Solid State Drives SSD are now becoming the new and standard storage A.K.A hard drive for our computers.Solid State Drives SSD are considerably better in most aspects when considering storage performance. However, with storage in-mind. The old classic Hard Drive Disc is still better in terms of storage capacity. Why you say? Well… That’s pretty simple. A Solid State Drive with a capacity of 120/128gb is usually being sold at a price point where you can buy 2(two) pieces of 1Terabyte Hard Drive Disc.

So which is better? Both are great! It’s only a matter of preference when deciding which one to buy. Today, the most common configuration of computer storage is having an SSD for your operating system and other applications that you want to open up fast while having an HDD for storage of movies, pictures, games, and other files.

But there are things you have to know when it comes to SSD. Solid State Drives SSD are not operating like how HDD are. Solid State Drives SSD doesn’t have that disc platter that HDDs have. Which makes SSD more power efficient and faster in terms of performance. I’m not going into more details how one is better than the other. I’m here to tell you that the “SSD Experience” is different for Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 compared to Windows 7 and older Windows OS.

Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 are operating systems that are, and if I may say again, that are… Solid State Drive friendly. Why? unlike windows 7 where you have to disable or exclude an SSD manually to its scheduled defragmentation. Windows 8, 81, and 10 optimizes your SSD and does not perform any defrag process to it at all. How does it optimize? rather than a scheduled defragmentation.. Windows 8, 81, and 10 would perform an optimization known as “TRIM”. A Trim command (commonly typeset as TRIM) allows an operating system to inform a Solid State Drives SSD which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally. This way, your SSD will be at top notch/best condition at all times.

So if you have a Windows 8 or 8.1 or 10 system-based computer with a Solid State Drives SSD or planning to have one, here are our recommended ways of Solid State Drives SSD optimization for Windows 10 based computer system.

Solid State Drives SSD Tweaks and Configuration Guide

(This guide also applies for SSD optimization for Windows 8 and 8.1)

Set your SATA controller to AHCI mode for Solid State Drives SSD

AHCI mode simply enables the TRIM feature to do its job and to make sure everything works accordingly.

• To check if your system is in AHCI mode. Go to your device manager and open IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Look for an ACHI controller. If present, then your system is in AHCI mode.

Guide to SSD Optimization for Windows

Configure “Defragment and Optimize your device”

1. Slide your mouse cursor to the top right corner of your screen and click search.
2. Type “Defragment” and click “Defragment and Optimize your drives”.
3. On the “Defragment and Optimize your drives” window. Make sure that your SSD is categorized as an SSD.
   

   Guide to SSD Optimization for Windows

• If it’s not. You can set it as an SSD on your bios. This way, you don’t have to exclude your SSD or disable any scheduled defragmentation.
  

  Guide to SSD Optimization for Windows

Disable Drive Indexing

This one is a matter of your experience or opinion but personally, I felt that Indexing is unnecessary since  it only makes more unnecessary writes on your SSD. Also, the read times of your SSD is fast enough to perform a search to a point that it doesn’t need any indexing at all. However, if you’re someone who constantly searches for emails or files from a large almost full drive. Then disabling drive indexing is not for you.

1.  Press “Windows Logo + R”.
2.  Type “services.msc”(without the quotations).
3.  Look for “Windows Search” and right click on it.
4.  Click properties then click Startup type.
5.  Select Disabled and click OK. (Note: This disables the “search indexer”)
6. Click the folder icon on your taskbar.
   

   Guide to SSD Optimization for Windows

7. Click on your SSD and right click on it.
8. Click properties then uncheck “Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties“.
9. Click apply then click OK.

Guide to SSD Optimization for Windows

Pagefile Managing

If you have a secondary drive, it’s best to put the pagefile on that drive rather than on your SSD. If you don’t have a secondary drive, you can reduce the pagefile size. I won’t go into any petty details about what, how, why, and how about on pagefile. Personally, I disabled pagefile and haven’t encountered any issues ever since. You may want to do if you feel like it is unnecessary but it’s more of a virtual ram and so~so. I just disabled it.

1. Click the folder icon on your taskbar.
2. Right click anywhere on the opened window and click properties.
3. On the system windows, click advance system settings.
4. On the System Properties window and under the Advance tab. Click the Settings inside thePerformance box.
5. On the Performance Options windows. Click Advance tab then click Change.
   

   Guide to SSD Optimization for Windows

6. On the Virtual Memory windows. Uncheck the Automatically Manage Paging File Size on all Drives.
   

   Guide to SSD Optimization for Windows

7. Select your SSD and set it to No Paging File if you plan to move the paging file on your second drive or change the paging file size via Custom Size.
8. If you plan to move it to your second drive. Select your second drive then click System Manage Sizeor set the paging file size on your won by setting it on Custom Size.

Restore Point

Another option that will go down to individual preference. If you want to be in the safe zone and feels like you’re gonna mess up your computer soon then don’t disable restore point or simply reduce the size allocated for this. However, if you’re someone hardcore and can handle your personal computer perfectly. I suggest that you disable restore point and save your SSD from more writes and space.

Disable Hibernate

Hibernate mode is set up by default to allow the hard drive disk to load the programs faster instead of booting the system, but it is unnecessary for an SSD system drive as it takes seconds to boot from an SSD. Doing so frees up space on your SSD drive. However, the hiberfil.sys file will not be removed if you use Windows settings to disable it.

To do this, simply open your CMD command with Admin privileges and type:

powercfg -h off

then press Enter.

Disable SuperFetch

In order to fully optimize your SSD for Windows 10, we recommend to disable Superfetch. This service waste a large amount of time opening and accessing files multiple times thus reducing the lifespan of your SSD. To do this…open“services.

open“services.msc” via run.exe and then look for “Superfetch” in the pop-up window.

Once you found it, disable it by right clicking on it.

And there you have it. Easy steps to optimize your SSD on a friendly SSD Operating system like Windows 8 and  8.1. This way, your SSD will always be at its tip top condition and might last a very long time before you get yourself a new one.

This will be my recommended SSD optimization based on my experience of having an SSD on a Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 system.

Also, to check if TRIM feature is working. Open CMD with Admin rights then type fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify. It will give you one of two results, either a 0 or a 1. A zero indicates that TRIM is enabled correctly, a one means that it is not.