Due to the different structure of the solid-state SSD compared with traditional mechanical hard drives, there are also some differences in their applications. Many people who are currently using the solid-state SSD do not know how to use them correctly.
Basic preparation required for the use of solid-state SSD: Windows 7 or later operating systems must be used. XP should be disposed of directly because the operating systems designed before Vista did not consider optimizing for solid-state SSD. Only the Windows 7 system has better support for SSD, including the important Trim command.
Installing the system on a solid-state SSD
Install the solid-state SSD on the hard drive bay;
Enter the BIOS after powering on, set the disk mode to AHCI (the default disk mode of almost all motherboards is IDE mode, which is to provide compatibility for mechanical hard drives, but is not suitable for SSD). At the same time, NCQ of AHCI should also be enabled;
Load the Microsoft original Windows 7 installation image with a CD or bootable U disk (absolutely not use a chaotic GHOST version), and format the newly purchased SSD using the disk management tool or the disk partition tool Diskgen provided by Windows 7 to align the 4KB sector of the disk. Whether the 4KB is aligned or not can be detected by AS SSD benchmark. If it is green "1024-OK" words, it means it is aligned. If it is red, it means it is not aligned;
Proceed with the normal operating system installation process as usual.
Manually disabling some services to optimize solid-state SSD
Specifically, this means disabling the WinSearch, Superfetch, and Disk Defragmenter services. For solid-state SSDs, which have a completely different structure than mechanical hard drives, the default disk defragmentation that the system enables is unnecessary and even harmful. Therefore, we need to disable disk defragmentation, as well as Superfetch read-ahead and WinSearch indexing, which are also unnecessary for traditional mechanical hard drives. The steps to do this are: Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Services.
Tips for using the solid-state SSD
In general, solid-state SSD does not require optimization, but there are a few areas where it is important to pay attention or follow recommendations:
On AMD chipset motherboards, there may be a decrease in performance with Intel SSDs, so opting for third-party products is a good choice.
Turning off hibernation in the Win7 system can free up a significant amount of hard drive space.
Virtual memory should be set to 4GB or 768-1024, as anything larger is pointless unless the programs you use require significantly more memory than your physical memory + 1024 virtual memory.
Avoid doing too many hard drive tests, as this can cause wear and tear on its lifespan.
Manually trimming the disk every half a month can effectively prevent performance degradation, especially for SSDs with SF controllers.
