KeeperOfThePizza Posted August 19, 2009 Share Posted August 19, 2009 Do not do any of these "tweaks."Some of them, in certain scenarios, can artifically inflate synthetic benchmark numbers. But you will actually *hinder* real world performance if you disable caching or NCQ, or put your data at risk if you disable buffer flushing. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Live Veteran Posted August 20, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 20, 2009 If you have an SSD, the best thing you can do is make sure you have the latest firmware. Other than that, just leave the defaults alone - they're carefully tuned to balance the most important performance aspects (sequential read/write speeds aren't everything, it's random mixed I/O more than anything that causes hangs or other responsiveness issues - caching and NCQ help this). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisan Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 Do not do any of these "tweaks."Some of them, in certain scenarios, can artifically inflate synthetic benchmark numbers. But you will actually *hinder* real world performance if you disable caching or NCQ, or put your data at risk if you disable buffer flushing. In certain scenarios are the key words here......in my particular case I do get better performance with caching disabled. Its not a benchmark or a placebo its a fact for my system. With it enabled my SSD stutters and makes my system un-usable while any heavy writing is going on, with it disabled I can use my computer while under heavy write loads (such as installing new software) and it doesn't stutter or hang at all. I agree that most system tweaks can hinder real world performance, but its something everyone would need to test (beyond benchmark testing, that is) to see if its right for them. In my case, disabling write caching improved real world performance, despite whether it should or not, it did. I wouldn't go as far as saying do not use any "tweaks", I would honestly feel "use at your own risk" or "test real world scenarios before and after the tweak to find whether the tweaks work for your system or not" would be a better statement. (and yes I fully understand you work at MS and have a much more in-depth understanding of Windows than I probably ever will, but I am speaking from my own experience of trying various tweaks, not what I have heard or read online) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdodson Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 Above post makes no sense.This is a "GREAT" tweak for those that have (which I assume most have) a UPC. I've noticed my overall benchmarks, and hard drive bench marks go up with using this tweak....and have used it since I was using Vista. No, AaronMT is correct. This feature is designed for pre-Windows 95 database programs that tried to flush the cache too many times and would cause lockups when MS fixed the issue with Win95. This is only for compatibility and serves no purpose on modern machines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NfoTech Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 No, AaronMT is correct. This feature is designed for pre-Windows 95 database programs that tried to flush the cache too many times and would cause lockups when MS fixed the issue with Win95. This is only for compatibility and serves no purpose on modern machines. LoL You think that it is only related to a database program from the Win 95 era? Source? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bryonhowley Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 This is not a must have tweak nor will it optimize any hard drive speed.This thread should be closed. Agreed this should be under "Use With Caution May Will Corrupt Your Data!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AltecXP Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 Used it for years, (since XP SP0) never an issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdodson Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 LoL You think that it is only related to a database program from the Win 95 era? Source? Here's one, and second post here. And don't try to tell me that it's different because in 7 it's not called "Advanced Performance." Microsoft just changed the name so that people wouldn't go "OMG Advanced Performance!" <click>. Unfortunately people think that because there's a disabled option, they must enable it to get more speed. It may yield a bit of speed in some cases, but that is not the purpose of this option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Access Denied Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 If you want to tweak your HD, install Perfect Disk 10. Gold Certified Partner with MS. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrrgh Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 One would think that SSDs with huge cache would gain some from this, not necessarily performance wise but by reducing writes to the disk by keeping data that is constantly modified in the cache as long as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Grasshopper Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 Open Device Manager, select your Hard Drive Properties. Now select policies tab. Ensure you ahve both of these ticked Once done, click ok to save changes You will notice an instant speed boost Another tip is to disable NCQ on SATA Controller!! my laptop had these on by default. how do you disable NCQ on the sata controller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViperAFK Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 AFAIK NCQ improves performance.. why would you turn it off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mordkanin Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 AFAIK NCQ improves performance.. why would you turn it off? It shuffles the order of reads/writes on the drive so as to reduce latency. It does improve performance. Doesn't anyone remember what a huge deal NCQ was made out to be around the second SATA revision? (What was it, SATA 150?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skyfrog Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 If there was an easy, safe tweak that improved performance Windows would already ship with it enabled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Grasshopper Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 AFAIK NCQ improves performance.. why would you turn it off? nevermind. i just read a huge article on it. i think i will leave it alone. my drive is optimized already. don't need to mess with my read/writes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subject Delta Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 If you want to tweak your HD, install Perfect Disk 10. Gold Certified Partner with MS. ;) QFT, Perfectdisk is an excellent piece of software+, and far more reasonably priced than diskeeper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilovetech Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 on my sata 300 i couldn't find any difference in performance with this tweak. i believe better to disable it again than to risk the data or face those "certain scenarios" mentioned by brandon_live Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aergan Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 Yeh true,But in UK we hardly have power outages, also forgot to mention laptop users should not really apply this tweak I've lived in West Country, Surrey, North Wales & Midlands throughout my life. Your statement on UK hardly getting power outages couldn't be more false. This tweak will not net you any significant performance gains that justifies the risk to data loss and has been availible in Vista as well as XP (Even in the same location). "A must have" is completely false. In short & in closing, FAIL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SojIrOu Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 hmm i've always wondered about these settings. on my desktop i generally leave them off but on my laptop i switch it on without losing any data so far. however, i noticed the first one is on by default. so i guess microsoft has tested it "rigourously"? what do you guys think? leave the first one on but not the second? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dead_Monkey Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 We used to have very few power outages where I grew up. Then some British company bought out our local power company. Now we have them routinely. Thanks England! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZZzzzzzZZZZZ Posted August 20, 2009 Author Share Posted August 20, 2009 Ok here are the results of my benchmark: Without NCQ: NCQ Enabled You can see the noticeable difference between the two, the burst speed is slighly higher with disabled NCQ. Hmm..... What do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViperAFK Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 Your drive probably has buggy firmware making the NCQ performance lower, it should improve performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soulburner Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 (edited) Burst speed is totally irrelevant. It doesn't tell you anything about your hard drive speed and it doesn't translate to a measurable transfer speed increase. Theoreticaly, burst should tell you the interface speed, but it rarely (if ever) reaches values that are significantly higher than max read speed. So the only things that matter, really, is transfer speed (sustained speed on the above screenshots) and access time. edit - oh, and a 0,3MB/s speed increase is also insignificant and it's just a measurement error. Each time you test, you will get slightly different results. Edited August 20, 2009 by soulburner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Comic Book Guy Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 If you want a noticable HDD improvement, upgrade to a 10,000 RPM drive. Or get an SSD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powerade01 Posted August 20, 2009 Share Posted August 20, 2009 I ran HD Tune with the default setting and after selecting Turnoff Buffer Flushing. The result, I see improvement, not very high but its there:Default Turnoff Buffer Flushing Selected I also want to know, when it says there is possibility of corrupting the data/losing the data. It means the data which is currently being written/worked on, correct? For example if there is nothing running except the usual background services and a download manager through which I am downloading some file and there's an outage, highly unlikely since this is a laptop. Then what is going to get lost? The file being downloaded? Is there any fear of a corrupt Windows? [/thread] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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