Vista Tutorial - Hard drive speed boosts

**Brink** · **STEP ONE:**

How to Increase Hard Drive Performance in Vista

Information

This will show you how to increase the hard drive performance by enabling Advanced Performance, disabling NTFS from creating 8.3 versions of file names, and defragging on a regular schedule.

NOTE

You can follow all the steps below, or just pick the ones you would like to do.

RELATED LINKS:

STEP ONE:
Enable Advanced Performance for Hard Drive

WARNING

This option enables extremely aggressive write caching that will speed up the hard drive's performance, but it can also cause you to lose data in the drive's cache if you lose power suddenly. It is not recommended for laptops that run on battery power all the time. While this is fine for the normal home desktop, it may not be a good idea if you have unreliable power.

NOTE

This may not be supported by some hard drive setups (Ex: RAID). If it does not, then you will see that it will just change back to the default settings automatically when you look at the Properties again.

1. Open the Control Panel. (Classic View)
2. Click on the Device Manager icon.
3. Click Continue button for UAC prompt.
4. Close the Control Panel.
5. Click on Disk drives to expand it. (See screenshot below)
6. Right click on your hard drive device listing and click Properties.

7. Click on the Policies tab. (See screenshots below)

8. For a ATA (Parallel) or Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drive -
A) Check the Enable write caching on the disk box. (See left screenshot below step 10)
NOTE: This should already be checked by default.

B) Check the Enable Advanced performance box.
NOTE: If this will not stay checked for you, then check to make sure that you have the latest chipset drivers installed for your motherboard. Also see:How to Fix Can't Enable Hard Drive Advanced Write Caching in Vista

9. For an External Hard Drive -
A) Dot Optimize for performance. (See right screenshot below step 10)

10. Click OK to apply.

STEP TWO:
Disable NTFS from Creating 8.3 Versions of File Names for Backwards Compatiblity with DOS

NOTE

You will not need this unless you work with DOS or the command prompt and have long file names.

1. Open the Start Menu.
2. In the white line (Start Search) area, type regedit and press Enter.
3. Click Continue button for UAC prompt.
4. In regedit, go to: (See screenshot below)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem

5. In the right pane, right click NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation and click Modify.

6. Type 1 and click Ok. (See screenshow below)
NOTE: To enable it again, type 0 (number) instead.

7. Close regedit.

STEP THREE:
Defrag the Hard Drive on a Regular Schedule

1. If you use Vista's Disk Defragmenter, see the link below on how to create a automatic defrag schedule.

How to Change the Schedule for Disk Defragmenter in Vista

2. If you do not like Vista's Disk Defragmenter, you can use a 3rd party program instead. Auslogics Disk Defrag is a great program that has a status graph of the hard drive's defragmentation progress, but the free version does not have a automatic defrag schedule. Here is the link:

http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/

3. Here is a recommended schedule of times to defrag.
NOTE: The more you save and delete items off your hard drive, the more often you should defrag. Adjust to your needs.

Scheduled Time Description For
Once a Month For a user that is only on the computer a few hours a week and does not do much file saving and deleting. You rarely install and uninstall programs.
Once a Week For most average users that use the computer for a few hours on a daily basis and does a lot more file saving and deleting. You only do a few installing and uninstalling of programs.
Once a Day For your power user that uses the computer for several hours a day and does an unbelievable amount of file saving and deleting. You do a lot of installing and uninstalling of programs.

Enjoy faster performance,
Shawn

**Payne747** · 04-30-2007

Option 1 will only really make a difference on RAID setup's, will also increase chances of loosing data if the power dies, but it sure as hell makes a noticable difference in data transfers

**Brink** · 04-30-2007

	Quote:	Payne747
	Option 1 will only really make a difference on RAID setup's, will also increase chances of loosing data if the power dies, but it sure as hell makes a noticable difference in data transfers

It sure does. I do recommend having a UPS Battery backup if you really can't afford to loose any data due to a power failure. Otherwise the average user probaly will never be affected by it.

Shawn

Crito · 05-03-2007

If you put swap file on its own small partition that low disk space warning will drive you nuts. Guess #2 must be same hack I used to disable it.

**Brink** · 05-03-2007

	Quote:	Crito
	If you put swap file on its own small partition that low disk space warning will drive you nuts. Guess #2 must be same hack I used to disable it.

Yep

Shawn

Reverence · 05-08-2007

#II hack ???

or I don't know english

Crito · 05-08-2007

Yes, it's a hack, not a crack. If you were meant to change that setting there'd be a way to do it from the GUI or command line. Which, while I'm ranting, would be nice so I could leave it on for some volumes but not others.

**Asky** · 06-01-2007

gr8 guide Brink,tried and it works,thnx

**Brink** · 06-01-2007

Hi Asky,

Thank you and your welcome.

Shawn

Qu0ll · 06-08-2007

The performance option you refer to is not presented on my system. I use Ultra-320 SCSI disks in a RAID-1 configuration and there is one "option" available which is greyed-out - "Optimize for performance".

Any ideas what this means exactly?