I have been reading the forums and trying to learn about SSD and how to optimize perfommance, live and speed. I have read Tom's Guide and most of the other threads on this subject. But I'm still getting wrapped around the axel on this and I want to focus on one premise:
Assume I will NEVER have AHCI or TRIM support. Let's stick with "no AHCI and no TRIM".
1) Are there any utilities that can accomplish the same thing as TRIM, even though not necessarily on the fly? Are there utilities that can be run occasionally, that will put the SSD back into better performance, that recovers space compared to not having trim and doing nothing? I mean are there any "it's better than nothing tools" that can be used in place of trim?
2) I have turned off the features that allow disc optimization (i.e. defragging) backups, etc. But this also prevents me from defragging my other HDD. How do you typically deal with that? Do you temporarily turn it on to allow defragging a 2nd or 3rd drive that needs defragging? When I try to run defragmentation now, it does nothing. I can't even use it on my HDDs, since I turned this off for my SSD.
3) I guess one should not defrag an SSD, because it's not really necessary. But purely from a housekeeping standpoint, is it possible to defrag (one-time only say), to get all the programs together and all the free space released?
I ask this, because I have installed and then uninstalled a few programs, created and deleted a number of files, in setting up my SSD. It's possible that my SSD is already getting messy. One of the things I was considering doing, before I go any further, is to make and exact clone of this drive, on a 2nd SSD.
This would serve 2 purposes. It would give me an exact baseline copy of my SSD, with OS installed and nothing else, to allow me to get back to square 1, without having to re-install my OS.
4) The other side to #3 is, "can one clone an SSD, to be 100% identical to the original, so that one can remove one and install the other in it's place and be guaranteed that it would boot, without any diference from the first. I mean purely identical". If possible, what are the better programs for doing this?