Recently I dusted-off one SSD and decided to install it into my ThinkPad X201. It's a small 64 GiB 2.5" Transcend drive, and wanted to see how much better is using the SSD (on this machine) compared to a conventional spinning-disk drive. So here's my check-list:
- Install Windows 7 as usual.
- Disable scheduled disk defragmentation - right click on the drive, select "Tools" tab, click "Defragment now...", click "Configure schedule...", uncheck "Run on a schedule".
- Disable file indexing - right click on the drive, select "General" tab, uncheck "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".
- Check the MSAHCI driver is using SATA mode - edit registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci\Start" to value "0".
- Reboot and check in your BIOS that the disk is in SATA (sometimes described as AHCI) mode, not Compatibility mode.
- Check for disk TRIM support, run this command in the console (run "cmd" as administrator): "fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0". Note: SSD TRIM can actually slow-down your machine, by explicitly marking blocks for deletion. It's entirely possible to have TRIM disabled and to just over-provision your disk by leaving some non-partitioned spaceon the disk (between 7% and 25%). Feel free to experiment and choose what suits you best.
- Disable your system page file - Control Panel -> System, select "Advanced" tab, click on "Settings..." button in "Performance" area, select "Advanced" tab, click "Change...", uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives", select "No paging file" radio-button, click "Set", reboot (hey, GUIs are nicer than command-line, aren't they?).
It's not very scientific, but it works.
The usual disclaimer: This information was found on the "Internet", and was copied here solely for my own convenience. I didn't invented these tip, credit should go to others.