Hard drive speed boosts

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.

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)​

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2. Click on the Device Manager icon.​

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3. Click on Continue in the UAC prompt.​

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4. Close the Control Panel.​

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5. Click on Disk drives to expand it. (See screenshot below)​

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6. Right click on your hard drive device listing and click Properties.​

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

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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.​

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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: Write-Caching - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Forums​

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9. For an External Hard Drive​

A) Dot Optimize for performance. (See right screenshot below step 10)​

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10. Click on OK to apply.​

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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.​

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2. In the white line (Start Search) area, type regedit and press Enter.​

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3. Click on Continue in the UAC prompt.​

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4. In regedit, go to: (See screenshot below)​

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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem​

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

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6. Type 1 and click on OK. (See screenshow below)​

NOTE: To enable it again, type 0 (number) instead.​

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7. Close regedit.​

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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.​

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How to Change the Schedule for Disk Defragmenter in Vista​

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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:​

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Disk Defrag - Best Free Defrag Software For Your Hard Drive​

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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.​

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Scheduled Time	Description
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.

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Enjoy faster performance,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Speed Up the Performance of Vista
• How to Disable or Enable Low Disk Space Warning in Vista
• How to Shrink and Create a Partition with Disk Management in Vista
• How to Delete and Extend a Partition with Disk Management in Vista
• How to Change a Drive Icon in Vista
• How to Show or Remove Drive Letters from Displaying in Vista
• How to Rename a Drive in Vista
• How to Add, Change, or Remove a Drive Letter in Vista
• How to Restrict or Unrestict Drive Access in Vista
• How to Hide or Unhide a Drive in Vista
• How to Create a Drive Shortcut in Vista

 

[Brink]

That's ok. Thank you for sharing this.

Enjoy your vacation,
Shawn

 

[Goldwing2001]

I just purchased a desktop computer with a Solid State Drive (SSD). The manufacture states not to run disk defragmentation, It may decrease the lifespan of the drive.

Will the steps you list here on boosting hard drive speeds work on my solid state drive?

 

[Brink]

Hello Goldwing2001, and welcome to Vista Forums.

To be honest, I do not know since it is so new right now.

Since SSD drives use memory chips instead of a hard drive using a spinning platter with only a small amount of memory for a cache, I do not think it will make much if any difference. I'm not even sure if a SSD drive has these options.

For now, all I can say is follow any recommendations made by the manufacturer of the SSD drive. If your curious, I suppose that it would be ok to try it for a short time to see if it helps any or not.

Wish I knew more about them to help you better.

Shawn

 

[jmdolesky]

Windows Vista not optimized for solid-state drives....
SanDisk: Windows Vista not optimized for solid-state drives | Nanotech: The Circuits Blog - CNET News.com
JM

 

[Goldwing2001]

I'm not sure what the Sandisk guy is talking about. This is kind of funny don't you think:

http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/PressRoom/PressReleases/PressRelease.aspx?ID=3785

"The results indicate that the new Windows Vista operating system will run optimally when installed on the SanDisk SSD."


I think what you are seeing here is Sandisk blaming their poor performance on the OS instead of their own drive.


The OCZ SSD drive in my system is working great with Vista. I think it's the best and fastest SSD drive currently on the market.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hard-drive,1968-4.html

"The drive is based on Samsung’s current SLC Flash SSD and a modern second-gen SATA interface. We already mentioned the better energy efficiency attributes of a native interface, but the test results are truly enlightening. What the OCZ SATA IISerial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2.5” SSD is able to do beats everything else — both the Flash SSDs and all of the mechanical hard drives."

 

[Lightning Speed]

Nice guide mate I've seen many guides but you're guides are easy to understand and you do display information of what are we trying to do and what is it for and the most important thing WARNING us about the risks that might happen. Thanks!

 

[tomoedinburgh]

On Step One, It is said that if you enable advanced performance for HD, it may cause you to lose data in the drive's cache if you lose power suddenly.

Now, by "suddenly" you mean sudden power failure, like hit by lightening or breaker down? Does it exclude simply forgetting to plug in and the battery
dies down slowly? Or even this would cause data loss?

Cheers, Tomo

 

[Fumz]

On Step One, It is said that if you enable advanced performance for HD, it may cause you to lose data in the drive's cache if you lose power suddenly.

Now, by "suddenly" you mean sudden power failure, like hit by lightening or breaker down? Does it exclude simply forgetting to plug in and the battery
dies down slowly? Or even this would cause data loss?

Cheers, Tomo

Hi Tomo,

Missing from the documentation is the reality that even without this setting enabled, a sudden power failure will result in the loss of data. Anything you have not saved, either way, will be gone. That warning wasn't meant so much for us home users, but rather the corporate environment. You'll be fine using this tweak... I noticed big improvements when combined with the other optimizations in this section.

Having said that, everyone should invest in a good UPS... because tweak or no tweak, power outages happen.

 

[PainlessTorture]

On Step One, It is said that if you enable advanced performance for HD, it may cause you to lose data in the drive's cache if you lose power suddenly.

Now, by "suddenly" you mean sudden power failure, like hit by lightening or breaker down? Does it exclude simply forgetting to plug in and the battery
dies down slowly? Or even this would cause data loss?

Cheers, Tomo

You can set your computer to shutdown safely if it detects low battery power which would stop dataloss from this.

 

[Pharaoh]

The link to the Defrag program by Auslogics is broken. The new link is:

Disk Defrag - Reclaim the Speed Of Your Disks

 

[tomoedinburgh]

continuing the topic of high performance and data loss,

How can I set my PC to shut down safely keeping data when there is not enough battery?

Or is it normally already set like that by default?

 

[Brink]

Tomoedinburgh,

I do not run with battery power so I do not have the exact procedure for you, but under Power Options, Change plan settings, and the Change advanced power settings link these are the options that you would change to what you want the computer to do when the battery gets down to a certain point that you decide is low:

• [SIZE=-1]Battery/Critical Battery Action – This option specifies the action Windows Visa should take when the battery reaches the level specified in the following option. It can be set to Sleep, Hibernate, Shutdown, and when plugged in to Do Nothing.[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=-1]Battery/Critical Battery Level – This option specifies the percentage of remaining battery power that is considered critical.[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=-1]Battery/Low Battery Level – This option specifies the percentage of remaining battery power that is considered low.[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=-1]Battery/Low Battery Action – This option specifies the action Windows Visa should take when the battery reaches the level specified in the above option. It can be set to Sleep, Hibernate, Shutdown, and Do Nothing.[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=-1]Battery/Low Battery Notification – This option can be set to On or Off to specify whether Windows Vista should popup a notification when the batter reaches the ‘low' level. [/SIZE]

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[tomoedinburgh]

Thank you for the reply and I will definitely check into the off-mode options to
safeguard my work in progress.

However, I would like to ask, does this high performance option really
does its job if if I click? I burnt a CD today and there was no noticeable improvement. Does it really make a difference?

 

[Brink]

High performance can make a difference with most items running on the computer. You usually do not notice much difference though until you start running a lot more on the computer at once.

 

[antonyua]

Is It Recomended For Laptops to turn this options on.?
As Far as they Are Using they battery They arent in danger losing data?

 

[PainlessTorture]

Is It Recomended For Laptops to turn this options on.?
As Far as they Are Using they battery They arent in danger losing data?

Actually, I think laptops are supposed to disable this feature in case of battery failure. I would only do it on a desktop with a backup power supply or a power supply that is not going to fail.

 

[Brink]

Hello Antonyua,

I would agree with Fmjc001. It's not a good idea with laptops. It can increase the chance of data corruption on your hard drive should you lose power.

 

[antonyua]

Thanks for the Info :D

 

[PainlessTorture]

We are here to protect and serve...

Just post again should you need more assistance, we are happy to help

 

[Brink]

In addition, you're welcome Antonyua.