First SSD install tomorrow, can someone clear the air on some info?

Seth Starnes

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Jan 20, 2014
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First of all, here are my specs:
PNY XLR8 PRO SSD9SC240GCDA-RB 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3P AM3+/AM3 AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
(just in case its pertinent to anything) AMD FX-9370 Vishera 4.4GHz Socket AM3+ 220W Eight-Core Desktop Processor - Black Edition
I also have (dont remember model or brand) 16 GB of ddr3 SDRAM 1333
And i will be using two mechanical hard drives along with my SSG.

My goals: Install fresh windows 7 onto SSD along with 1 or 2 of my most commonly played video games. Nothing more will be used on the SSD. This should help with minimizing rewrites.

So i have been reading thread after thread trying to figure out a best practice for my SSD. Here are the most common suggestions (mostly from back in the start of

A lot of debate it seems between turning off file indexing. Some say its a waste to keep it on, other say its really smart on how it handles information so its better to keep it on. If i am installing games on mechanical drives, does that matter? Should i turn this on or off?

Like wise, I am to turn off hibernate i assume because there is no difference between hiberante and just turning on and off the PC?

Turn off Defrag, true or false? It makes a lot of sense to me why this is a smart thing to do. But i want to make sure. TRIM command is supposed to help on this front for an SSD. I dont really even know what TRIM does.

Also when i partition windows, if my SDD is 240 GB should i only partition 200 and leave 40 unused for the extra... stuff that it does or is that not needed now days on SSDs?

Lastly should i disable Prefatch, and Superfetch?

Any help is very much appreciated as i am 100% new to SSD. I dont know if the one i has is a good one or not, its what i could afford and had good reviews so i want to keep it working for as long as possible.

Thank you.
 
Solution
#1: DEFRAG MUST BE OFF. This should happen automatically on W7. Don't fall for the write nazism on the internet, but the fact is defrag and how it works is both irrelevant with an SSD and highly detrimental to its life.

on a spinning platter, the OS needs to afford some space for files written to grow, so they get spaced out over time. When you defrag, it moves this data to be closer together since the file sizes are probably more finalized at that point. For an SSD however, with how it splits items up, there's no extra lag associated with it - and because of how the blocks work, it results in a LOT of writes to the drive. Never, ever, ever, ever defrag an SSD.

Defrag is used on Mech drives because it decreases the physical space you...
#1: DEFRAG MUST BE OFF. This should happen automatically on W7. Don't fall for the write nazism on the internet, but the fact is defrag and how it works is both irrelevant with an SSD and highly detrimental to its life.

on a spinning platter, the OS needs to afford some space for files written to grow, so they get spaced out over time. When you defrag, it moves this data to be closer together since the file sizes are probably more finalized at that point. For an SSD however, with how it splits items up, there's no extra lag associated with it - and because of how the blocks work, it results in a LOT of writes to the drive. Never, ever, ever, ever defrag an SSD.

Defrag is used on Mech drives because it decreases the physical space you need to move to get to a file. SSD's don't really have this "physical space" thing in the first place.

#2: Ensure TRIM is enabled: cmd --> fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify (==0 is good, ==1 is bad)
#3: You might as well turn Pre/superfetch off. On an SSD they're not really that useful.

TRIM lets the SSD get rid of unused data immediately; if it weren't, the drive performance would decrease dramatically. This is the issue many 2012 Nexus 7s had. If you google "What is TRIM and why do I need it" there's a good explanation. Basically, it's because on an HDD it's easier to only delete a file when you come to it, while on an SSD, it's better to delete it in advance for faster writing later.

http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/solid-state-drive-ssd-tweaks-for-windows-7/552.html

Windows 7 does a lot of the lifting for you in terms of SSD optimization, but you should consider the above.
One other piece of info to google before hand is SSD Sata to ACHI (I can't remember the exact instructions, but this should mention it)

Most of all, avoid writes if you can. It doesn't do any favours - but that said, there have been numerous tests of people writing over 80TB to a SSD without it conking out. They're quite durable and therefore set your system up how you like it - the dictates of the SSD aren't so relevant.

I did move my browser cache off, but that's a matter of preference.

I've got two in my computer. 120GB C: and 240GB Games. My opinion is an SSD is only really useful for system - games are nice and load a bit faster, but they fill up the drive crazy fast and honestly, is a minute worth $210? With hindsight, I'd keep a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD for other stuff. Adjust amounts to preference.
 
Solution

gaborbarla

Distinguished
I use the following settings: AHCI, Indexing On, Defrag Off, One partition, Readyboost On, Superfetch off, Swap/hibernation file on SSD, Program files, windows on SSD.

It doesnt really matter if you enable superfetch, it is something that the intel software did for me, but at home on my ssd I keep it on, with 16gb of ram it is good to have it on I think, but I would not partition my SSD at all. Keep it as one disk, SSDs dont get fragmented, but can deteriorate in speed if your drive runs out of space. Trim does its thing on its own, don't worry. If PNY has optimisation software for the SSD it might run it about once a week. Hibernate is good to have on. When you put your PC into sleep (not shutdown) it hibernates very fast and even if the power goes out, it will go back to the state that it was in using the hibernate file.

Gabor
 

Ronaldspiers

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Sep 25, 2013
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Hi, sorry to semi-hijack the thread. Is the information you are giving exclusive to if you are installing the OS on an SSD?
I have just ordered my first SSD. Crucial M500 240GB. I am pretty much only going to be using it for installing games until I build my new Rig. Will I need to follow all these steps too?
 


Thread hijacking isn't nice :(

At any rate, yes. This advice is applicable across the board.

@Original poster: One other thing I forgot - for smoothest results, boot the first time in SATA (once you've loaded your OS to the drive), change the AHCI registry key (google how) to on, and then go back into your bios and switch the input on that connection to AHCI.

I don't recall if I've had problems without doing that, but I've done it and no difficulties, so it must be useful.