Windows 7 Tweak List (Primarily for SSD users)

[Arainach]

And that's why Automatic Updates are turned off on my home PC. I prefer to know when and what things are being downloaded and installed on to my PC. As stated earlier there have been cases when "trusted" Microsoft updates have borked systems.

That's like refusing a vaccine because 0.00001% get side effects.

 

[Ritorix]

That's like refusing a vaccine because 0.00001% get side effects.

You should see the testing process we go through at work to handle new updates. Kid gloves. There have been instances of the cure being worse than the disease, breaking production servers and resulting now in a weeks-long process. Between MS and other vendors its an endless stream of patches to keep up with.

Plus MS likes to sneak their own crap into WU. Critical update: Install Silverlight! (wtf?)

Its also set to Manual on my netbook. Ever see what happens to a laptop that runs out of power halfway through an update? Good thing that doesnt happen anymore (it checks for power before updating), but it will still download even if you are on battery power on Starbucks wifi.

 

[da sponge]

Windows Update doesn't commandeer your bandwidth. It uses BITS, which uses idle bandwidth. Christ.

 

[Raptor007]

Windows Update doesn't commandeer your bandwidth. It uses BITS, which uses idle bandwidth. Christ.

Windows has no way of knowing your total bandwidth use. BITS isn't a complete solution unless you only have one computer on your network.

And that's why Automatic Updates are turned off on my home PC. I prefer to know when and what things are being downloaded and installed on to my PC. As stated earlier there have been cases when "trusted" Microsoft updates have borked systems. If a "key" application needs more bandwidth, I'll give it to it. I don't need Microsoft deeming what has priority and what doesn't for me.

I hope by "turned off" you mean "set to notify only". You should at least know when there are security updates available! And then you can browse through the list to uncheck anything stupid you don't want.

 

[soulesschild]

You should see the testing process we go through at work to handle new updates. Kid gloves. There have been instances of the cure being worse than the disease, breaking production servers and resulting now in a weeks-long process. Between MS and other vendors its an endless stream of patches to keep up with.

Plus MS likes to sneak their own crap into WU. Critical update: Install Silverlight! (wtf?)

Its also set to Manual on my netbook. Ever see what happens to a laptop that runs out of power halfway through an update? Good thing that doesnt happen anymore (it checks for power before updating), but it will still download even if you are on battery power on Starbucks wifi.

I've never seen Silverlight as a critical update. Always optional on my machines.

 

[GotNoRice]

I'm sure there are legit tweaks for SSD users. Page files have traditionally been set to a fixed size (not deleted, lol). Setting temp file locations was a good idea on Unix servers in 1987 but it isnt much help nowadays. And some of the settings recommended are dumb because...Win 7 already does them.

I did a fresh install of Windows 7 on my X25-M G2 and it didn't automatically disable Defrag or Superfetch.

 

[ibdoomed2]

Other than that, I don't mind UAC, search index (then again I use Everything search now), and for god sakes, don't turn off Windows Update unless you want your computer to be compromised. I tell so many of my customers not to do that yet they come back wondering why their computer is infected or why their Windows installation is "broken."

I'll agree with almost everything else but auto-updates are really a crapshoot. I've had over 100 identical machines in the office become unusable at least twice in the last three years because some auto-update broke something (the nic was one of them). I still have it on for every machine but I fully expect to walk in some morning and find them all down again. On my personal machine I have it turned off.

 

[Neb]

For a business environment WSUS or SMS is a better choice for centrally controlling updates.

From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa362708(VS.85).aspx :

Background transfers are optimal in that BITS uses idle network bandwidth to transfer the files and will increase or decrease the rate at which files are transferred based on the amount of idle network bandwidth available. If a network application begins to consume more bandwidth, BITS decreases its transfer rate to preserve the user's interactive experience.

As Raptor stated earlier, that only accounts for the individual computer's bandwidth use. However, you can reduce the network usage by windows update via either IIS (ie. WSUS server side) or Group Policy (client side). Ref: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/archive/2008/11/19/more-on-throttling-wsus-downloads.aspx

FWIW, when I installed my X25-M G1, it didn't disable defrag nor superfetch.

 

[Blackforge]

Weird.. my X25-M 160GB G1 was disabled on both RTM and RC. When you run defrag, you should see the SSD disk set to "Never run".

 

[Conditioned]

Nice roundup. If you have a ssd you can also disable superfetch and prefetch.

 

[msny]

Rule of thumb about the topic of this thread,

"if it ain't broke, why fix it?"

Should have been a warning, "do at your own risk".

 

[Joe Average]

And yet another instance of some thread necromancy. What I said nearly 2 years ago in post #2 is still relevant - actually it's more relevant nowadays considering that most of the better (read: not cheap shit) SSDs now have Sandforce or similar controllers to handle the TRIM functionality more properly, so...

Leave it alone still applies.

 

[vick1000]

You do not want to "leave it alone" on a Sandforce drive, becasue TRIM does not work the same as with other controllers on Sandforce.

Write amplification is real, and you want to minimize writes to an SSD no matter who's controller is in it. Not just for NAND life, but more for performance sake. The other tweaks are to free up space on a SSD, which generally increases performance on all types.

Do some more research on SSDs and write amplification, then post back.

BTW Firefox is one of the worst offenders if not configured properly.

 

[x509]

If you're going to go through that much trouble, you may as well not even run Windows 7. People implementing all those "tweaks" are basically gutting Windows 7 of everything that makes it work the way it does, and in the long run you're not going to improve much if anything at all.

Leave it alone.

Words to live - and compute by with respect to Windows 7.

Joe Average (and everyone else),

Even if you have an SSD and apply 20% of these tweaks, that's a long list. It would be nice if I could "automagically" apply these tweaks to all my Win 7 installs. Any tools that capture some/all of these tweaks and put them into a file (or script)? That way, I could also do a fresh install, then run the "tweaks file."

Thanks.

 

[vick1000]

Joe Average (and everyone else),

Even if you have an SSD and apply 20% of these tweaks, that's a long list. It would be nice if I could "automagically" apply these tweaks to all my Win 7 installs. Any tools that capture some/all of these tweaks and put them into a file (or script)? That way, I could also do a fresh install, then run the "tweaks file."

Thanks.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?49779-SSD-Tweak-Utility

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4926-ssd-tweaker.html

 

[x509]

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?49779-SSD-Tweak-Utility

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4926-ssd-tweaker.html

Thanks!

 

[vick1000]

I recently became aware of a potential threat to SSD performance (and perhaps NAND life).

AVG anti virus causes some massive I/O writes, I have uninstalled and started using MS Security Essentials instead.

 

[bigdogchris]

Post #14 still applies too.

 

[vick1000]

Post #14 still applies too.

Applies to what? Do you have anything to contribute besides snide remarks?

If you have a reason you feel these tweaks are not needed, by all means expand and state what it is. If not, butt out.

 

[Joe Average]

They're not needed, nor required, as people have previously stated. Windows 7 can and does adjust/tune itself right outta the box for SSD operation, and there's really not much the end user can do to make it "better" in the long run.

If people are that afraid to actually use an SSD with respect to write cycles and other aspects they should just stick with physical hard drives. The cells are good for several million write passes, you know, years of use - unless of course you're some bored idiot that writes an app to write a bit of data to a cell 40 million times a day just to say "See, they can die, mine did..."

Leave it alone still remains the best advice anyone is going to give or get.

"How fast is fast?"

If you have a reason you feel these tweaks are not needed, by all means expand and state what it is. If not, butt out.

And this isn't your thread.

 

[vick1000]

They're not needed, nor required, as people have previously stated. Windows 7 can and does adjust/tune itself right outta the box for SSD operation, and there's really not much the end user can do to make it "better" in the long run.

If people are that afraid to actually use an SSD with respect to write cycles and other aspects they should just stick with physical hard drives. The cells are good for several million write passes, you know, years of use - unless of course you're some bored idiot that writes an app to write a bit of data to a cell 40 million times a day just to say "See, they can die, mine did..."

Leave it alone still remains the best advice anyone is going to give or get.

"How fast is fast?"



And this isn't your thread.

You don't understand, or you are just ignorant to the fact that reducing writes to an SSD and expanding free space on it, improve it's performance and reliability. If you don;t know what write amplifications is, you should abstain from the debate.

While Win7 makes some adjustments for the presence of an SSD (two adjustments), MS is not the end all know all of SSD performance. There for, just as always, there are tweaks to improve upon the products they release.

Of course, if someone is offended by the term Microshaft, then they obviously think MS is and their products are Golden and infailable like God's own software. Or maybe you are just Bill Gates love child, or his favorite stalker.

I don't care if it's my thread or not, it's the same trash and deserves the same treatment. There is no reason for bull shit one liners, make your case or butt out.

 

[Joe Average]

We have made our case, and it's not your thread.

 

[vick1000]

We have made our case, and it's not your thread.

The poster I refuted made no case, hence my refute.

I never said it's my thread, but usless one line degredation is still usless degradation, and I rebuked it, and I will continue to rebuke it.

The only "case" you have made is the typical, "don't mess with it, Microshaft is perfect" unsubstantiated drivel. Let's see someone refute my claims of write amplification. Oh that's right, you can't refute it because it's fact.

But I'm sure the readers of this thread can research write amplifications, and see the clear benefits of some of the tweaks listed in the OP. I just trust they will ignore the nay-sayers and their unsubstantiated drivel.

As proof I can offer screens of AS-SSD performance on a two year old install of Win7 on a Vertex2, showing equal to day one performance, after using most of the tweaks offered here. What can you offer?

 

[Jon55]

Why did this horrible, horrible "advice" thread get resurrected? Then again, I'm not doing any good with posting this. So I'll try to make my post helpful:

To those who are looking for advice on how to "speed up" Windows 7 and came across this thread somehow, please note that the advice in the original post is TERRIBLE. Please- do not, do not, do not implement these "tweaks", which are really only "tweaks" that worked in Windows XP. And even in XP, these "tweaks" never worked very well, marginally sped up performance (if at all), and if anything caused more problems than anything else. Windows 7 is a very smart OS and can manage itself very well. Windows 7 is not XP, and should not be treated as such.

 

[x509]

They're not needed, nor required, as people have previously stated. Windows 7 can and does adjust/tune itself right outta the box for SSD operation, and there's really not much the end user can do to make it "better" in the long run.

...

Joe Average: what happened? Some of the posts in this thread are pretty snarky.

Lets say I accept your point that Windows auto-adjusts to an SSD. Great. But there is a whole other part of Windows 7 not related to the SSD. In post #54, I asked if there was some way to record all the tweaks and save them in one place, a "repository," so to speak. That way, I can re-create all those tweaks quickly. That was my idea.

But so far, no one has responded to that question. Not "interesting enough?"

 

[Joe Average]

x509, this is a long post but that's what I'm known for I suppose, if you choose to read it, congrats, if not, no skin off my nose.

In response to your question in post #54, vick1000 posted links to an "app" that supposedly does the following (quoted from the product page):

SSD Tweaker 1.9 Lets you Tweak the following:

• Windows Services
• Query and Set Windows 7 TRIM Status (Pro Only)
• Experimental TRIM Optimization (Pro Only)
• Hibernation Settings
• Use Large System Cache
• Ntfs Memory Usage
• Disable 8.3 Filenames
• Disable Date Stamping
• Disable Boot Tracing
• Windows Prefetcher
• Windows Vista Superfetch
• Windows Indexing Service
• System Restore
• Windows Defrag

Now, for myself, I wouldn't use such a tool personally, but if other people want to drink the snake oil, so be it, I can't stop 'em. Mucking around with Windows Services is generally considered to be a very bad idea - anybody that actually does know what he/she is talking about will agree with that statement, and those that don''t have a clue will lambast it and bitch, whine, and moan till the cows come home.

That's their problem. But I'll break it down regardless:


[*] Windows Services (bad idea, honestly)


[*] Query and Set Windows 7 TRIM Status (Pro Only) (probably does nothing at all, who knows, but it sure sounds "Pro" don't it?)


[*] Experimental TRIM Optimization (Pro Only) (oooo... more "Pro" level stuff, right, right)


[*] Hibernation Settings (disabled with Admin Command Prompt, powercfg -h off, simple)


[*] Use Large System Cache (never been proven to do anything for Windows since Windows NT 4.0, Windows 7 already has Superfetch which is superior and the evolution of data caching in memory)


[*] Ntfs Memory Usage (has no discernible or measurable affect on system performance)


[*] Disable 8.3 Filenames (a few bytes saved now and again, in terms of actual performance gain, on an SSD, something like 15 places past the decimal point)


[*] Disable Date Stamping (wrecks indexing and search, can also have an effect on other aspects of the file system that require proper date stamping, especially backups)


[*] Disable Boot Tracing (how often do you actually reboot your PC, folks? 50 times a day? I didn't think so, this is utter bullshit)


[*] Windows Prefetcher (this is a core aspect of why Windows 7 is such a kickass OS - disable it and you might as well go back to XP)


[*] Windows Vista Superfetch (again, a core aspect of why Windows 7 is a kickass OS - disable this and you basically end up having gobs of RAM doing Jack Fuckin' Shit other than consuming power - if you really need a shitload of RAM for a good reason, you'd be smart enough to know to leave the OS alone in the first place)


[*] Windows Indexing Service (has no measurable effect on SSD peformance - indexing is a READ OPERATION 99% of the time and it only writes an index entry as required which is a big table of contents so it's a non-issue like those blowhards continue to profess it is)


[*] System Restore (disable it faster than you can even install this ridiculous software, why waste space on your hard drive to run an app when you can turn this off and save space? Seems kinda stupid, doesn't it? Use up write cycles on the SSD to install some crazy tweaking software instead of just disabling System Restore in a few seconds flat)


[*] Windows Defrag (when you put an SSD into a system with Windows 7 as the OS, the native automatic defrag process which is scheduled to run on that drive will no longer be in effect - it will still work for all other media in the machine, but not the SSD)

So, of all those, the only ones that could actually prove useful are:

- disable hibernation to save space (it's a non-issue as far as writes are concerned unless you hibernate your machine dozens of times a day, and I doubt anyone does - standby is superior in that respect for very quick startup/standby cycles, especially with laptops, and disabling hibernation takes what, 5 seconds?)

- disable System Restore (if you have a better backup routine, like I do by using Acronis True Image, then using System Restore is of no practical use, disable it and get some space back, or just disable it to delete past restore points and then enable it)

- shrink the page file (I did NOT say remove it, or delete it, I said shrink it to save some space on the SSD - Microsoft recommends that people NOT remove the page file or disable it, and in the case of owning an SSD they recommend leaving the page file situated on the SSD because that drive will be the fastest in the system most likely and provide the best performance for pages when they are required)

Since the page file and the hibernation files (by default) match the amount of system RAM, if you've got 4, 8, 12, or even 16GB or more then that's a considerable chunk of space "wasted" that you can get quite a bit back from by a simple task of disabling hibernation and shrinking the size of the page file to something smaller. My recommendation always stands at a 1GB static page file (1024MB minimum/1024MB maximum) which frees it from being fragmented except in the absolute worst situations.

And if you do have 4GB or more of RAM, the chances of you ever actually having Windows complain about "low virtual memory" is extremely rare indeed.

x509: As far as a "list" of those tweaks, well... a huge chunk of those "tweaks" are ones that are known to be effectively useless on Windows performance, and they have been useless for a very long time. Some of them would help Windows 95 and NT 4.0, but many changes have been made in the kernel and the memory subsystems of Windows over the years - those particular tweaks just don't have any affect anymore on the day to day performance of Windows 7. It is an awesome OS because those aspects that were "tweaks" long ago are now basically native parts or aspects of the OS itself. Hence, leave it alone means the OS can take care of itself.

Now, you're free to do whatever you want with your machine(s), nobody is telling you you can't do what you want to do with your machine (whoever is reading this). What most of us that actually know what we're talkin' about - for a variety of reasons, like having done this stuff for decades, or having coded some of this stuff, or developed the technologies for this stuff, or writing articles about this stuff, or testing this stuff 24/7 for technical support/I.T. organizations with staffs that make some third party countries look baren in terms of population - know what works and what doesn't.

On occasion we'll get someone here at this forum that just has to basically run amok in the opposite direction of all the things that most of us knowledgeable folk know works and they'll create a fuss for a few days then they go right back into the woodwork and don't get out much again. There's a guy that perks up about page files from time to time, there's a guy that gets pretty uptight about XP Professional x64 occassionally, I myself harp on RAMdisks frequently (because nothing can touch 'em) and many other folks just like it.

Looks like another one has found his or her calling too...

(and I'm done with this thread so... have fun, always)

 

[vick1000]

Knowledgable folk who have no knowledge of write amplification.

I personally don't use the apps, and do everything manually, but they provide a list of what to do. I don't perform all of the tweaks either.

But moving the page file, moving the Temp folders, disabling hibernation, and watching out for excessive I/O writes should be a priority for a SSD with OS installed on it. Those alone free up space on the drive allowing better provisioning, which is probably another term the so called "knowledgable people" are not familiar with.

Superfetch/ prefetch are the silliest waste of resources when you have an SSD. The whole purpose of an SSD is to load apps faster, so you have them faster when you need them. Why preload apps that you may or may not use, when you can load them in seconds with an SSD. They are services meant for mechanical drives, not NAND devices.

The same goes for indexing, wasted CPU cycles and drive space for something to speed up searches which will be just as fast since it's an SSD. Another service meant for mechanical drives.

As far as the rest of the crap, it's meaningless to me, but to each his own. BTW if Win7 is so great, why use a RAM drive? Win7 can handle anything right. Heck I guess we don;t need SSDs either since Win7 is so great, it can make a mechanical drive obsolete with it's awesome services.


Knowledgable....indeed.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Knowledgable folk who have no knowledge of write amplification.

I personally don't use the apps, and do everything manually, but they provide a list of what to do. I don't perform all of the tweaks either.

But moving the page file, moving the Temp folders, disabling hibernation, and watching out for excessive I/O writes should be a priority for a SSD with OS installed on it. Those alone free up space on the drive allowing better provisioning, which is probably another term the so called "knowledgable people" are not familiar with.

Superfetch/ prefetch are the silliest waste of resources when you have an SSD. The whole purpose of an SSD is to load apps faster, so you have them faster when you need them. Why preload apps that you may or may not use, when you can load them in seconds with an SSD. They are services meant for mechanical drives, not NAND devices.

The same goes for indexing, wasted CPU cycles and drive space for something to speed up searches which will be just as fast since it's an SSD. Another service meant for mechanical drives.

As far as the rest of the crap, it's meaningless to me, but to each his own. BTW if Win7 is so great, why use a RAM drive? Win7 can handle anything right. Heck I guess we don;t need SSDs either since Win7 is so great, it can make a mechanical drive obsolete with it's awesome services.


Knowledgable....indeed.

This whole post is wrong. Literally.

You, knowledgeable? Not on this, buddy.

Page file should be ON the ssd, it improves performance significantly and write cycles are not a concern.

Superfetch is disabled on SSD-bearing installs by default. You would know that if you actually learned instead of chiding people.

Indexing is great, lets you search inside of files and start menu/etc. more quickly. It uses virtually no cpu power to do, either.

P.S. Did you figure out that Windows 7 automatically aligns SSD's properly, yet? Oh and by the way it's "Microsoft" not microshaft as you call it. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1623073

 

[vick1000]

This whole post is wrong. Literally.

You, knowledgeable? Not on this, buddy.

Page file should be ON the ssd, it improves performance significantly.

Superfetch is disabled on SSD-bearing installs by default. You would know that if you actually learned instead of chiding people.

Indexing is great, lets you search inside of files and start menu/etc. more quickly. It uses virtually no cpu power to do, either.

P.S. Did you figure out that Windows 7 automatically aligns SSD's properly, yet? Oh and by the way it's "Microsoft" not microshaft as you call it.

Then explain why I had to disable Superfetch just two days ago on this new build, with a shiny new Win7 SP1 disc.

We move the page file off the SSD becasue it will cause write amplification, and degrade the drive performance over time.

I already knew Win7 aligned properly if you use the default setup method, which you would have know if you could comprehend what you read, if in fact you read anything beyond grammatical errors or the word Microshaft, before you respond to posts.

If you have a large SSD that would require significant time to search, and you for some reason use it to store data, rather than run apps and the OS, AND you require searches of the drive frequently, I suppose indexing would be preferable. Even though it will constantly write to the drive updating a index table, and increase write amplification as a result.

Do you even own an SSD? I think you are full of crap.

 

[Damar]

Then explain why I had to disable Superfetch just two days ago on this new build, with a shiny new Win7 SP1 disc.

Per MS:

Will Superfetch be disabled on SSDs?

Yes, for most systems with SSDs.

If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn’t have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadDrive will all be disabled.

So apparently that SSD failed the check.

We move the page file off the SSD becasue it will cause write amplification, and degrade the drive performance over time.

And yet MS disagrees with your "logic", and I think their engineers who wrote the code know better than you.

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

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.

Do you even own an SSD? I think you are full of crap.

Always nice to end with an insult, makes you seem far more credible and professional.....not.

My drive still works flawlessly months after its clean install and I didn't do anything special like some people claim you have to. The only thing you don't want to do is completely fill the drive to 100% or close to it, so I moved my picture and video libraries to another drive.

That link is a good read for anyone going the SSD route, and a MUCH better source of information.

 

[MrCrispy]

I don't know why the myth of Windows tweaking utilities continues to exist - probably because they are so profitable and the FUD from way back continues to this day.

The fact is this - all the usual crap people suggest, defragmenters, registry cleaners, registry defrag, various system cleaners and tweakers - none of that makes any damn difference in daily use on a clean Win 7 install. The OS does everything it needs to and is self healing.

I'd bet if you installed it on 2 machines, left one alone and tweaked the other one to hell and back, installed a bunch of apps and used them, a user still wouldn't be able to tell them apart, and there wouldn't be any measurable difference except a few points in benchmarks.

Do you think MS doesn't do extensive (and I mean massive) performance testing on every kind of hardware combination imaginable to optimize the OS performance? All these tweaks are like a developer who starts making optimizations without profiling or measuring their effect - its worthless placebo effect at best, and at worst it will introduce instability (which you then blame on the OS) or actually degrade performance.

 

[Damar]

The fact is this - all the usual crap people suggest, defragmenters, registry cleaners, registry defrag, various system cleaners and tweakers - none of that makes any damn difference in daily use on a clean Win 7 install. The OS does everything it needs to and is self healing.

 

[vick1000]

Per MS:



So apparently that SSD failed the check.

Another screw up for Win7 then, as it's one of the faster drives available, and scores a 7.9 on their own stupid performance index.

And yet MS disagrees with your "logic", and I think their engineers who wrote the code know better than you.

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

That doesn't even make sense. What ever get's written to the page file, get's read from the file and is the same size. I would like to see these magical large sequential writes that turn into small random reads. In any case, ANY write to the drive increases write amplification becasue the drive writes to new NAND blocks every damn time. Just more marketing tripe from the man in charge of marketing for Win7, not a code level engineer, "Win7 is God's own OS, no need to do anything" (*releases 700MB critical update 2 hours later).

Always nice to end with an insult, makes you seem far more credible and professional.....not.

I only insult those that are insulting.

My drive still works flawlessly months after its clean install and I didn't do anything special like some people claim you have to. The only thing you don't want to do is completely fill the drive to 100% or close to it, so I moved my picture and video libraries to another drive.

That link is a good read for anyone going the SSD route, and a MUCH better source of information.

Good for you, care to post some performance numbers, before and after?

 

[rampantandroid]

That doesn't even make sense. What ever get's written to the page file, get's read from the file and is the same size. I would like to see these magical large sequential writes that turn into small random reads. In any case, ANY write to the drive increases write amplificationm becasue the drive writes to new NAND blocks every damn time. Just more marketing tripe from the man in charge of marketing for Win7, not a code level engineer, "Win7 is God's own OS, no need to do anything" (*releases 700MB critical update 2 hours later).

If you understood memory allocation, it'd make sense, I think. From my meager understanding: When RAM is low, and a new memory page is needed, Windows will look for a page of memory not currently needed and dump it out to memory. Usually, it will dump multiple pages out, for example, an entire application, hence a large write.

Now, when that application comes back to the foreground, a page fault occurs for the memory needed at THAT MOMENT. Begin again looking for an empty page in system memory, and then load the NEEDED pages into memory. As the app then requires more of it's paged data, it causes further page faults which will look like small reads.

Basically: An app goes inactive and a page frame is needed, so it dumps the app into the pagefile. Large write. App comes back active, and is slowly moved to system memory as the pages in the pagefile are needed (determined by page faults) meaning multiple small reads.

It makes sense.

Sinofsky's MSDN blog, I imagine, is proofread by the very engineers working on Windows. You'd do well to listen.

Just more marketing tripe from the man in charge of marketing for Win7, not a code level engineer, "Win7 is God's own OS, no need to do anything" (*releases 700MB critical update 2 hours later).

Sinofsky is the president of Windows, right? He runs it. He doesn't market it. Also, wasn't he actually a developer once in his life?

And updates....as I remember, Win7 had a Beta that was stable, and slightly buggy...and a RC....that was pretty damn stable. No updates needed to make it run.

 

[chinesepiratefood]

As for superfetch...my laptop has an SSD and it did not disable superfetch. In fact...I cannot understand why you would ever disable superfetch, your RAM will always be much faster than your SSD.

 

[odoe]

This is like a three year old necro'd thread that is devolving quickly.
The Data and Storage forum would be a better location to discuss SSD tuning.