Hard Drive Optimization Tips and Tricks

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Optimize your Hard Drive or SSD with these tips and apps!

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28 Comments Comment from the forums
  • nukemaster
    While I have seem many of theses partitioning tweaks. I have never gone that overboard.

    For single drive systems

    c:\
    d:\

    For multi drive

    Drive1(fastest) Windows
    Drive2(Slower) Files
    Drive3(depends on work load) Image/Video editing input (output if smaller can do to drive 2 or add another drive if you need more speed)

    With SSD's

    SSD1 Windows
    SSD2 Games :)
    SSD3 Win8
    HDD (Slow) Files+Docs+Cache+any other constant writes.

    As always

    External slow drive. Backup.
    Reply
  • silverblue
    As an addendum to the pagefile tips, it not only benefits having one on a separate HD, but I've heard that putting it right at the start of said drive maximises access speed.
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  • CaedenV
    With Win8's 'shut down' option really being hibernate in disguise I kinda wonder if you can turn off the hibernate feature at all, or if it would make shutdown act like a traditional shutdown option. Personally I only ever sleep or reset during day-to-day use, and only shutdown when making hardware changes.

    @article
    Modern versions of windows already have many of these parts you have partitioned sandboxed in the registry so that if they fail then it is fine and Windows will simply over-write the file. Making a separate partition for everything just makes a mess, it does not add to performance or reliability. Also, having a ton of partitions (each with it's own free space at the end because Windows freaks out of you fill a partition or drive) wastes premium edge platter space by forcing information to be written in the middle of the drive where things run slower. It is a lot of work and headache for something that will help very little at best, or make things slower at worst.

    @nukemaster:
    For single drive systems:
    Agreed, one contiguous partition is generally best. If anything maybe a separate hidden partition with a system image on it, but most likely if the drive is toast it won't do much good anyways.

    For 2 drive systems:
    SSD: Windows, program, and small files (office documents, pictures, possibly music collection, etc., this is purely so the HDD can go into sleep mode more often, not for performance)

    HDD part1: program overflow (if needed). Guarantees that programs get the edge of the drive where they will perform best.
    HDD part2: user files (documents, videos, and other bulk files)
    HDD part3: system image and file backups

    For many-drive systems:
    SSD RAID0 part1: drive with OS, Programs, documets, music etc.
    SSD RAID0 part2: 60GB Intel RST SSD cache for HDDs (read cache only)
    (For content creators) SSD RAID0 part3, or seperate SSD: Render drive, or active project space

    HDD RAID1/5 part1: Bulk files such as multimedia, CD/DVD images, network shares, etc.
    HDD RAID1/5 part2: system image and file backups

    Gives extra space and peak performance to the SSDs on the system drive, while allowing protection of personal files in the event of a virus requiring a system wipe, SSD failure, or a single HDD failure. If done correctly the RAID1 or 5 will also give the HDDs a performance boost to the file storage, but this is not a guarantee, especially if using dissimilar drives.
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  • omnimodis78
    SSD Tip 4: Disable Prefetch & SuperFetch: this is absolutely a terrible advice, and has been demonstrated to be a misguided and incorrect "optimization". Firstly, the rationale is that turning these off will save writes on the SSD. The fact of the matter is that the writes used for these are so minimal as to be insignificant (practically and mathematically), but the benefits are so measurable that it makes no sense at all to disable them. Firstly, having "fetching" technology enabled means that programs/services load faster and more efficiently into RAM. Windows knows what it needs to "fetch" into RAM even before you trigger the event to open said program/service. Meaning that when you do double-click on that porno link, things are already fetched in RAM to open everything that is needed to make the process as fast and responsive as it can be (very basic example, but that's the essence) Turn these off, and it has to do it crudely each and every time...
    Reply
  • techcurious
    All these "disable this.. disable that" tips that are meant to "increase lifespan of SSD drives" are so incredibly pointless! Forfeit the benefits of System Restore just to presumably increase the lifespan of an SSD?? For what? My 120GB SSD boot drive is now almost 5 months old and it's SMART status still reports that 100% Life Left, after total writes of 1585GB! So even if we round that up to 1% worn out, I want to keep using this same SSD for how long, 41 Years!?? (5months x 100=500, 500/12months). Even if the circuit board doesn't fail long before that, neither the capacity, nor the speed of this SSD will be very useful after 5 years, let alone 10 years.
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  • techcurious
    Oh, and I forgot to add that I have both my pagefile and hibernate file enabled on the same SSD.
    I prefer not having a Pagefile as I have enough RAM, but some programs/games don't like to run without a Pagefile no matter how much RAM you have... pity.
    But since when is hibernating just about shutting down and starting up quickly? No matter how fast you can boot up with an SSD, only Hibernate can preserve and restore the state your PC was in, with the same open programs, files, games, etc! (Fortunately, new browsers can restore their previous session/tabs anyway). So, I still use my Hibernate sometimes, so I wont have to remember and reopen all the different PDF, Word, Excel, etc files that are open and I am not finished with before having to leave my PC for an extended period.
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  • omnimodis78
    @techcurious - you are 100% correct! I used to be one of those people who spent hours upon hours of "optimizing" my SSD after a Windows installation. But the more I looked into it, and the more I experimented, the more I realized that a lot, too many in-fact, of those so called optimizations were coming from people who were merely stuck in the old Windows XP days when some things were worthwhile tweaking. Firstly, most of the optimizations today are actually counter-intuitive, and some are downright wrong to even suggest! Not to mention, this idea of actually disabling very advanced and practical things in order to add a theoretical amount of time (nobody has ever stated how much) to the 3,000,000 hours (that's over two centuries...228.1591052 years to be exact) of life expectancy (G.Skill FM-25S2S-60GBP2) is laughable! How many people would ever dare to go outside to their cars and say "unplug this, and this, and this" in order to add a few minutesworth of life to their engines. That's what these inaccurate optimizations are actually doing. Yes, I have disabled some stuff but not for the misguided reason to save SSD life, but because I don't need, or use some (file indexing is one, windows back-up is another).
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  • Agree that almost all of these "optimizations" are pointless. It might have made sense if it was an older SSD, but today's SSDs handle write cycle conservations well enough for average consumer, and by the time those SSDs wear out, you'll probably be getting a new computer anyways. Did I mention that Windows 7/8 already performs these optimizations when SSD is detected? Just re-run the Windows Experience Index Assessment from Control Panel -> System.

    Don't waste your time with these "optimizations" and enjoy your SSD.
    Reply
  • Flyfisherman
    The Microsoft Pagefile should of course be on the SSD, preferable use two of them and put second pagefile on the HDD, since Windows will automatically read/write from the disk that is not used at the moment. The SSD/HDD cannot read/write on the same disk at the same time.

    Microsoft http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive s-and.aspx
    Quote:
    Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs? Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

    In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
    Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
    Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

    In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.
    End quote.

    This article on Tom's should be re-written, since it has some wrong suggestions about what is best to do.
    http://www.computing.net/howtos/sh 7/552.html
    Reply
  • Seriously - BAD ADVICE with regards to putting swapfile on seperate partition!!!! Different drive, yes, but different partition (ala Unix/Linux), stupid. You force your head to move between distant cilinders (Head travel time) and then to seek again for every swap IO that follows or before normal access IO. This not only slows it down, but wears it out. It's best to keep regularly accessed disk locations, such as system files, temp files, cache files etc. in close proximity therefore minimizing head travel and seek times. Yes, most are going to complain that your swap can then also become fragmented which will be even worse, unless you set your swap size a static, fat provisioned size (Min 1.5x RAM to max 2x RAM).
    PS: Also, read up on thin and thick stroking. Thin stroking means that you use only the outside tracks of your disk as the linear speed (Opposed to rotational speed), or the percieved speed of the passing by under the head, would be the highest obviousy tracks (The first tracks): Ideally for performance, this is exactly where you want your swap. Partitioning your drive for swap, means that you force your swap to be further from your highest performance tracks.
    Also, Unix actual intend is that your swap be on an entirely seperate disk (If possible).
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