SSD Tweaks with Windows 7 - Confused!

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sir_rob

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 27, 2003
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135
I just purchased OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT60G 2.5" 60GB for a Windows 7 install. I have been reading up on tweaks at

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forum.php

and

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3116/tweaktown_s_solid_state_drive_optimization_guide/index.html

There is a lot of conflicting information and I am confused as to what tweaks are necessary and desirable for a windows 7 installation that will be used for video editing. OCZ, tweaktown, Microsoft, and forums do not agree in many cases! I will use the SSD for the OS drive, but will have traditional hard drives for the video files. Thanks for any advice.
 
I too just got a SSD drive today and am right where you are. The Tweaktown looks like some good info. I'm just going to basically pop in in and let Windows 7 do it's stuff on a fresh install.
 
The first problem is that you read those two sites. Just....Don't. No tweaks are needed.
 
C'mon...this is the [H] forum! How can us geeks not look at tweaks for optimized performance?!

If I really should not tweak anything, great! I will be thrilled with that, but I want to make sure because there is a ton of misinformation out there!
 
danman said:
The first problem is that you read those two sites. Just....Don't. No tweaks are needed.
Click to expand...

Agreed


you don't need any tweaks... just install windows and enjoy it :) I'm sure you can disable a ton of features/processes/services in windows 7 to give you more synthetic performance for benchmarks or something, but for day to day use, it's totally pointless
 
Thanks for confirming! I will close my tweaks document that I was creating for the install and simplify my life a bit.

...now to find 6 gigs of RAM, an i7 920, and a motherboard for a decent price!
 
I tweaked, at first but have decided why bother. W7 does most of the dirty work, and the remainder isn't worth sweating in my book. So my drive dies in 5 years instead of 10, oh well. I'm sure they'll be cheap as dirt, and much faster then anyway.

P.S.

Now if it were XP, that would be different as it is not optimized for SSDs at all. (W7 is the best for that obviously.)
 
The consensus seems to be that this app is not needed for Win7, but it would be great for older OS's. Thanks.
 
sir_rob said:
Thanks for confirming! I will close my tweaks document that I was creating for the install and simplify my life a bit.
Click to expand...

Yeah I went through all that went I first got my Vertex. Although I did upgrade the firmware and ensure TRIM was enabled, the tweaks quickly went by the wayside.

sir_rob said:
...now to find 6 gigs of RAM, an i7 920, and a motherboard for a decent price!
Click to expand...

LOLs ... I’m now going through the same thing.
 
sir_rob said:
The consensus seems to be that this app is not needed for Win7, but it would be great for older OS's. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes, but it's a good way to check that the so-called auto optimizations that windows 7 is supposed to do are actually carried out. For instance, in my initial install on my intel ssd, I had to manually disable disk defrag.
 
nsx241 said:
Yes, but it's a good way to check that the so-called auto optimizations that windows 7 is supposed to do are actually carried out. For instance, in my initial install on my intel ssd, I had to manually disable disk defrag.
Click to expand...

windows wont even let me select my intel ssd for defrag. is it still selectable for you?
 
MS guy said: "By default, Windows 7 will disable Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance. These technologies were all designed to improve performance on traditional HDDs, where random read performance could easily be a major bottleneck. See the FAQ section for more details."

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

I don't know how to make sure it actually does this but I would keep indexing enabled, people grossly overstate its impact on performance.
 
I ran into some Windows 7 beta builds that didn't automatically disable defrag/indexing/prefetch for my SSD. However this problem has never happened with my retail Windows 7 installs.

Like others mentioned, I haven't really run into a need to mess with the tweaks anymore. Half those tweaks Windows 7 now takes care of on it's own. And the other half really don't seem to do anything to boost performance anyone as long as you aren't using a cheap Jmicron based SSD drive.
 
A lot of the tweaks and tips you'll find were either meant for WinXP, Vista, older SSD models that weren't optimized for tasks like OS use, and/or using SSD before we had TRIM support in Win7. I'd ignore most of it tbh... Just make sure you've got the latest firmware on your SSD and that TRIM is working (CrystalMark's CrystalDiskInfo can tell you that, the console command that you might've seen before will not, that just tells you whether the OS and/or the drive supports it but not whether it's working).

Beyond that, the only reason to mess w/anything else is if you wanna squeeze a couple extra GBs ou of the SSD by disabling or limiting certain elements you might find unnecessary. That includes disabling Hibernation (will net you an extra 4-6GB+ depending on how much RAM you've got, not practical for laptops tho, obviously), disabling or limiting System Restore, etc. Most of the tweaks won't net you any extra performance at all tho, not w/current drives and not if you've performed a clean Win7 install.

The only other thing I'll say is that depending on whether you do image backups of your OS/SSD or not (and what app you use to do 'em), it might be simpler to install Win7 w/o that 100MB system recovery partition it creates... It's not necessary (it's main reason for existing is actually BitLocker, which most people don't use), and if you install Win7 w/o it the contents are just moved to a recovery directory within C:\, all you have to do in order to install Win7 like that is simply partition the drive before installing it... But you should use the diskpart tool on the OS disc itself to make sure it's properly partitioned (i.e. the partition is properly aligned).

nsx241 said:
Yes, but it's a good way to check that the so-called auto optimizations that windows 7 is supposed to do are actually carried out. For instance, in my initial install on my intel ssd, I had to manually disable disk defrag.
Click to expand...

There seems to be some confusion regarding that kinda stuff... The defrag service should still be active and enabled in order to allow the OS to defrag your HDDs. Even tho it's active it shouldn't be running on your SSD, that's the default behavior if it recognized your SSD. That's just about the only thing Win7 pre-configures tho, I think it might also avoid running Superfetch on stuff that's on the SSD but I'm not positive. (the logic being that stuff on the HDD would probably benefit way more from being cache'd)

As far as indexing, you can configure what drives/directories it indexes anyway. If you're using a HDD for data then simply move the Documents, Pictures, Music, etc. folders there and make sure those are indexed properly.
 
Oh and if you happen to use Norton Internet Security 2010, disable that Idle Time Optimizer option under Miscellaneous Settings... It's actually a feature that calls upon the Windows defrag service but I think it overwrites Windows' own checks and might attempt defragging your SSD. No clue why they've included such a feature in the 2010 version when they've been going in the completely opposite direction w/the rest of the suite since '08 (keeping it lean and mean w/very little performance impact and unnecessary prompts, etc).
 
Used some tweaks and behold, the darn SSD lost performance big time. Could not get Sanitary Erase either since I have a nVidia not Intel mobo and no way to borrow one to get Sanitary either. So I had to send it back to OCZ and sanitized it and get it back to day one.

Will never use many of those tweaks and let windows 7 do its job. Also will hope that these SSD manufactures come up with some simple Window Program to sanitize a nVidia boards before I ever buy another SSD.
 
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