How do you configure Windows on an SSD?


Recommended Posts

When I setup Windows on an SSD I've always done a list of things:

 

-Disable Hibernation

-Disable System Restore

-Disable Defrag

 

-Move personal folders (My Music, Downloads, My Documents, etc) as well as the Desktop directory onto secondary HDD

-Move Temp directories onto secondary HDD

-Move IE Temporary Files folder onto secondary HDD

 

Getting ready to setup a new system and Im wondering what others do nowadays? I know Windows 8 now has SSD optimization isntead of Defrag so obviously that should be left on.

I disable the paging file.  It's a waste of space and doesn't cause any harm (contrary to what anybody else claims).  Windows will automatically create a paging file if it absolutely needs it anyway.

 

If you have 8GB+ of RAM, you can gain back a considerable amount of space this way.

Don't do anything - let Windows configure itself.

Which means Trim will be on, and defrag will essentially be off.

 

I never had a problem with my computers or the SSDs in them.

Don't do anything - let Windows configure itself.

Which means Trim will be on, and defrag will essentially be off.

 

I never had a problem with my computers or the SSDs in them.

 

Yeah obviously with Windows 8's new features the defrag disabling is obsolete.

 

Though I put my desktop to sleep and wake it multiple times a day, so leaving Hibernate on would result in many large I/O operations being done on SSD every day.

Yeah obviously with Windows 8's new features the defrag disabling is obsolete.

 

Though I put my desktop to sleep and wake it multiple times a day, so leaving Hibernate on would result in many large I/O operations being done on SSD every day.

 

Defrag disabling was also obsolete in Windows 7 - most were just too paranoid to trust it.

Hibernation will not kill your SSD - again just paranoia.

SSDs are supposed to be drop-in replacements for HDDs.

 

You're not supposed to baby them; don't disable things, move files out of your profile, disable the pagefile, etc. It defeats the purpose of quick file access if you're moving all the files off the SSD!

 

The only thing to check into is to make sure the drive is "4K aligned" on older operating systems.

 

I know Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.04 will format a drive starting at sector 63. Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 will format to the 1MiB mark, sector 2048.

If you're going to use an older OS, make sure to partition the drive first with a tool that will let you set where the partition starts (such as GParted). If you're not using an older OS, then you don't have to worry about this, as the built-in partition/format tool will set it up correctly.

  • Like 2

I just clone the drive then make doubly sure that TRIM is enabled. The rest will just sort itself out. SSD's are designed to last for ages even with several GB's worth of writes per day - of course, just like normal hard drives, some kick the bucket before others.

SSDs are supposed to be drop-in replacements for HDDs.

 

You're not supposed to baby them; don't disable things, move files out of your profile, disable the pagefile, etc. It defeats the purpose of quick file access if you're moving all the files off the SSD!

 

 

If I dont move my Documents/Media directories off of the SSD my 256 GB drive would be filled rather quickly.

I have four systems here with SSD's, 3 of which had nothing special done with them.. had zero reason to monkey with it, not into placebo effects, Windows manages things just fine on its own. The fourth has a smaller SSD, only 128GB, so I relocated the Users directory during the installation via audit mode as I know space would have been problematic down the road, but other than that, no changes. The only time I'd get a bit more hands on if I were feeling nostalgic/masochistic and wanted to put a legacy OS on the thing.

Windows already configures itself for SSD usage, if you have 7 or newer, you don't need to do anything. Not to mention if you disable hibernation on Windows 8 you lose fast boot. You don't need to disable defrag either, Windows won't try and defrag an SSD.

Try and google "Pushing the Limits of Windows Virtual Memory" to see a statement by Microsoft that not all applications work correctly without a page file.

 

Either you're misinterpreting the article or I'm having a hard time to find the statement that confirms your idea.

In fact, I'm afraid it actually advocates to find what the commit limit is on one's system and then use that number to set the size of the paging file, therefore according to one's demands.

Yeh as you're talking about Windows 8 just leave Windows to configure itself, only thing is to move Docs music etc off to a HDD for space savings.

 

System restore I'd only disable if you have some other system backup methods etc.. just clean it out every few months.

Same goes for Temp directories, don't move them off, just clean them out every now and again with ccleaner or similar.

Try and google "Pushing the Limits of Windows Virtual Memory" to see a statement by Microsoft that not all applications work correctly without a page file.

Give me some specific examples.  I've been running SSDs since the very first ones came out 7-8 years ago, and I've never had a single crash or instability with the page file off.  As I mentioned before, Windows will create one regardless if it really needs it.

 

I've never seen a single bit of proof that shows that disabling it has adverse effects.  I'd be curious if you can find anything, but my years of experience doing so have been without flaw.

Windows already configures itself for SSD usage, if you have 7 or newer, you don't need to do anything. Not to mention if you disable hibernation on Windows 8 you lose fast boot. You don't need to disable defrag either, Windows won't try and defrag an SSD.

 

Windows won't configure for SSD until winsat is ran will it? Does a fresh 8/8.1 install do this automatically?

 

Disabling hibernation was more to free up the 16GB (over 10% of my current SSD capacity) than anything. I really don't want fast boot. I just use S3 sleep for my PC and only Shut Down when I actually want it to completely Shut Down.

When I setup Windows on an SSD I've always done a list of things:

 

-Disable Hibernation

-Disable System Restore

-Disable Defrag

 

-Move personal folders (My Music, Downloads, My Documents, etc) as well as the Desktop directory onto secondary HDD

-Move Temp directories onto secondary HDD

-Move IE Temporary Files folder onto secondary HDD

 

Getting ready to setup a new system and Im wondering what others do nowadays? I know Windows 8 now has SSD optimization isntead of Defrag so obviously that should be left on.

 

I can understand disabling the automatic defrag but why Hibernation and System Restore, both can be incredibly useful and since they involve simply writing data rather than any sort of structural change surely enabling them would leave you better off.

 

This is off topic slightly, but isn't Optimization essentially the same as Defrag for non SSD drives?

I map as much as possible to alternate drives and keep only the OS and certain programs on the SSD itself.

I always disable System restore regardless of HDD type, and as far as defrag you dont really need to disable it as it will try to run and simply fail.

Chances are you wont see crashes but you will stress your machine. An example is the fact that the .NET CLR pushes a lot of the heap memory space to the page file. If there is no page file, then it will be moving memory around all the time. Photoshop is another example that has a strong dependency on the page file. So managed applications and photoshop are good examples of programs that will be impacted by not having a page file.

Once again google "Chapter 17 - Tuning .NET Application Performance", Microsoft KB 314482.

I have done investigation on this and I am not just making it up

It doesn't work that way.  Like I said, if Windows absolute needs a paging file, it will create what it needs.  Disabling it doesn't truly disable it. In 7-8 years, I've never seen any irregular CPU spikes or any instabilities on any of my PCs.  A simple Google search brings up absolutely no proof of anything you're claiming.  Show me some dicrete proof.  Testimonials from Microsoft, charts, graphs, etc.  I've seen nothing about it, so I'm classifying this as nothing more than a conspiracy, no offense.

I don't do anything special with SSD's. Windows does that for you. I just make sure that Windows configured those settings.

 

I have a second 3TB drive that I redirect the "My Documents" to, as I have a lot of data in there that I don't need to access as fast as an SSD goes.

Any other application or game that I want to perform fast I install on the SSD.

Anything else also goes on the 3TB drive.

 

There is an article on Techspot about the recommended settings. They post that with every SSD review they do. Find it here.

 

As to the large amounts of reads/writes a day, I wouldn't be worried about it either, unless you actually do exceed those limits every day, every year for multiple years. Also a nice article from Techspot explaining it easily is found here. You are most likely to replace your drive than wear it out due to using up the cycles.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • GitHub removes manual model selection from Copilot free and student plans by Karthik Mudaliar GitHub is removing the ability to manually select an AI model from its Copilot Free and Student plans, making its automatic routing system the default and only way to choose a model. This means users on these tiers will no longer be able to deliberately select a particular OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or Microsoft model for a task. In its announcement, GitHub said Copilot Auto will dynamically choose what it considers the best model for each request. Free and Student accounts will retain access to models from multiple families, although the available selection will continue to depend on the restrictions attached to each plan. GitHub did not identify a fixed pool of models that Auto will always use, and its documentation warns that model availability can change over time. GitHub describes Auto as more than a random fallback system. On supported surfaces, its task-optimization technology evaluates the complexity of a request alongside real-time information about model health and availability. Straightforward prompts can be routed to faster and less expensive models, while more demanding coding tasks may be sent to higher-cost reasoning models. The company says this approach should reduce rate limiting, latency, and failed requests. Auto generally selects one model along natural prompt-caching boundaries rather than repeatedly switching models during a session, as GitHub found that mid-session changes increased costs without producing sufficient improvements in output quality. Users can still check which model generated a response. In Copilot Chat, the information appears when hovering over an answer, while Copilot CLI and the Copilot cloud agent display the selected model alongside their output. Auto is available in Copilot Chat, Copilot CLI, and the cloud agent, with the exact implementation and release status varying between supported development environments. The latest restriction follows several months of adjustments to Copilot’s individual plans. GitHub temporarily halted new Pro, Pro+, and Student subscriptions in April as it sought to manage demand and service reliability. It later introduced token-based billing and began gradually reopening individual-plan registrations on June 17. Alongside the picker change, GitHub is retiring the “Preview” label from Microsoft-developed models. It argues that the label is no longer necessary because Auto handles model routing and models are continuously updated behind the scenes.
    • Look up 'inflation' kid. Ask an AI for the numbers between both games.
    • Google reportedly set to lose two key Gemini and DeepMind researchers to Anthropic by Karthik Mudaliar Google is reportedly preparing to lose two more prominent artificial intelligence researchers, with Gemini contributors Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel planning to join rival AI developer Anthropic. According to a report from Bloomberg, both researchers are viewed internally as important contributors to Google’s flagship Gemini model family. Adler worked on Google’s AI coding efforts, while Pritzel was involved in the process used to train AI systems. Neither company has publicly confirmed the moves. The report also does not say when the researchers will formally leave Google or what positions they will hold at Anthropic. Training a large AI model requires decisions covering its architecture, data preparation, distributed computing infrastructure, and post-training methods that shape how the finished system behaves. Researchers with experience operating at the scale of Gemini are consequently difficult to replace quickly. Both Adler and Pritzel have previously contributed to Google DeepMind’s scientific research as well. They are listed among the authors of the company’s work on expanding AlphaFold protein-structure predictions across entire proteomes, alongside AlphaFold researchers including John Jumper. The reported departures arrive shortly after another important change within Google’s Gemini organization. Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI, after returning to the search company in 2024 through its deal with Character.AI. Shazeer is particularly well known as one of the authors of the Transformer paper, whose architecture became the foundation for most modern large language models. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been recruiting recognizable figures from other leading laboratories. OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May. His move, followed by the reported recruitment of several Google researchers, suggests Anthropic is strengthening the research teams responsible for the core capabilities of future Claude models rather than concentrating solely on product and enterprise sales. The competition is complicated by the companies’ extensive commercial relationships. Anthropic competes directly with Google’s Gemini models, but it also relies on Google as an infrastructure partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded agreement with Google and Broadcom covering multiple gigawatts of next-generation Tensor Processing Unit capacity. TPUs are Google-designed accelerators used to train and run large AI models. via Bloomberg
    • This article makes my head hurt. Lots of confusing words
    • Google adds built-in computer control to Gemini 3.5 flash by Karthik Mudaliar Google has added Computer Use as a built-in tool in Gemini 3.5 Flash, giving developers a single model that can reason about a task and operate graphical interfaces across browsers, mobile devices, and desktop environments. The feature is available through the Gemini API and Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, although it remains a preview feature for now. Computer Use enables an AI agent to examine screenshots and return actions such as mouse clicks, scrolling, and keyboard input. A developer’s application must execute those actions, capture the resulting screen, and send it back to Gemini, creating a continuous loop until the task is completed. Google says the integration can be used for activities including repetitive form filling, application testing, research across multiple websites, and longer enterprise workflows. Gemini 3.5 Flash can work with browser, mobile, and desktop environments, whereas Google’s earlier standalone Computer Use model was primarily positioned around browser interaction. The main change is consolidation. Computer control was previously offered through the separate Gemini 2.5 Computer Use preview model. As Neowin reported when that model was introduced, it was designed to interpret a visual interface and generate actions without requiring a website-specific API. Google later brought Computer Use to preview versions of Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash in January 2026. The latest release now incorporates the tool into the stable Gemini 3.5 Flash model rather than requiring developers to select a specialized model solely for interface automation. Gemini 3.5 Flash itself was announced in May as Google’s latest fast model for coding and multi-step agent workflows. It supports a one-million-token input context window and up to 65,000 output tokens, along with adjustable thinking levels that let developers trade additional reasoning for lower latency and cost. Google also added that Gemini 3.5 Flash received targeted adversarial training for computer-use scenarios. The company is also offering safeguards that can require user confirmation before sensitive or irreversible actions and automatically stop a workflow when suspected prompt injection is detected. Its developer documentation describes configurable protections for areas such as financial transactions and changes to sensitive records. Google isn't the first to bring Computer Use to its platform. Anthropic has made computer control available through Claude, while OpenAI has continued improving computer-use performance in its recent models. Microsoft has also applied the concept to business workflows, including a Computer Use capability for the Researcher agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
    • One Year In
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      463
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!