Installing xp on ssd drive. How to optimize Windows XP to work with SSD - a private opinion. If you read the inscription "buffalo" on the cage of an elephant ...

As you already know, an SSD is much faster than a regular hard drive, and allows Windows to work with the file system almost instantly, I mean with small files.

It is the work with small files that is the weakest side of a conventional disk, and linear speed, as many people think. An SSD can even be 100MB/s and it will still be faster than even a new hard drive. But what do you do when you love the benefits of an SSD but don't want to leave Windows XP? In this case, you can try setting up Windows XP for the SSD.

In this article, I will give the main points, as well as give recommendations about the operation of the SSD on the old, but still beloved XP.

TRIM SSD support in Windows XP

Perhaps the main problem in XP is the lack of a TRIM command (essentially garbage collection). What is TRIM? In short, so you understand, this is a special interface command with which Windows notifies the SSD which blocks no longer contain data, and therefore they can be physically removed from the SSD. Modern versions of Windows support this command, but in the days of XP, SSDs were not even thought of.

What happens to the SSD if there is no TRIM command? Firstly, if you have a drive on a SandForce controller, then its performance will drop over time, but it will still be much faster than any hard drive.

What to do? Choose an SSD on a Marvel controller, they have a good internal working algorithm and TRIM support is not critical. You can also pay attention to drives with an Indilinx Everest 2 controller (mainly from OCZ), the official forum has a utility to enable TRIM support in Windows XP. Well, the simplest thing is to buy the O&O Defrag program, which, in my opinion, is the best defragmenter that ensures TRIM works with any controller.

That is, we can conclude that Windows XP needs an SSD with "internal self-cleaning", that is, with TRIM support. You do not need to defragment an SSD, disable it immediately and never enable it. If possible, reduce the activity of working with the file system, by the way, you can look towards the PrimoCache utility (it works at the driver level).

The size or partition boundaries on the SSD must be a multiple of 1 MB, for example, the GParted manager can do this (in LiveCD mode, the layout is created automatically).

I advise you to buy not the cheapest SSD to work in Windows XP (I advise the manufacturer Intel), and also, if possible, leave at least 20% of free disk space.

Installing Windows XP on an SSD Drive

The first thing to understand is that AHCI mode is required for support, IDE mode will not work (or rather, the SSD will just work slower). Therefore, before installing, go into the BIOS and switch SATA in AHCI mode.

The second thing to do is to embed the SATA AHCI drivers in Windows XP, in general, you will have to download the drivers for this and embed them into the installation disk, this can be done using the nLite utility. Since, by and large, SATA controllers are manufactured by Intel, we go to their website and look for our motherboard. If you suddenly do not know your chipset, then you need to go to the Device Manager and in the IDE ATA / ATAPI Controllers section you will see its name.

As a last resort, you can try installing some build of Windows XP with built-in SATA AHCI drivers, but I don't recommend that. Just to make sure that it works with your motherboard - you can try. Do not forget to install the O&O Defrag defragmenter on the installed system, which, as I already wrote, will execute the TRIM command (there is an “automatic optimization” section in the program settings, you can enable SSD optimization once a week there). The developers of O&O Defrag report (this can be found in the documentation for the program) that in principle, even in IDE mode, TRIM can work, but is not guaranteed.

How to check that TRIM is working?

You can check if TRIM is actually working using the TRIMcheck utility. How? Very simple - run this utility on the drive you want to check and press enter. Then close the window, wait a few minutes, and run the utility again.

If TRIM is working, then you will see such an inscription in a black window (that is, in the console) - TRIM appears to be WORKING!:

But how does the TRIMcheck utility work? It's very simple - when it starts, it writes a certain amount of data to disk and notes the addresses of the virtual blocks that were written to. Then these addresses are saved in a JSON file in the folder with the utility, after saving, the previously recorded data is deleted - this checks the operation of TRIM. When restarted, TRIMcheck checks if there is data at the addresses that are in the JSON file, if they are not, then the SSD disk controller has successfully processed the TRIM command and the files have been deleted.

Maybe disable Prefetcher for SSD?

Let's think about what Prefetcher is anyway? This is a special Windows component that can speed up the boot process and increase the speed of programs launching. It first appeared in Windows XP, and since Vista there have also been additional technologies - ReadyBoost and SuperFetch. What does Prefetcher do? I’ll try to be brief so that what they say “do not load” you - Prefetcher technology analyzes the work of programs and tries to predict the data that they will need at a certain time (for this, the technology simply places this data in RAM). This allows you to speed up the launch of programs, loading modules.

It is possible to disable it - the benefit to the SSD from this is doubtful, but you can try. To do this, open the registry using the key combination Win+R(then enter the command there regedit), and go this way:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

There will be a key EnablePrefetcher(DWORD), the value of which can be changed to:

After changing the parameter EnablePrefetcher you can not do a reboot, but if possible, do it better.

I recently got an OSZ Vertex 4 SSD. I didn’t immediately begin to deal with all the specifics of these devices properly. I heard that Windows 7 is better for SSDs due to disabling defragmentation for them and something else. "Oh, okay," - I thought - "I'll have to install Windows 7." I already tried to work with this system, I remembered that I didn’t like it, but I decided to give it another chance. Withstood this Windows 7 I one week. First, I broke off with the lack of folders with shortcuts in the Start menu. The forum helped where they suggested the Classic Shell utility.
But the real problem was the wild instability of 3ds Max and its slowness in viewports when working with scenes of medium and heavy weight. Instability is so special in general - max often crashed without an offer to continue. And one of the scenes allowed me to save exactly 2 times, after which it was no longer saved and after some (small) time it fell. The same scene did not cause problems in XP 64 either before or after 7k.
Wow, trees! Finally, I understood why the same scene often works stably for me, but for other people with whom I happened to work remotely, it crashed. Now it's all messed up for me.
I fully felt the moment that was said on Lukomorye "XP is the apogee of the development of the Windows line and the last system in it that did not try to consider itself smarter and more important than the user." So yes, the behavior of 7ki made me think that the system is trying to allocate less memory to programs, what she thinks they deserve. the system itself was consuming 1.1GB of my 8 from the start. Of course, I heard that "Windows will give you the RAM when you need it," but I no longer believe in this.

I don't want to hear more about 7ke! Who screams there - "super system" - they only loaded it with toys. For work, my work, it doesn't fit.

So, I decided to return to my beloved Piggy 64. In general, I installed it without any problems, and only then began to deal with the peculiarities of using XP on an SSD. Learned about the TRIM operation. And I also realized that it is sensible and consistent nowhere, even on the manufacturers' websites - it is not indicated how to set up the system so that the SSD works in XP without any problems.
I decided here, in one place, to collect all the pieces of information on installing and configuring Windows XP 64 on an SSD. Microsoft is doing its best to move users to 7k by not including the essential elements for full XP support in their installation discs, but fortunately the world is not without good people - third-party manufacturers and the Internet collective knowledge allow you to get around the obstacles of the Megacorporation.

1. First and most importantly, you need to install Windows XP on a computer whose SATA mode has been converted to AHCI. Since I used to work in XP, my computer was set to IDE mode and I never bothered with it (didn't know about AHCI at all). But it turned out that the TRIM operation required for the SSD requires only the AHCI mode set in the BIOS. It is curious that SSD manufacturers do not yell about this, and it can only be deducted somewhere in the depths of some manuals (my OSZ did not have a word about AHCI at all, I saw a mention on the Corsair website) or in rare articles.
Since I first installed it on the SSD in IDE mode, I tried to transfer Windows from IDE to AHCI on a system already installed on the SSD (by changing the drivers, as various articles on the Internet advised), but in all cases it ended with a BSOD and the need to reinstall Windows. So first of all, before installing WINDOWS XP 64, you need to go into the BIOS and switch SATA to AHCI.

2. If you started installing Windows XP right after the first point, you would be disappointed. Blue screen of death. The fact is that the standard assembly of WIndows XP does not include SATA AHCI drivers. Thank you, Little Soft!
In general, these drivers need to be downloaded and built into the XP installation disk. The SATA controller for most PCs is made by Intel, so you have to go there and download it. It is curious that just by entering the name of the chipset on the intel website, you are unlikely to immediately find the right drivers right away. At least they didn't hit me right away. if you have the same chipset as I have ICH10 then here is a suitable link. By the way, it is suitable not only for ICH10R, but also for earlier models.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18063&lang=eng&wapkw=sata+ahci+driver

If you don't know the name of your chipset, go to the device manager, go to the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section - you'll see it there. And look for drivers.

3. Next, we need to embed these drivers into the Windows XP installation disk image. Don't just mess up. If XP is 64, you need to install 64-bit drivers too. This must be done using the nLite program. I did as described here
http://acerfans.ru/faq/16-integracija-drajjverov-sata-v.html
Only I slipped the drivers I downloaded, and not those that are offered there - they are laptop ones.
When you specify the path to the folder with your downloaded drivers, the nLite program will display a list of chipsets whose drivers are proposed to be included in the installation. Choose - everything, do not look for yours, you can only look so that yours is there.

Application. Do not use any author's assemblies of Windows, of which there are plenty on the Internet. Even if it says that these same AHCI SATA are included. I had to reinstall Windows three times because of these assemblies. there all the time something fell off - on one video card driver was not installed, the other one installed some devices, which are not there, and Windows cursed constantly. Take only the VL version

4. Install Windows. Did you forget to switch SATA to AHCI? :)

5. When Windows XP 64 is installed, (pay attention, the system "eats" 160MB of RAM before installing the drivers!) You need to configure it a little. You need to install the O&ODefrag disk defragmentation and optimization utility. It will disable the standard Windows defragmenter and will defragment (not SSD drives, but the rest) according to your settings.
Go to the program settings, in the "automatic optimization" section and enable optimization for your SSD - once a week. This will be your TRIM in Windows XP.
Although the program is German, they also didn’t write anything sensible about the vital necessity in AHCI mode, moreover, their documentation directly states that TRIM can technically work in IDE, but, they say, with brakes. They have a command line utility that manually starts TRIM, so whether it worked or not is completely incomprehensible!

6. In order to make sure that TRIM works, you need to download the trimcheck-0.4 program. The fact is that the fact that the program sends the TRIM command does not mean that it is happening.
Trimcheck must be copied to the SSD, run. You will see a message that the program did something there (created a temporary file) and you need to close it, perform the TRIM operation (using the command line utility oodcmd.exe / TRIM:C in the O&ODefrag folder. During this operation (which takes 10 seconds) 20) can slow down the computer, slow down the cursor, break the sound.After that, run trimcheck-0.4 again and make sure TRIM works.The program will delete the temporary file.

7. The last thing left to do is disable Prefetcher. How to do this - it is said in the article on Wikipedia.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefetcher

Prefetcher settings are stored in the system registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters. The EnablePrefetcher (DWORD) parameter can be one of the following values:
0x00000000 - Component is disabled
0x00000001 - speed up application launch
0x00000002 - system boot acceleration
0x00000003 - Acceleration of application launch and system boot

Changing the EnablePrefecher parameter takes effect immediately.

That's all, in fact, everything is simple, but in order for me to figure it out, I had to reinstall Windows 6 times. I hope that everything I wrote here will help someone.
That's it, nothing more needs to be done for the SSD. O&ODefag starts automatically with Windows and will do what you tell it in the settings.

Any questions or comments - write!

So you've got a brand new SSD. You installed a system on it, armed yourself with an optimization guide found on the net, and after a couple of hours you did everything possible to ... slow down your work in the system!

Don't believe? Think about what constitutes high performance. Advantages SSD speeds you can experience in three categories:

• system, for example, the speed of its loading and operation
• programs, including web surfing and working with documents, images and media files
• your actions, including disk navigation and copy/move files

How myths are born

I'm pretty sure that your SSD tuning measures have negatively affected at least one of these components. You will learn why this happened next, but first about the reasons for this optimization.

If you read the inscription "buffalo" on the cage of an elephant ...

There are tons of guides and even tweaks on the web to optimize your SSD. In fact, the same information is used everywhere, and:

• obsolete, since it is aimed at saving disk space and reducing the number of rewrite cycles, which is irrelevant for modern SSDs in home PCs
• useless, because Windows itself takes care of what they offer to configure
• harmful, because it leads to a decrease in the speed of work - yours, programs and system

look critical to your guide or tweaker and think about which items fit into one of those categories!

There is another problem - bad presentation of information including misplaced accents.

If you have an HDD alongside an SSD, measure the speeds of both drives and keep the picture in mind. I will return to her, and more than once!

Special Notes for Dissenters

After the publication of the material, I decided to specifically clarify a few points so as not to repeat them regularly in the comments when answering opponents.

In this article:

1. All myths are considered solely from the point of view of speeding up the system, programs and user. If a measure is declared useless or harmful, it means that it does nothing to speed up the work.
2. Reducing the amount of writes to disk is not considered as an optimization measure due to the irrelevance of this approach. If this is your goal, myths 3 - 11 are for you, as well as storing an SSD in a sideboard.
3. RAM disk usage is not considered as it is not directly related to SSD optimization. If you have an excess of RAM, you can use the RAM disk regardless of the type of drives installed in your PC.
4. All recommendations are given taking into account a wide audience, i.e. most users. When analyzing tips, keep in mind that they may not match your tasks, work skills, and ideas about the optimal and competent use of the operating system.

Now - let's go! :)

myths

1. Disable SuperFetch, ReadyBoot and Prefetch

This advice: debatable, can slow down the launching of programs, and in Windows 10 - increase the amount of disk writing and reduce the overall performance of the OS when there is not enough RAM

The speed of launching programs from the hard drive

When each program is launched, the prefetcher checks for the presence of a trace (.pf file). If one is found, the prefetcher uses links to the file system's MFT metadata to open all necessary files. It then calls a special memory manager function to asynchronously read data and code from the trace that is not currently in memory. When the program is started for the first time or the startup script has changed, the prefetcher writes a new trace file (highlighted in the figure).

It is unlikely that SuperFetch is capable of speeding up the launch of programs from an SSD, but Microsoft does not disable the feature, given the presence of hard drives in the system. If a proprietary SSD manufacturer's utility (such as the Intel SSD Toolbox) recommends disabling SuperFetch, follow its advice. However, in this case it is more than logical to keep all programs on the SSD, which will be discussed below.

Compress memory in Windows 10

This aspect is covered in a separate article Nuances of disabling the SysMain service in Windows 10. Earlier on this page there was an excerpt from it, published impromptu.

2. Disable the Windows Defragmenter

This tip: useless or harmful, may degrade disk performance

One of the functions of the CheckBootSpeed ​​utility is to check the status of a scheduled defragmentation job and the Task Scheduler service. Let's see how these parameters are relevant for the latest Microsoft OS installed on the SSD.

Windows 7

Windows 7 does not defragment the SSD, which is confirmed by the words of the developers in the blog.

Windows 7 will disable defragmentation for SSD drives. Because SSDs excel at random reads, defragmenting won't provide the same benefits that it does on a regular drive.

If you don't believe the developers, take a look at the event log. You won't find any entries there about defragmenting an SSD volume.

So when the SSD is the only drive, the scheduled task simply doesn't run. And when the PC also has a HDD, disabling a task or scheduler deprives the hard drive of decent optimization with a standard defragmenter.

Windows 8 and newer

In Windows 8, the place of the defragmenter was taken by the disk optimizer!

Optimizing hard drives, as before, comes down to defragmentation. Windows no longer ignores solid state drives, but helps them by sending the controller additional a set of TRIM commands for the entire volume at once. This happens according to the schedule as part of automatic maintenance, i.e. when you're not working on a PC.

Depending on the SSD controller, garbage collection can be performed immediately upon receipt of the TRIM command, or delayed until a period of inactivity. By disabling the disk optimizer or task scheduler, you reduce the performance of the drive.

3. Disable or move the paging file

This tip: useless or harmful, reduces the speed of the system when there is not enough memory

The hardware configuration must be balanced. If you don't have enough RAM installed, you should add more, as an SSD only makes up for some of the lack of RAM by speeding up swapping compared to a hard drive.

When you have enough memory, the swap file is practically not used, i.e. This will not affect the life of the disk in any way. But many people still turn off paging - they say, let the system keep everything in memory, I said! As a result, the Windows memory manager does not work in the most optimal mode (see #4).

In extreme cases, the paging file is transferred to the hard drive. But if suddenly the memory is not enough, you will only benefit in performance by having pagefile.sys on the SSD!

IN Q: Do I need to put the swap file on the SSD?

ABOUT: Yes. The main operations with the swap file are random writes of small volumes or sequential writes of large data arrays. Both types of operations work great on an SSD.

Analyzing telemetry focused on evaluating writes and reads for the swap file, we found that:

• reading from Pagefile.sys prevails over writing to pagefile.sys in a ratio of 40:1,
• read blocks for Pagefile.sys are usually quite small, 67% of them are less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% are less than 16 KB,
• write blocks in Pagefile.sys are quite large, 62% of them are greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% are almost exactly 1 MB

Generally speaking, the typical swap file usage patterns and SSD performance characteristics are a great fit, and it is this file that is highly recommended to be placed on an SSD.

But in practice, the desire to extend the life of an SSD at any cost is indestructible. Here is a blog reader shaking his SSD, transferring pagefile.sys to the hard drive, although he himself even sees with the naked eye that this reduces performance. By the way, my netbook cannot install more than 2 GB of memory, and with a solid state drive it became much more comfortable than with a standard 5400 rpm HDD.

Finally, don't forget that completely disabling the swap file will prevent you from performing critical error diagnostics. The paging file size can be flexibly adjusted, so you always have a choice between disk space and performance.

Tricky question: what was my swap file size when i took the task manager screenshot?

Special Note

On the Internet (including in the comments to this entry) you can often find the statement: “The paging file is not needed if you have installed N GB RAM. Depending on fantasy N takes the value 8, 16, or 32. This statement does not make sense, because it does not take into account the tasks that are performed on a PC with a given amount of memory.

If you set yourself 32GB, and 4-8GB is used, then yes, you don’t need FP (but then it’s not clear why you bought 32GB RAM :). If you have purchased such an amount of memory in order to use it as much as possible in your tasks, then the FP will come in handy for you.

4. Disable hibernation

This advice: vague and harmful to mobile PCs, can reduce battery life and speed of your work

I would put my advice like this:

• stationary PCs - shutdown is normal, because you might as well use sleep
• mobile PCs - turning off is not always advisable, especially when the battery consumption is high during sleep

However, people have disabled, are disabling and will disable system protection regardless of the type of disk, this is already in the blood! And no, I don't want to discuss this topic in the comments for the hundredth time :)

6. Disabling Windows search and/or disk indexing

This tip: useless, slows down your work

This is sometimes argued by the fact that SSDs are so fast that the index will not significantly speed up the search. These people just never really used real Windows search!

I believe that it is pointless to deprive yourself of a useful tool that speeds up the performance of everyday tasks.

If you have fallen victim to any of these myths, tell me in the comments if I managed to convince you of their futility or harm and in what cases. If you don't agree with my assessment of "optimization", explain what is the benefit of these actions.

You can mark fragments of text that are interesting to you, which will be available via a unique link in the browser's address bar.

about the author

Vadim, in recent days I have bought 4 SSDs for installation in all my computers. Let's just say... life has changed :-)

I also thought for a long time whether to buy a laptop with an SSD or a hybrid drive, the second one won, I chose 340GB + 24 SSD. I was surprised that the standard installation of Windows 8 was on a 5400 drive, but not an SSD. After suffering for a long time, I moved Windows 8 to an SSD and went a little crazy, because. about 3 GB left on the SSD. Knowing that over time W8 will swell and will need to fight for space, I returned everything back, transferred TEMP and Page file to SSD, plus I put frequently run programs.

Still, you just had to buy a laptop with an SSD and not soar your brain. They gave me an SSD for NG and now I'll stuff it into an old netbook, install W8 and be happy.

Thanks for the articles about SSD, we have the whole department reading.

Alexei

You, Vadim, have gone through SSD myths very well, we can hope that now there will be fewer fans of SSD perversions. I have Win8 on an SSD, as I installed it and it plows, I’m satisfied and don’t bother my head with all sorts of optimizations, the exhaust from which is doubtful.

PS: Answer to the question: 1Gb.

• Alexey, thanks for the response. You can’t put your head on everyone, but I don’t try :)

  The answer to the question is incorrect. How did you come to him?

madgrok

Before buying an SSD, I read a mountain of forums, benchmarks, etc. And I came to the conclusion that all tweaks are in the furnace.
Why do people buy their own SSD? Of course, what would be faster! :) And most of the optimization tweaks basically negate the entire performance gain, which Vadim wrote about.
I use my Vertex 4 256 GB as a regular disk for the system. Bought somewhere in the fall. The flight is excellent, health is 100%
An excellent article, I will recommend it to all my friends, friends for reading so as not to suffer. :)
And in general, thanks to the author for a great blog. I really like the fact that the topic is trying to "disassemble the bones."

Andrey

Vadim, at the end of the article there is a survey about the presence of SSD on our computers, I think that this topic is still relevant - there are those who are not going to, at least in the near future, acquire a solid state drive for a number of reasons - someone does not see the point of installing it on an old one they save up a computer for a new one, or, as in the polling point, arranges an HDD, or this is how Pavel Nagaev thinks for a long time which one to prefer ....
What would you advise? Is it worth moving the OS to an SSD for "increasing system performance", so to speak?

Andre

Hello Vadim, I think a lot of people are now looking at buying an SSD, and it would be very cool if you wrote an article on choosing an SSD!

Alexey Matashkin

Vadim, thanks for the article.
In my practice, I did not have to deal with these myths, I only heard some advice separately, so I read it with pleasure.

I don’t quite get into the survey :) The main PC is not home, and it has an SSD. And at home, there is still enough of the usual.

There is nothing to add on questions, because I don’t use tweaks, all installed SSDs work normally with the system.
Although, an important detail is updating the firmware on the disk. In my practice, there are 3 cases of serious failures that were eliminated with firmware version updates.

Valentine

Pavel Nagaev,

Your 24 SSD was most likely designed for caching, which is why it is so small, maybe you needed to use it as a cache, in which case you get the benefits of both media - volume and speed. Vadim, do you have an article regarding hybrid hard drives or combining HDD with SSD? I think many readers might be interested in such an article. I think the topic of 12 myths is very useful, because I have many friends who consider themselves experts, but make such mistakes and impose these mistakes on ordinary users, thanks to the link to this article, it will be possible to convince them to make such mistakes

Vadims Podans

Nice and good article.

Sergey

Yes, indeed, people are surprised who buy an SSD to speed up work, but then they themselves transfer everything and turn it off and lose performance again ..

MythBusters in action! We went through all these myths with a skating rink.

Alexey G

At first I fell for disabling hibernation, but then I realized that it was inconvenient.
I remove labels 8.3. Because I use new versions of the program, and I don't need it)

From life: when I build a PC with an SSD, I transfer user files to the HDD. If the PC for unknown reasons (playful hands, viruses) starts not to boot, then if I am nearby, then I will restore the customized image of the installed system (thanks to the blog), but if the person called another “master”, then the first thing he will do is format the disk: (More Unfortunately, I have not seen a smart way in my city, so this is a forced need to save the user's files.

Answer to the question: 2834mb?

Dima

Thanks Vadim.
As always intelligible and with a light sense of humor.
As promised, I part with the myths easily and see you off on your last journey. I'll turn everything back on.
Sincerely, Dima.

PGKrok

I agree on all points, but I myself had to transfer the index files, some programs and personal photo-videos to the HDD, because. SSD - only 60 GB (which one I mastered :))
For comparison (to the question of "keeping the picture in mind")
Result CrystalDiskMarc (HDD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/HDD1301020_6347406_6812031.png
Result CrystalDiskMarc (SSD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/OSZ3010201_4238885_6812055.png

controller SATA-3 SSD - SATA-6

Dawn

I bought a 60gb ssd, left only Windows 8, program files, appdata, program data on it. The rest is on hdd.
Reason: the system partition is growing too fast, just look, the place will go to zero.
When buying, there was one task: to speed up the cold boot of the system. What he achieved - 8 seconds.
Vadim, the article is a test, thanks!

Ruby

About transferring TEMP and cache - I stupidly put them on a gigabyte ramdisk - this is a real speed increase, incomparable with SSD.

Denis Borisych

I have been working in IT for a long time and still do not cease to be surprised at the grief of optimizers.

I have had an ssd in my home computer for a year now and everything is in a bunch. 7 starts in 10 seconds, programs load quickly and easily without any optimizations. Well, except that the folder of necessary and important documents is not on ssd (its size is over 500 GB). And in the folder "My Documents" there is usually a routine.

As a person, well, I am very close to IT, sometimes I am not enthusiastic about the innovations of MS (only the inability to use Explorer without a mouse is worth something). But I must objectively admit that in terms of optimizing the operation of the OS on ssd and stability of work, they are undoubtedly great.

Ruby

I would also transfer the search index, but on the Windows blog they write that it is still kept in memory, so it makes no sense.

SuperFetch is needed in any case, it preloads files into RAM in advance, increasing speed and reducing the number of accesses to the drive.

Valery

Vadim, I read your articles quite regularly and often put the advice from them into practice.
Having bought an SSD (Intel 520 120GB), I also first read about all sorts of optimizations and even applied some, but now I left only the indexing transferred to the HDD and Intel's recommendations for their disks, and here some of your advice and recommendations from Intel diverge:
http://123foto.ru/pics/01-2013/42746566_1358157387.jpg
Whom to listen to?))

Alexei

Vadim Sterkin,

Came by typing :-)
My swap file takes up 1 Gb per 16Gb of RAM (the size of the system's choice). Moreover, the system monitor shows almost zero% load. I decided that 8Gb should have at least 1Gb.

Oleg

Hello Vadim. I always look forward to new articles from you, this article was VERY useful for me and for my friends. To my regret, my arguments and advice do not reach some friends, for some reason they trust more forums where they do not always write useful information.
I hope this article will convince you.

I will wait for articles about choosing an SSD.
Thank you.

George

Thank you for the article.
To be honest, I didn’t quite understand about Superfetch - what is the increase in performance on an SSD?

And about the size of the swap file, the answer seems to be this: 10.7 GB is written in the allocated line. From this figure, you must subtract the amount of RAM.

Alexander

I recently bought a Kingston Hiper X 3K 120GB SSD. I installed Seven sp1. I did not see any increase in download speed and program operation.
Previous configuration: Asus P5Q, 2 WD 500Gb Raid 0, DDR2 2 1GB each.
My conclusion: when connecting an SSD to a "slow" Sata 3Gb / s port, the performance gain of the system, compared to that set to stripping, is negligible. You will have to upgrade to a motherboard with Sata 6Gb / s and at least 8GB DDR3 memory.

GlooBus

Pavel Nagaev,

From 16-32 GB SSD disks soldered on laptop motherboards, there is no sense. The best thing in this case would be to take a laptop in a simple configuration with an HDD and upgrade it yourself. I did just that, took the ASUS X301A with 2 GB of memory, 320 GB of HDD and upgraded to 8 GB of memory and 128 GB of SSD. The laptop worked in a completely different way! Loading the computer from pressing the button until the password entry window appears is 6-7 seconds. I didn’t do any tweaks, except that I turned off indexing, tk. I don't use search.

Alick

The other day I installed VERTEX 4 128Gb Win 8 on it, applied optimizers, and after a week I realized that it was in vain, incl. will have to be reinstalled. And here's another great article.

Michal

Vadim Sterkin,

I think this is due to the fact that most people simply have not yet had a specific practice in using an SSD, like you have.
and there are many myths.
for example, I'm from Uzbekistan, we have SSDs here that have just appeared.
no experience with them yet. yes, and very expensive.
I read your article, I realized that in vain I transferred the swap file.
thanks for the article, I hope not the last :)

Question: Is it possible to correctly install Windows XP on an SSD?

Answer:

Nothing different from mounting on a screw.

Message from vavun

This is already to extend the life of the SSD, although the author will most likely need a trim with modern technologies.

Question: After installing Windows 7, usb ports, touchpad, internet do not work

Answer: efjifwe, installing Windows is an incomplete business. To do this, you need to install drivers that can be downloaded from the official website of your laptop manufacturer.
If there really are no drivers for Windows 7, then you need to return the version of Windows that was originally installed.
And by the way, if you still have a warranty, then you reinstalled Windows in vain, because because of this your warranty will simply be cancelled.

Q: Can I install IE 11 on Windows XP, 32 or 64 bit?

Answer:

Message from iooan4

As far as I noticed, IE 11 is installed in the x86 directory, which means it has only a 32-bit system

Question: Installing Windows 7

Install"

Format"



Further"

and continue installation

Answer: If you do not have an installation disk, but have an image of it
Want to burn an image to a disc - How to burn discs correctly
Want to create a bootable flash drive - FAQ on creating a bootable USB flash drive

How to split a disk into several during installation
So, we have a hard drive that needs to be divided into several local
1. Click the item " Disk setup"

2. In the next step, you must click the item " Create" and after that additional settings will be available

3. In the box Size"you need to enter digital information about the size of the created disk, in this example, disk C will occupy 20 GB, after entering digital information, you must press the button" Apply"

4. As a result, we got a section with a bootloader ( don't touch him ) and local disk C (it needs to be formatted, for this the disk must be selected and clicked on the item " Format")

5. To create other local disks, you need to select the section " Unallocated disk space", press item " Create", then enter the digital information of the disk being created, in this example it will be 40 GB and click the " Apply"

6. As a result, another local disk will appear that can be formatted immediately

7. Next, in the same way, another local disk is created from the section " Unallocated disk space"
Important - to continue installing windows, you must select drive C, in this case it is Section 2

You can also create additional local drives after installing Windows (steps 5,6,7 are not needed for this). Creating disks is done through the Disk Management utility.

Question: Installing Windows 8 on a USB flash drive

To create a bootable flash drive, you will need a Windows 8 Enterprise Edition (or Ultimate) distribution. In addition, the capacity of the media must be appropriate - at least 16 GB.

Answer: 1. Downloading the utility Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool 1.0
(The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool allows you to install the Windows 7 \ 8 operating system from a USB drive, and not from an optical disc, as usual. This utility works fine with both Windows 7 and Windows 8).

If you do not know which version of Windows 8 to use, then I recommend installing a 64-bit build (especially if your computer is relatively new).
64-bit Windows 8 differs from 32-bit in that it requires 1GB more RAM and 4GB more disk space, which is negligible for most users.

Create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 8.
To create a bootable USB flash drive, you need to insert it into your computer. Next, install the Windows 7 USB / DVD utility and run it. In the utility, select the downloaded ISO image with Windows 8 and the desired flash drive.
Remember, everything on your flash drive will be erased! So copy all the important data from it in advance or it is better to use a new USB flash drive.

Upon successful completion, a message like “Backup completed” will appear.

Installing Windows 8
It is worth noting that before performing the installation, you should back up all important data. If you want to upgrade or overwrite your Windows XP, Vista, or 7 installation, open the root directory of your USB stick in Windows Explorer, and then run the Setup.exe file.

You will see a selection prompt that will allow you to save settings, personal files, etc., save only personal files, or save nothing:

Windows 7 users can choose the first option - after all, upgrading to Windows 8 is less painful for them - all their Windows settings, programs, accounts and files are imported. However, programs from Vista and programs and settings from Windows XP will not be preserved.
If you want to create a two-boot system from Windows 8 and your current operating system, you will have to install an additional drive on your computer or create a new partition on the current drive.
The first case does not require further explanation: we simply connect another drive to the computer and select it when installing Windows 8.
The second case is more complicated and requires additional efforts. Vista and 7 users can create a new partition using the built-in Disk Management tool (Click the Start button and search for diskmgmt.msc). After running the application, you should see the disk of your operating system. We do the following:

• We right-click on the disk on which we want to install Windows 8 and select the option “Shrink Volume” (Shrink Volume). Remember that 64-bit Windows 8 requires at least 20GB of space, so shrink your partition accordingly;
• We right-click on the new “Unallocated” (Unallocated) place and create a “New Volume” (New Simple Volume);
• We select the next available drive letter, and format it in NTFS (you can choose any drive name, but recommended: Windows 8 RP x64).

In turn, Windows XP users will have to resort to third utilities, such as Partition Logic, to create a new partition. But, in fact, they need to do the same thing: compress one of their volumes and create another.
After that, we simply boot from our USB flash drive with Windows 8, select manual installation and specify the newly created partition. If you cannot boot from a flash drive, then you must specify booting from it in the BIOS.
If you want to remove Windows 8, boot your main operating system and run the partitioning program again (for Vista and 7 users, this is the aforementioned disk management tool). Delete the Windows 8 volume and expand your primary volume to take up the newly freed space.
Removing Windows 8 can corrupt the bootloader and prevent the main operating system from booting. But don't panic. To fix the problem, Windows Vista and 7 users can use automatic repair (from the installation disk), while XP users will have to boot into the recovery console and then enter the commands fixmbr, fixboot, exit.

2. If application Microsoft Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool seems too complicated, you can use a simpler option - the program Windows 8 USB Installer Maker.

The sequence of steps to create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 8 using the program is as follows:

We are preparing a flash drive with a volume of at least 4GB.
Downloading the Windows 8 distribution
Download the Windows 8 USB Installer Maker program itself (or take it)
We start the program Windows 8 USB Installer Maker with administrator rights:

To start recording, you just need to select the previously downloaded Windows 8 image using the button Search ISO, tick format drive and press the button Create.
The program will then perform three steps:

1. Format the drive to NTFS format;
2. Copies all the files of the Windows 8 distribution to a USB flash drive. Please note that this step will take a long time depending on the power of the computer - maybe even one or two hours;
3. Creates a boot area partition (MBR) on the USB.

Question: Installing Windows 7

4. In the next step, press the button " Install"

5. We see the inscription " Installation start" and then you need to read the terms of the license, if you agree, then you need to check the box next to " I accept the license terms"and press the button" Further"

10. And now the bootloader has been created, select our disk and click the item " Format"

Next, we agree that the data will be lost

After formatting, press the button " Further"

11. Windows installation has begun, patiently waiting for the reboot

12. During the reboot, we return to the BIOS the boot priority from hdd, then we see

and continue installation

13. So, it happened, we enter the username, it is also better to change the computer name so that there are no Russian letters

15. We enter the key until we do and uncheck

Do not forget to activate windows within 30 days, the key can be on a sticker that is pasted on the case or with a key that was purchased when purchasing the OS.

This article describes the features of installing Windows XP on new HDD or SSD drives with 4k sectors (4096 bytes, so-called Advanced Format drives).

The peculiarity of using such disks is that the partitions on these disks must be aligned along the boundaries of a multiple of 1024. That is, the beginning of the first (system) partition should not be in sector 63, as it was on old disks, but, for example, in sector 2048.

This is the problem with installing Windows XP. Two situations are possible here:

1. Partitioning the disk with the Windows XP installer.
2. Partitioning the disk with the Windows 7 or 8, 10 installer, as well as alternative programs, such as gparted.

In the first case, there will be a drop in the speed of the disk, because the partitions will be aligned along odd boundaries. This is due to the fact that the Windows XP installer "does not know" anything about 4K disks and does not know how to work with them correctly. And for example, he will start the first section with sector number 63.

And in the second case, the Windows XP bootloader will not be able to start. This is due to the fact that the first part of the bootloader code, which is written in the MBR sector, will "crawl" into sector 63 behind the second part of the bootloader. And it's empty there, because the aligned partition starts in a completely different sector (for example, 2048).

That is, the algorithm for installing Windows XP on a 4K disk should be as follows:

1. Create NTFS partitions on a disk using programs that can work with 4K disks. It is best to use Windows 7 for this purpose, but something else is also possible.
2. Start installing Windows XP. After the first step, text mode - copy files, then the installer will restart the computer and you will get a black screen. There will be no loading in the second stage.
3. Now you will need to install an alternative bootloader.

The easiest option is to use the bootsect program, which is included with Windows 7, 8, 10. You need to start the computer from the installation disk of any of these versions, when the installer starts, press the Shift + F10 keys - this will open the Windows terminal (command line). In the terminal run the command:

bootsect /nt52 c: /mbr

In the command line, you need to specify the letter of the drive where you started installing Windows XP. You can find out the drive letter by first running the diskpart program. Or based on the rule for assigning letters to disk partitions. If the disk is the only one and it has one partition, it will be the letter C:. If there are two partitions, then the first partition will get the letter C: and the second partition will get the letter D:

Alternatively, in the installer window, you can select "System Restore" and then use the Windows Boot Repair tools

Another option is to start the computer in some assembly of Live Windows and run the program from there Bootice.

After installing the bootloader, you need to boot the computer from the disk and the Windows installation will continue.

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