Regarding fresh windows installation on SSD (First time user)

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wong93

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Nov 2, 2012
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1) Do I need to change from IDE>AHCI before installing my Windows 10?
a) Will it make a difference doing it after/before?
b) Will my SSD performance be severely affected if I do not use AHCI?
c) Is AHCI a MUST so that SSD can use TRIM mode?

2) Is TRIM enabled in Windows 10 Pro by default? Or do I need to enable it myself?

3) What are some other things I have to do with my SSD once I installed Windows to make sure it's always on peak performance? Apart from doing these
- Disable Index
- Disable Drive Defragmentation
- Disable Pagefile

Thanks!
 
Solution
USAFRet


You can if you want. It will just make accessing the pagefile slower.

People want to move the pagefile off the SSD for 2 reasons:
1. To save space. If you have a 120GB (or smaller) drive, having a 10GB pagefile is a huge waste of space.
Hence just turning it down to 1GB. That's why I did it like that those many years ago. Even though I now have a 500GB SSD for the boot drive, I left the pagefile at 1GB min/max.
Zero performance impact.

2. To prevent too many write cycles to the SSD
This is no longer a concern. Unless you are using it to host a huge database, with thousands of transactions per minute...
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Jul 31, 2014
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Hey there.

1) Yes, you should change the SATA mode to AHCI before you install Windows. Doing it afterwards is possible, but you'll have to go and edit the registry and something might get messed up.
You can use IDE mode and you might not see a huge difference in terms of performance, but the SSDs work best on AHCI.
On the contrary to the popular belief, you can enable TRIM with IDE mode as well as long as the OS supports it.
Connect the SSD and disconnect all other drives from the motherboard and keep them disconnected until after you're finished with the Windows installation process. This is necessary, because sometimes some of the system files or partitions might get written on one of the secondary drives and this could cause issues.

2) Yes, it should be enabled by default.

3) Check out the suggestions from this article: https://www.maketecheasier.com/12-things-you-must-do-when-running-a-solid-state-drive-in-windows-7/ (even though it says Win 7, those options are still viable for the newer versions as well).

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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3) Pagefile - Don't disable it.
If you have sufficient RAM, just turn it down. I have 16GB RAM, and the pagefile set to 1GB min/max.

Some few operation do rely on it actually being there, rather than no pagefile at all.
It will not affect the lifespan of the SSD.
 
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wong93

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Thank you for such detailed info!





I see, what about setting my secondary drive (HDD) as page file? and removing my OS drive(ssd) page file?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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You can if you want. It will just make accessing the pagefile slower.

People want to move the pagefile off the SSD for 2 reasons:
1. To save space. If you have a 120GB (or smaller) drive, having a 10GB pagefile is a huge waste of space.
Hence just turning it down to 1GB. That's why I did it like that those many years ago. Even though I now have a 500GB SSD for the boot drive, I left the pagefile at 1GB min/max.
Zero performance impact.

2. To prevent too many write cycles to the SSD
This is no longer a concern. Unless you are using it to host a huge database, with thousands of transactions per minute, current consumer grade SSD's will not die from too many writes.
In everyday use (your OS drive), it will become obsolete due to size long before it wears out from too many writes.
 
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