[Curious]

Increase System Speed
Disable indexing
Description: Indexing creates and maintains a database of file attributes. This can lead to multiple small writes when creating/deleting/modifying files. Searching for files will still work.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications -> Services - > Right-Click Windows Search -> Startup type: Disabled -> OK

Disable defragmentation
Description: Defragmenting a hard disk's used space is only useful on mechanical disks with multi-millisecond latencies. Free-space defragmentation may be useful to SSDs, but this feature is not available in the default Windows Defragmenter.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications -> Services - > Right-Click Disk Defragmenter -> Startup type: Disabled -> OK

Disable Write Caching
Description: There is no cache on the SSD, so there are no benefits to write caching. There are conflicting reports on whether this gains speed or not.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Device Manager -> Disk drives -> Right-Click STEC PATA -> Properties -> Policies Tab -> Uncheck Enable write caching -> OK

Configure Superfetch
Description: Frees up RAM by not preloading program files.
Instructions: On second glance, I would recommend leaving this one alone. However, there are some customizations that you can follow in the post below.

Firefox - Use memory cache instead of disk cache
Description: If you use Firefox, there's a way to write cached files to RAM instead of the hard disk. This is not only faster, but will significantly reduce writes to the SSD while using the browser.
Instructions: Open Firefox -> Type about:config into the address bar -> Enter -> double-click browser.cache.disk.enable to set the value to False -> Right-Click anywhere -> New -> Integer -> Preference Name "disk.cache.memory.capacity" -> value memory size in KB. Enter 32768 for 32MB, 65536 for 64MB, 131072 for 128MB, etc. -> restart Firefox

Free up extra drive space
Disable the Page File
Description: Eliminate writing memory to the SSD, free over 2GB of disk space. Warning - If you run out of memory the program you're using will crash.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Settings (Performance) -> Advanced Tab -> Change -> Uncheck Automatically manage -> No paging file -> Set -> OK -> Restart your computer
Alternatively, if you want to play it safer, you can set a custom size of 200MB min and max.

Disable System Restore
Description: Don't write backup copies of files when installing new programs or making system changes. Can free up between a few hundred MB to a couple GB. Warning - Although unlikely, if a driver installation corrupts your system, there won't be an automatic way to recover.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> System Protection Tab -> Configure -> Turn off system protection -> Delete -> OK

Disable Hibernate
Description: You may free up 1GB of space on the SSD if you have 1GB of memory, 2GB of space if you have 2GB memory. You will lose the hibernation feature which allows the equivalent of quick boots and shutdowns.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Type cmd -> Right-Click the cmd Icon -> Run as Administrator -> Type powercfg -h off -> Type exit

[strider_mt2k]

After running a while with indexing turned off I've very recently turned it back on again.
I like keeping the thumbnails on my media files without it having to re-read them all the time.

The visual slickness doesn't seem to affect performance really either, or not in a way I notice in regular usage.

[holmes4]

I have been using hibernation for years - never a problem. I have not seen anyone, other than you, claim that hibernation corrupts systems.

[nd4spdbh]

i must ask why hasnt anyone said anything about algining the partition you install win 7 on.... depending on how you let win 7 install make your partitions it may or may not align it... regardless you should align it to 64KB for best performance.

OCZ Forum - View Single Post - How to setup Core V1/2, Solid, Apex, Vertex SSD with aligned partitions using USB (if available on the drive) or SATA. Updated to show how to use Vista recovery disk

Do the same steps using the win 7 install... offset by 64KB, and dont let win 7 do n e formatting of ur ssd, just install it on the ntfs partition.

Probably one of the best speed tweaks out there!

[Montala]

Originally Posted by nd4spdbh

i must ask why hasnt anyone said anything about algining the partition you install win 7 on.... depending on how you let win 7 install make your partitions it may or may not align it... regardless you should align it to 64KB for best performance.

Sorry for being a bit thick, but I don't quite understand why you should have to 'align' a system partition, or indeed what you are actually alighning it with?

Unless of course we are talking about an SSD which is going to be set up with a 'dual-boot' option... but if not, I am sure that someone will explain further!

[MoInSTL]

It's done for performance. Did you read the link in nd4spdbh's post right above yours?

[Montala]

Originally Posted by MoInSTL

It's done for performance. Did you read the link in nd4spdbh's post right above yours?

Yes I did thanks, but I didn't see any specific reference there to Windows 7.

According to the OCZ Forum, this procedure is NOT necessary (at least under a new installation of Windows 7) on their Vertex series of SSD drives.

[bjd223]

Originally Posted by Montala

Sorry for being a bit thick, but I don't quite understand why you should have to 'align' a system partition, or indeed what you are actually alighning it with?

Unless of course we are talking about an SSD which is going to be set up with a 'dual-boot' option... but if not, I am sure that someone will explain further!

Aligning the partition, as it applies to conventional HDDs is when you tell the partition to start its first cluster at the very start of a full sector. If you do not do this then many of your clusters could span 2 or more sectors. Meaning your machine would need to read (and then later write) 2 or more full sectors to change only one cluster. This adds overhead which is more noticable on SSDs as they do not like small random writes. Aligning tries to reduce the amount of sector reads and writes at a disk level.

As it applies to SSDs you do the same thing, except you want the clusters to match the block size of the SSD as best as possible. Since SSD blocks are typically larger than one cluster, many people stay with multiples of 64.

The reason that this problem exists, is because Windows XP uses 63 instead of 64. Which throws off every boundry on the disk (which could make writes 2x-3x slower in some cases!). If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7 to create the partition it will align it automatically. Windows XP is the only OS that 'requires' alignment.

Anyway unless you are using Windows XP to create the partition don't worry about it.

[nd4spdbh]

i will say this does apply to windows 7... i installed win 7 and it aligned my partition at 63 sectors. now i will say that i was messing around with partition in the win 7 install so maybe by default it will do a 64sector offset but mine didnt... so just check when you get your system up n running.

needless to say i ended up aligning to 128sectors (64KB) as per this huge ocz thread

Guide Partition alignment importance under Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit)..why it helps with stuttering and increases drive working life. - OCZ Forum

[satyr]

Overall, a good (let's say) "article", I mean there's a lot of good info in it (esp. for newbies), however, I have a few problems with it (i.e. things to add and/or correct):

Originally Posted by Curious

Configure Superfetch
Description: Frees up RAM by not preloading program files.
Instructions: On second glance, I would recommend leaving this one alone. However, there are some customizations that you can follow in the post below.

Hmmm, sorry, but this one is totally ridiculous. Prefetching in Windows works totally differently (i.e. there is no "preloading of files"); you only need to look into one of the *.pf files in "Prefetch" directory, and see what data these files contain. I mean it's quite obvious that they don't "preload" anything, but they rather just contain a list of directories, OS-libraries that a respective executable loads (or maps/hooks) when executed with regard to the device (i.e. the hard-disk/volume on which these files reside), that's where "Layout.ini" file comes into action.

So you see, a prefetch file is only a some kind of map (containing references to files which a respective executable loads on launch), if you want to also see Ed Bott's article titled "Windows Expertise: One more time: do not clean out your Prefetch folder!" for more info about this.

With "totally ridiculous" I am referring only to the part of text that says that disabling it "frees up RAM". It's true though that having it enabled causes writes to SSD now and then, but perfetch files are usually just a few kBs in size.

/EDIT: And one more note: all this above (my explanation of how it works etc.) regarding prefetching applies only if Superfetch in Windows 7 is not completely different thing than prefetching in let's say Windows XP.

Originally Posted by Curious

Firefox - Use memory cache instead of disk cache
Description: If you use Firefox, there's a way to write cached files to RAM instead of the hard disk. This is not only faster, but will significantly reduce writes to the SSD while using the browser.
Instructions: Open Firefox -> Type about:config into the address bar -> Enter -> double-click browser.cache.disk.enable to set the value to False -> Right-Click anywhere -> New -> Integer -> Preference Name "disk.cache.memory.capacity" -> value memory size in KB. Enter 32768 for 32MB, 65536 for 64MB, 131072 for 128MB, etc. -> restart Firefox

Nothing important really, just wanted to note that "there's a way to write cached files to RAM instead of the hard disk" sounds a bit strange, because if you set Firefox to only use RAM, there are no "cached files" at all (and certainly no "cached files written to RAM").

By the way, other related user-prefs (that is if you want to disable disk caching) in "prefs.js" or "user.js" files are the following ones:

user_pref("browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl", false);
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.enable", false);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.enable", true);

Note that by default these do not exist so you need to add them by yourself manually.

Originally Posted by Curious

Disable the Page File
Description: Eliminate writing memory to the SSD, free over 2GB of disk space. Warning - If you run out of memory the program you're using will crash.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Settings (Performance) -> Advanced Tab -> Change -> Uncheck Automatically manage -> No paging file -> Set -> OK -> Restart your computer
Alternatively, if you want to play it safer, you can set a custom size of 200MB min and max.

Actually, I rather keep a small fixed-size pagefile (I only have 1 GB of RAM), however, I needed to set it up like this by myself. What I want to say is that by default there was no pagefile on my Dell Mini 9.

Finally, also see the "No pagefile by default on Dell Mini 9?!" thread here on MyDellMini, and optionally also the "No pagefile by default on my new netbook, is this OK?!" one on forum on ArsTechnica website, that I opened about this.