Vadim, at the end of the article there is a survey about the presence of SSDs on our computers, I think that this topic is still relevant - there are those who do not intend, at least in the near future, to acquire a solid-state drive for a number of reasons - someone does not see the point of installing it on an old one computer - saving for a new one, or as in the survey point - satisfied with the HDD, or like Pavel Nagaev - he thinks for a long time which to prefer...
What would you recommend? Is it worth moving the OS to an SSD to “increase system performance,” so to speak?

Andre

Hello Vadim, I think a lot of people are now looking at buying an SSD, and it would be very cool if you wrote an article on choosing an SSD!

Alexey Matashkin

Vadim, thanks for the article.
In my practice, I have never encountered these myths, I only heard some advice separately, so I read it with pleasure.

I don’t quite fit into the survey :) The main PC is not a home PC, and it has an SSD. But at home, the usual is enough for now.

There is nothing to add regarding questions, because I don’t use tweaks, all installed SSDs work normally with the system.
Although, important detail is updating the firmware on the disk. In my practice, there are 3 cases of serious failures that were resolved with firmware version updates.

Valentine

Pavel Nagaev,

Your 24 SSD was most likely designed for caching, which is why it is so small, maybe you needed to use it as a cache, in which case you will get the benefits of both media - capacity and speed. Vadim, do you have an article regarding hybrid rigid or combination HDD operation with SSD? I think many readers might be interested in such an article. I think the topic about 12 myths is very useful, as I have many friends who consider themselves experts, but make such mistakes and impose these mistakes ordinary users, thanks to a link to this article, it will be possible to convince them to make such mistakes

Vadims Podāns

Good and useful article.

Sergey

Yes, it’s really surprising people who buy SSDs to speed up work, but then transfer everything and turn it off and again lose performance.

MythBusters are in action! We had a great run through all these myths.

Alexey G

At first I fell for disabling hibernation, but then I realized that it was inconvenient.
I remove the 8.3 marks. Because I use new versions of the program, and I don’t need it)

From life: when I assemble a PC with an SSD, I transfer user files to the HDD. If the PC for unknown reasons (playful hands, viruses) starts to not boot, then if I’m nearby, I’ll restore the configured image installed system(thanks to the blog), but if a person calls another “master”, the first thing he will do is format the disk: (Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a smarter method in my city. So this is a forced need to preserve the user’s files.

Answer to the question: 2834MB?

Dima

Thanks Vadim.
As always, intelligibly and with a light sense of humor.
As I promised, I part with myths easily and see you off on your last journey. I'll turn everything back on.
Best regards, Dima.

PGKrok

I agree on all points, but I myself had to transfer the index files, some programs and personal photos and videos to the HDD, because... SSD - only 60 GB (I've already mastered it :))
For comparison (to the question of “keeping a picture in mind”)
Result CrystalDiskMarc (HDD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/HDD1301020_6347406_6812031.png
Result of CrystalDiskMarc (SSD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/OSZ3010201_4238885_6812055.png

SATA-3 SSD controller - SATA-6

Dawn

I bought a 60gb ssd, left only Windows 8 on it, program files, appdata, program data. The rest is on hdd.
Reason: growing too fast system partition, just look, the place will go to zero.
When purchasing, there was one goal: to speed up the cold boot of the system. That's what I achieved - 8 seconds.
Vadim, the article is excellent, thank you!

Ruby

About transferring TEMP and cache - I stupidly moved them to a gigabyte ramdisk - this is a real speed increase, incomparable with an SSD.

Denis Borisych

I’ve been working in IT for a long time and I still never cease to be amazed at woe to optimizers.

I've had an ssd in my home computer for about a year now and it's still going strong. 7 starts in 10 seconds, programs load quickly and easily without any optimizations. Well, maybe the folder of necessary and important documents is not on the ssd (its size is 500 GB). And in the “My Documents” folder there is usually a list of documents.

As a person very close to IT, sometimes I am not enthusiastic about MS innovations (the inability to use Explorer without a mouse alone is worth it). But I must objectively admit that in terms of optimizing the operation of the OS on an ssd and stability of operation, they are undoubtedly great.

Ruby

I would also move the search index, but in Windows blog they write that it is still retained in memory, so there is no point.

SuperFetch is needed in any case; it preloads files into RAM in advance, increasing speed and reducing the number of accesses to the drive.

Valery

Vadim, I read your articles quite regularly and often put the advice from them into practice.
Having bought an SSD (Intel 520 120GB), I also first read about all sorts of optimizations and even applied some, but now I left only the indexing transferred to the HDD and Intel’s recommendations for its drives, and this is where some of your advice and Intel’s recommendations diverge:
http://123foto.ru/pics/01-2013/42746566_1358157387.jpg
Who should I listen to?))

Alexey

Vadim Sterkin,

Came at random :-)
My paging file takes up 1 Gb per 16Gb of RAM (size selected by the system). Moreover, system monitor shows almost zero % load. I decided that 8Gb should have at least 1Gb.

Oleg

Hello Vadim. I always look forward to new articles from you, this article was VERY useful for me and for my friends. To my regret, my arguments and advice do not reach some friends, for some reason they trust more forums where they do not always write useful information.
I hope this article will convince you.

I'll be waiting for an article about choosing an SSD.
Thank you.

Georgiy

Thanks for the article.
To be honest, I don’t quite understand about Superfetch - what is the increase in performance on an SSD?

As for the size of the paging file, the answer seems to be this: the line allocated says 10.7 GB. The amount of RAM must be subtracted from this figure.

Alexander

I recently bought a Kingston Hiper X 3K 120GB SSD. I installed Seven sp1. I did not see any increase in download speed or program performance.
Previous configuration: Asus P5Q, 2 WD 500Gb Raid 0, DDR2 2 1GB each.
My conclusion: when connecting SSD to the “slow” Sata 3Gb/s port, the increase in system performance compared to that installed on stripping is insignificant. You will have to upgrade to a motherboard with Sata 6Gb/s and at least 8GB DDR3 memory.

GlooBus

Pavel Nagaev,

From those soldered onto laptop motherboards SSD drive 16-32 GB is of no use. The best thing in this case would be to take a laptop in a simple configuration with an HDD and do the upgrade yourself. I did just that, took an ASUS X301A with 2 GB of memory, 320 GB HDD and upgraded to 8 GB of memory and 128 GB SSD. The laptop worked completely differently! Loading the computer from pressing the button until the password entry window appears 6-7 seconds. I didn’t make any tweaks, except that I turned off indexing, because... I don't use search.

Alik

The other day I installed VERTEX 4 128Gb on it with Win 8, applied optimizers and after a week I realized that it was in vain, incl. will have to reinstall. And here is also a sensible article.

Michal

Vadim Sterkin,

I think this is due to the fact that most people simply have not yet had concrete practice in using SSDs like you have.
and there really are a lot of myths.
For example, I’m from the Republic of Uzbekistan, and we’ve only just got SSDs here.
I have no experience working with them yet. and very expensive too.
I read your article and realized that I had moved the swap file in vain.
Thanks for the article, I hope it’s not the last :)

An SSD is a device that has the same purpose as a hard drive, but in terms of its structure and operating principle it is very different from its counterpart. In particular, if the matter concerns Windows operation installed on an SSD should be properly optimized this device to significantly extend its service life.

SSD optimization for Windows

Let's assume you have already installed the Windows operating system, starting with version seven, on a brand new SSD. If not yet, you can follow the link below to learn a short guide that will allow you to perform this procedure correctly.

The main feature of a solid state drive is that it has a limited number of rewrite cycles. This means that as little data as possible on the disk should be erased and rewritten. First of all, we will take this point into account when optimizing the SSD for the Windows operating system.

Step 1: Checking TRIM Activity

TRIM is a special feature introduced in Windows 7 that finds unused areas and allows you to clear them for later recording. If this function is undesirable for HDDs, then in the case of SSDs it will extend the service life of the drive.

Step 2: Disable automatic defragmentation

The next point that can seriously affect the service life of a solid-state drive is automatic defragmentation. The fact is that defragmentation is a useful tool for hard drives. It optimizes records on the disk, which allows you to speed up work with the HDD. In the case of SSDs, the less information is overwritten, the better.

As a rule, if an SSD is installed on your computer, Windows automatically disables this procedure, however, you should still check if this is the case.

To do this, press the keyboard shortcut Win+R to open the “Run” window and enter the following command in it, followed by pressing the Enter key:

The disk optimization menu will be displayed on the screen, in which, by highlighting the item "Solid State Drive", in the lower area of ​​the window you should see the value "Off". If you see the item "On", click on the button to the right "Change settings".

Uncheck the “Run on a schedule (recommended)” option, and then save the settings.

Stage 3: Deactivate the page file

The paging file is a system file that allows you to make up for the lack of RAM when it is fully loaded.

The idea is that the page file takes over unused data from RAM to the hard drive (solid state drive). It becomes clear that with activity this file Information on a solid-state drive is regularly overwritten, which needs to be minimized.

Alternatively, you can completely deactivate the paging file, which will reduce the number of rewrite cycles on the solid-state drive, however, if several resource-intensive games or programs are running on the computer, RAM may end completely, which means the following message will be displayed on your screen:

Step 4: Disable Windows Hibernation

Hibernation is a popular mode for turning on a computer, in which, after finishing work, the computer turns off completely, but after turning on it continues from the same place where you left off. Thus, the user does not have to re-launch all programs, open files, etc.

To disable hibernation, run Command Prompt as an administrator (as described above), and then run the following command in it:

Powercfg -h off

From this moment on, hibernation will be disabled, and the file responsible for it will be deleted from the system.

Step 5: Disable File Indexing

The file indexing procedure allows you to quickly find files on your computer, but due to constant rewriting, it negatively affects the life of the SSD.

Step 6: Enable Record Caching

Activating the record caching function will benefit both the solid-state drive and the hard drive.

Step 7: Disabling Prefetch

Prefetch is a special technology for speeding up system loading, which is aimed at working with slow media. As you understand, for SSD this function useless.

1. Launch the Run window using the Win+R keys and enter the following command:

HKLM SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Session Manager Memory Management PrefetchParameters

Double click on the option "EnablePrefetcher" and set the value in it «0» . Save your changes.

These tips will help you reduce the number of SSD write cycles without affecting system performance. But even if you do not resort to the tips listed in the article, the solid-state drive will still for a long time delight you with our excellent work. If you know what other SSD optimization techniques exist, share them in the comments.

The developers of SSD technology guarantee high loading speeds and operation of the system software. As noted by programmers who are already using the new drives, they have not identified any features of installing Windows 7 on an SSD that could prevent an ordinary user from doing so.

Initially, the process is divided into two stages:

1. the first stage is setting up the media itself for Windows 7, which is easy to do using the SSD Mini Tweaker 2.1 utility;
2. The second stage is the direct transfer of the operating system itself to the new device. It should be noted that you should not try to use Windows versions below 7th, even the use of “XP” will not show any significant differences between its operation on an HDD or on an SSD.

Things to consider before installing Windows 7

Before proceeding directly to downloading and configuring the operating system, you must firstly disconnect all other storage drives, for example, HDD drives, check the firmware version of the SSD drive on the website of the manufacturer of the SSD drive and, if necessary, update it, then make changes using the BIOS into disk operation mode by moving from IDE mode to AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) mode.

Physical installation of a new drive can only cause difficulties in cases where it will be used on laptops, since most models have only one connector for connecting the drive to motherboard. A way out of the situation may be to use an HDD drive as external device, and place an SSD drive in its regular place.

A situation may also arise when there is no space in the computer case to connect 2.5-inch devices, in which case you should use a “2.5-inch to 3.5-inch” adapter, which is often included in the basic SSD drive kit .

After physically installing the new disk, open the BIOS, and sequentially go first to the “Advanced” menu tab, then to the “SATA Configuration” item and in it go to the “Sata mode selection” sub-item in which we mark the AHCI mode module.

After this, press F10, which saves all changes made.
The procedures described above are all you need to know and do before directly installing the OS.

OS installation

It is best to install Windows 7 not by transferring the system image from the HDD, but directly from installation disk, and disconnect the hard drive itself from the motherboard at the time of installing the OS.

Initially, you need to make sure that the physical installation and connection of the SSD drive to the SATA interface is done correctly and that the BIOS sees it and correctly identifies it. Required information are displayed in the “Information” menu item, where all connected devices are displayed.

Photo: Windows 7 Ultimate for SSD drive

After making sure that a new disk is present in the list of connected devices, go to the “Boot” section, which indicates the device (CD or DVD) from which the system will be loaded and installed.

The further installation process is completely similar to that carried out when working with a hard HDD drive and, apart from the increased speed of downloading and copying information, there are no differences. You must act in accordance with the prompts of the installation program.

After the installation is completed, you again need to enter the BIOS and switch the boot point from the CD (DVD) to the SSD device, from which Windows 7 will now be loaded on the computer.

Correct installation of the software will instantly affect the performance of your computer.

Photo: computer performance assessment

Important! Before starting the installation, it is necessary to confirm that the SSD drive is formatted with the NTFS file system (New Technology File System– developed by Microsoft Corporation for the NT line of OS).

It's best to do this in manual mode by entering the appropriate commands in the CMD line in the following sequence:

1. “Diskpart” - launches the Windows command interpreter;
2. “List disk” - displays a list of all connected storage media with detailed characteristics and data;
3. “Select disk X” - select the device to format, the “X” parameter is replaced by the letter designation of the SSD drive in the list above;
4. “Create partition primary align=1024” — creating an offset parameter;
5. “Active”—activate the section;
6. “Exit”—exit CMD mode.

Video: WINDOWS installation

Setting up the system on SSD

Initially, “Seven” was developed to interact with HDD drives, since although the SSD production technology was already known and proven, it was not intended to be widely used due to its too high cost.

In this regard, for the correct operation of all OS services, it is necessary to optimize Windows 7 so that its operations increase their performance and do not lead to the creation of internal conflicts when interacting with the SSD disk.

Adjustment of OS utilities is also necessary to increase the service life of a new disk, since the technology of solid-state drives itself is critical to frequent rewrites, which wears out the disk, which is structurally similar to a huge “flash drive”.

The optimization process is preceded by the procedure of having drivers loaded and enabled in the system to support AHCI mode and the TRIM command of the ATA interface is activated.

Important! The TRIM command optimizes the performance of solid-state drives by providing them with information about unused blocks by the system that can be used for recording. Full support for TRIM mode is provided only in Windows 7/8/Vista; it was not provided in earlier versions.

The presence of enabled AHCI controllers is displayed in the “Device Manager” on the “Control Panel” in the “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers” tab.

The status is checked and the TRIM mode is activated from the line of active commands (the sequence of pressing “START” - “Run” and entering the CMD command) but only if you have administrative access rights to the system.

The CDM command for checking the status is “fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify”.

After entering it, there are two possible answers:

TO TRIM enable command – “fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0”.

Now you can proceed directly to the procedure for optimizing the OS for the SSD, namely:

• the paging file is either moved to another disk or disabled;
• SSD caching and indexing processes are turned off;
• defragmentation of the SSD disk is prohibited;
• the TEMP folder is transferred to the HDD and hidden;
• function is disabled system recovery and hibernation.

Disable indexing

The information exchange speed of SSD devices is much higher than that of HDDs, for which Windows 7 was developed, so there is no need for indexing and caching. Disabling these two functions will only increase the reliability and safety of information in cases of computer power problems.

Indexing is disabled in the SSD disk properties tab by unchecking the option "Allow indexing for quick search» (Allow files to have contents indexed in addition to file properties).

Photo: “Allow indexing for quick search”

After clicking “Ok”, the computer may show resistance, but to do this, just click "Ignore All" in the drop-down window.

Defragmentation service

Windows 8 independently detects the media type and automatically disables the defragmentation function for the SSD drive, thereby increasing its service life by eliminating the need to repeatedly move file blocks, to which it is very sensitive.

In Windows 7, disabling is carried out by excluding the SSD drive from the list of drives for which this mode is configured.

Photo: setting an optimization schedule

Creating restore points

By deactivating the System Restore function, the user minimizes the number of accesses to the SSD device for writing and saves its space by prohibiting the creation of copy files.

Disabling occurs in the “Computer Properties” folder in the “System Configuration” tab, checking the “Disable protection system” option.

Optimization with SSD Mini Tweaker utility

"SSD Mini Tweaker" — useful utility with free distribution and a small amount of memory space. When you launch it, only one window appears in which all the settings described above are displayed, enabling or disabling them is necessary to optimize the OS for working together with the SSD drive.

Photo: “SSD Mini Tweaker” launch window

Just check the boxes next to the required functions and click on “Apply changes” and all actions within the Windows 7 OS will be automatically performed.

For a long time, the main component that “slows down” the performance of even the most sophisticated home computer, there were hard drives. The fact is that spindle HDDs at some point reached the limit of development in terms of performance. This was due to physical laws that did not allow the disk spindle to spin above a certain speed, which affected the data access time, as well as the writing and reading speed. The volume continued to grow, but the performance did not. The next generation of hard drives was SSD drives.

An SSD drive is a computer non-mechanical storage device based on memory chips. Simply put, now the hard drive is a large and very fast flash drive on which the operating system and user files are located.

Why is it needed? optimization SSD Windows 7 ?

Undoubtedly, the main advantage of an SSD drive is its writing and reading speed, but it also has disadvantages, such as a limited number of write cycles. This drawback is especially relevant for outdated versions of operating systems, which can “kill” the drive ahead of schedule without taking into account the specifics of working with it.
That is why it can be a significant moment optimizing Windows for SSD. This article is intended to help “extend the life” of your SSD drive by correctly configuring your computer’s operating system.

Setting up an SSD drive

The Windows 7 operating system is initially optimized for working with solid-state drives, but to increase reliability you should adhere to the following rules:

1. Use solid state SSD drive(for the operating system and programs) along with a classic HDD on a spindle. In this option you combine speed and reliability.

2. Before you start using the solid-state drive, be sure to go into the BIOS and set the ACHI mode.

3. From any other computer, go to the website of the SSD drive manufacturer and check for more recent device firmware. If possible, update the firmware.

4. When marking a disk during Windows installations Leave about 20% of the total disk space unallocated. As the SSD wears out, it will take clusters from this area.

Optimizing Windows 7 for SSD

1. Disable the system cache Prefetch and Superfetch. They will be of no use when using a solid-state HDD. Most likely, Windows 7 will disable Prefetch on its own, but we will definitely check this. How:

Open the registry editor (Start - enter “regedit” in the search bar)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management -> PrefetchParameters
Install - EnablePrefetcher = dword:00000000

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management -> PrefetchParameters
Install - EnableSuperfetch = dword:0000000

2. You must disable automatic file defragmentation. It also makes no sense now. She will only cut in vain SSD resource drive.

Start - in the search bar enter - Defragmentation. Click on the “Set up schedule” button. Uncheck the “Run as scheduled” checkbox.

3. If you have a 64-bit operating system and a memory capacity of 8GB or more, then it makes sense to disable the page file.
Computer -> Properties -> Additional options systems -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual memory-> Change. Install - Without swap file

4. Change the Memory Management parameter:
Open the registry editor Start-Run->regedit

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management
Set - DisablePagingExecutive = dword:00000001

5. SSD optimization may also include disabling file journaling NTFS systems:
Start – enter –cmd in the search bar – click on the program icon with the RIGHT mouse button – Run as administrator.
In the window command line enter: fsutil usn deletejournal /D C: - example for drive C:

6. Disable sleep mode. The system will already boot very quickly and there will be no need for sleep mode.
In already open window From the command line, enter - powercfg –h off and press ENTER.

7. Disable indexing for the SSD disk:
Start-Computer-click on system disk right click and select properties - uncheck the option “Allow the contents of files on this drive to be indexed in addition to file properties”

8. Transfer temporary TEMP folders from SSD to HDD.
Open Computer – (right mouse button) Properties - Advanced system settings - Advanced - Environment variables.
We enter a new address for the TEMP and TMP environment variables, placing them on the second hard drive.

9. Finally, all that remains is to transfer the user’s folders (Documents, Videos, Downloads, etc.) from the SSD to the HDD.
We create a user folder on the HDD in advance, in which user libraries will now be stored.
We right-click on each folder whose location we want to change. On the Location tab, click the “Move” button. Move it to the HDD into the newly created folder.