SSD - What steps do I need to take?

[Neji]

I've just purchased my first SSD (thanks to some very good help from here) and I've read various things about making sure TRIM is enabled, switching of system restore etc. I'm also wondering about playing games, should I install them on the SSD and save on another HDD? Do I need to stop all my apps from constantly writing to the SSD, move Windows User files etc?

I was wondering if there is a guide that covers all that stuff for Windows 7? I don't want to miss anything but I don't know everything I need to do.

Thanks.

 

[game junky]

I think it all depends on how big of SSD is - I use a 120GB SSD and other than moving all my media (music, videos, pictures, etc) to a HDD, I leave all my programs on the SSD.

As far as what steps to take, make sure that you have hibernate disabled, make sure you have defrag scheduling disabled, make sure to go into power settings and disable sleep mode and make sure that the SSD never powers off in power settings. Other than that, just occasionally check on firmware updates and enjoy the speed. There are some drives that have a hard time with the Intel RST driver, but other than that I haven't had any issues even though I have used multiple drives from multiple manufacturers.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Hello,

Toms has an excellent article on this subject. TBH you really should be using the forum search function, as this question has been answered numerous times.

Read all of this, and do not just skim through it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-tweak,2911.html

 

[JamesSneed]

I agree with Chainzsaw, follow Toms guide as its pretty good. When following Toms guide the number one thing to do is "Start By Enabling AHCI ". everything else can be tweaked after the Windows 7 install.

I personally do not disable the paging file(256GB SSD) but that will depend on how large your SSD is.

Note by default, Windows 7 will now disable Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance. (This is page 5 in Toms guide which can be skipped now)