Ssd disk installed windows 8 tips. Setting up the system after installing the SSD

Nowadays, SSD drives have become increasingly commonplace. This article will discuss the main nuances of setting up SSD drives for optimal performance with Windows. For those who think that you can just install an SSD and then install Windows 8 on it and there will be no problems, I will give useful tips for productive work.

A little theory in brief. For those who do not know what SSD solid state drives are, I recommend reading it on Wikipedia. Using an SSD, you can increase the loading and operation speed of programs and systems several times when installing windows on an SSD (as is usually done nowadays).

Why do you need to configure Windows 8 to work on an ssd?

SSD drives have a certain number of information rewrite cycles, after which the drive is no longer detected by the system. The main task is to reduce the number of rewrites as effectively as possible. And Windows really likes to constantly write and overwrite something in the cache and temporary folders.

AHCI SATA mode in Windows 8 and Trim function support

The Trim function is designed specifically for Windows 8 to work with SSD drives. This function marks data blocks on the ssd that are no longer used. These blocks are gradually overwritten, and do not accumulate like on regular hard drives and do not wait for defragmentation.
For the SSD to work properly in Windows 8, the mode is required AHCI SATA.
To check whether AHCI is enabled for the SATA controller, you need to make sure in the device manager that in the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section there is a controller called AHCI. If such a controller is available, then the system is operating in AHCI mode.

This operating mode is enabled in the BIOS.

Attention!!! You CANNOT switch the AHCI controller to operating mode on a computer with an operating system installed!!!
Then it simply won't start.

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

DisableDeleteNotify = 0 – TRIM command support is enabled
DisableDeleteNotify = 1 – TRIM function is disabled.

You can enable TRIM in Windows 8 using the command:

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0

The Windows operating system is designed to work optimally on almost all types of hardware. Therefore, by default, Windows 8 always runs several functions that are designed mainly for simple hard drives. This is the disk indexing function and the windows search service. They are designed to speed up work with files, but on an SSD the response speed is high and these functions are of no use.

Disabling disk indexing in Windows 8

This function is needed to constantly monitor the file tree on the disk. During indexing, index files are constantly created, which means extra cycles of rewriting data on the ssd.
To disable the indexing function of an SSD disk, you need to uncheck the “Allow files to have contents indexed in addition to file properties” checkbox in the ssd properties.

In order to open the properties of the ssd disk, in “my computer” right-click on the ssd partition (usually Disk C) and select “properties”.

Disable Windows 8 Search Service

This service creates another tree of files that are on the disk to increase the speed of searching for files. This tree weighs 10% of the total occupied hard drive space. Since the SSD drive is fast, you should disable this feature. In addition, these are unnecessary rewrite cycles due to a saved photo or a new site opened in the browser.
To disable the Windows 8 search function, you must:
- Open “service management” (Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Services or services.msc in the command line).
- Then find “Windows Search” in the list.
- Double click on it.
- Press the Stop button.
- In the “Startup type” item, select “Disabled”.

Disabling the paging file correctly

A paging file is a space reserved by Windows on a disk (in our case, an SSD), which, as it were, replaces RAM when it is insufficient. Typically this is ten percent of the logical disk capacity. The paging file always updates the logs, which means unnecessary cycles of data rewriting.
It is best to use Windows on an SSD with a large amount of RAM (4 GB and above). With large amounts of installed RAM, a paging file is not needed in principle, since the physical memory copes with the operation of the system. In addition, the response of RAM is much faster than that of a hard drive.
To disable the Windows 8 page file you need to:
- in the “my computer” folder open the “system properties” window
- select the “advanced” tab, in the “performance” section, click the “parameters” button
- in the “Performance Settings” window that opens, select the “advanced” tab
- on it, in the “virtual memory” section, click the “change” button
- in the “virtual memory” window that opens, uncheck “automatically detect volume...”
- check the box “without swap file”
At first glance there are a lot of actions, but this is done in a maximum of 2 minutes.

Hibernation function designed to quickly restore system operation after inactivity. That is, Windows 8 falls asleep - goes into hibernation - saves all the contents to the hard drive and turns off the power supply from the RAM. When you exit hibernation, the data is transferred back to RAM. That is, a recording cycle occurs on the SSD drive (in our case).
Exiting hibernation in Windows 8 on an SSD occurs no faster than the operating system is fully launched, so this mode can be safely disabled.
To disable hibernation mode in Windows 8 you need to:
- execute the command

powercfg -h of f

How to disable Prefetch and Superfetch in Windows 8

Prefetch and Superfetch in Windows 8 are components that are designed to speed up the loading of data and applications. These services cache frequently used programs and data, thereby speeding up the launch of those programs. Since an SSD drive is much faster than a regular hard drive, the need for the Prefetch and Superfetch functions in Windows 8 on an SSD is eliminated. By disabling them, we save memory space and get rid of unnecessary rewrite operations on the SSD.
Windows 8 should automatically disable these services when running on the ssd. But often this does not happen. Therefore, you need to check whether they are disabled.
To check and/or disable the Prefetch and Superfetch functions in Windows 8 you need to:
- open the editor with the command regedit.exe
- go to the section

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

- check the key values: EnableSuperfetch=0, EnablePrefetcher=0
- if the values there are not 0, change them to 0 and reboot

Defragmenting an SSD drive in Windows 8

In Windows 8, when using an SSD drive, unlike Windows 7, you do not need to disable defragmentation for the SSD! In Windows 8, Storage Optimizer (disk maintenance utility) automatically determines the type of drive. If the SSD disk is detected by the program, it is not performed.

So, you got a brand new SSD. You installed the system on it, armed yourself with an optimization guide you found on the Internet, and after a couple of hours you did everything possible to... slow down your work in the system!

Don't believe me? Think about what makes for high performance. Advantages SSD speeds you can feel in three categories:

system, for example, the speed of its loading and operation
programs, including web surfing and working with documents, images and media files
your actions, including disk navigation and copying/moving files

How myths are born

I'm pretty sure your SSD tuning measures negatively impacted at least one of these components. Later you will find out why this happened, but first about the reasons for such optimization.

If you read the inscription “buffalo” on the elephant’s cage...

There are plenty of guides and even tweakers online for optimizing SSDs. In fact, the same information is used everywhere, and:

outdated, since it is aimed at saving disk space and reducing the number of rewrite cycles, which is irrelevant for modern SSDs in home PCs
useless, because Windows itself takes care of what it offers to configure
harmful, because it leads to a decrease in the speed of work - yours, programs and system

Look critical on your guide or tweaker and think about which items fit into one of these categories!

There is another problem - unsuccessful presentation of information, including incorrectly placed accents.

If you have a HDD along with an SSD, measure the speeds of both drives and keep the picture in mind. I will return to her, and more than once!

Special Notes for Dissenters

After publishing the material, I decided to specifically clarify several points so as not to repeat them regularly in the comments when responding to opponents.

In this article:

All myths are considered solely from the point of view of speeding up the system, programs and the user.. If a measure is declared useless or harmful, this means that it does not contribute in any way to speeding up work.
Reducing the volume of disk writes is not considered as an optimization measure due to the irrelevance of this approach. If this is your goal, myths 3 - 11 are for you, as is storing an SSD in a sideboard.
Using a RAM disk is not considered as it is not directly related to SSD optimization. If you have excess RAM, you can use a RAM disk regardless of the type of drive installed in your PC.
All recommendations are given with a wide audience in mind, i.e. to the majority users. When analyzing advice, keep in mind that they may not correspond to your tasks, work skills and ideas about the optimal and competent use of the operating system.

Now - let's go! :)

Myths

1. Disabling SuperFetch, ReadyBoot and Prefetch

This advice: controversial, can reduce the speed of program launch, and also in Windows 10 - increase the volume of disk writes and reduce the overall performance of the OS if there is insufficient RAM

Speed of launching programs from the hard drive

When each program is launched, the prefetcher checks for the presence of a trace (.pf file). If one is found, the prefetcher uses links to the MFT file system metadata to open all the necessary files. It then calls a special memory manager function to asynchronously read from the trace data and code that is not currently in memory. When a program is launched for the first time or the startup script has changed, the prefetcher writes a new trace file (highlighted in the figure).

It is unlikely that SuperFetch is capable of speeding up the launch of programs from an SSD, but Microsoft does not disable the function, given the presence of hard drives in the system. If the SSD manufacturer's proprietary utility (such as Intel SSD Toolbox) recommends disabling SuperFetch, follow its advice. However, in this case, it is more than logical to keep all programs on the SSD, which will be discussed below.

Memory compression in Windows 10

In Windows 10, the name of the Superfetch service displayed in the GUI has changed to SysMain, which matches the actual name of the service. Apparently, this is how Microsoft indicated a shift in the main purpose of the service from prefetching to a new function - memory compression. The company has published a detailed story about the technology in the Feedback Center application (PDF copy). Below is my brief explanation and additional information.

When the memory manager feels low on memory, it does not flush unused memory pages to disk, but rather compresses them. The paging file is written to only when the memory manager algorithms determine that compression does not compensate for the lack of memory.

Thus, by compressing memory, the number of I/O operations is reduced and, accordingly, the amount of writing to disk is reduced. As a consequence, if compressed memory is disabled, the combination of low memory and significant disk load will reduce overall OS performance.

The concept is called compression store. This is a collection of compressed pages stored in memory. A single storage is used for all applications (Win32 and UWP), as well as individual storages for all Windows Runtime applications, providing trimming and swap. Instead of writing pages to the page file, the memory manager compresses them and places them in the appropriate storage.

The Microsoft article does not mention the service SysMain. In addition, since the publication of the material, the visual presentation of information about compressed memory in the task manager has changed. Next, I will show you how to check that this particular service is assigned the memory compression function.

When the SysMain service is enabled, you can open the Task Manager tab Performance and in the section Memory verify the use of compressed memory, and also see additional information by hovering over the area Memory structure.

Windows 7 will disable defragmentation for SSD drives. Since SSDs perform superior at random reads, defragmentation will not provide the same benefits that it does on a regular drive.

If you don't trust the developers, take a look at the event log. You won't find any entries there about defragmenting the SSD volume.

So, when the SSD is the only drive, the scheduled job simply doesn't run. And when the PC also has a HDD, disabling a task or scheduler deprives the hard drive of worthy optimization by a standard defragmenter.

Windows 8 and later

In Windows 8, the defragmenter has been replaced by the disk optimizer!

Optimizing hard drives, as before, comes down to defragmentation. Windows no longer ignores solid-state drives, but helps them by sending additional a set of TRIM commands for the entire volume at once. This happens according to a schedule as part of automatic maintenance, i.e. when you are not working on your PC.

Depending on the SSD controller, garbage collection may occur immediately upon receipt of the TRIM command, or it may be delayed until a period of inactivity. By disabling the disk optimizer or task scheduler, you reduce drive performance.

3. Disable or move the swap file

This tip: useless or harmful, reduces system speed when there is insufficient memory

The hardware configuration must be balanced. If you don't have much memory installed, you should add more, since an SSD only partially compensates for the lack of RAM, making swap times faster than a hard drive.

When you have enough memory, the page file is hardly used, i.e. This will not affect the life of the disk in any way. But many people still turn off paging - they say, let the system keep everything in memory, I said! As a result, the Windows Memory Manager does not work in the most optimal mode (see #4).

As a last resort, the swap file is transferred to the hard drive. But if suddenly the memory is not enough, You will only benefit in performance by having pagefile.sys on the SSD!

IN: Do I need to place the page file on the SSD?

ABOUT: Yes. The main operations with the paging file are random writing of small volumes or sequential writing of large amounts of data. Both types of operations work fine on an SSD.

By analyzing telemetry focused on estimating writes and reads for the pagefile, we found that:

reading from Pagefile.sys takes precedence over writing to pagefile.sys in a 40:1 ratio,
read blocks for Pagefile.sys are usually quite small, 67% of them are less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% are less than 16 KB,
The write blocks in Pagefile.sys are quite large, 62% of them are greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% are almost exactly 1 MB

Generally speaking, the typical page file usage patterns and SSD performance characteristics fit together very well, and it is the file that is highly recommended to be placed on the SSD.

But in practice, the desire to extend the life of an SSD at any cost is ineradicable. Here is a blog reader fretting over his SSD, transferring pagefile.sys to the hard drive, although he himself can even see with the naked eye that this reduces performance. By the way, I can’t install more than 2 GB of memory in my netbook, and with a solid-state drive it became much more comfortable than with a standard 5400 rpm HDD.

Finally, don't forget that completely disabling the pagefile will prevent you from diagnosing critical errors. The paging file size can be flexibly adjusted, so you always have a choice between disk space and performance.

Tricky question: What was my page file size when I took the task manager screenshot?

Special Note

On the Internet (including in the comments to this post) you can often come across the statement: “A swap file is not needed if you have installed N GB RAM". Depending on your imagination, N takes the value 8, 16 or 32. This statement does not make sense, since it does not take into account the tasks that are solved on a PC with a given amount of memory.

If you installed 32GB for yourself, and 4-8GB are used, then yes, you don’t need FP (but then it’s not clear why you bought 32GB RAM :). If you have purchased such an amount of memory in order to use it as much as possible in your tasks, then the FP will be useful to you.

4. Disable hibernation

This advice: vague and harmful for mobile PCs, may reduce battery life and speed of your work

I would formulate the advice like this:

stationary PCs - shutdown is normal, because you might as well use sleep
mobile PCs - turning off is not always advisable, especially when battery consumption is high during sleep

However, people have, are, and will continue to disable system protection regardless of the type of disk, it’s already in the blood! And no, I don't want to discuss this topic in the comments for the hundredth time :)

6. Disable Windows Search and/or Disk Indexing

This tip: useless, slows down your work speed

Sometimes this is argued by the fact that SSDs are so fast that the index will not significantly speed up the search. These people simply never really used real Windows search!

I believe that it makes no sense to deprive yourself of a useful tool that speeds up everyday tasks.

If you have fallen victim to any of these myths, tell me in the comments if I managed to convince you of their uselessness or harm and in what cases. If you disagree with my assessment of "optimization", explain what the benefits of these actions are.

You can mark fragments of text that interest you, which will be available via a unique link in the address bar of your browser.

about the author

Vadim, in recent days I have bought myself 4 SSDs to install on all my computers. Let's just say... life has changed :-)

I also thought for a long time whether to buy a laptop with an SSD or a hybrid drive, the second one won, I chose 340GB + 24 SSD. What was surprising was that the standard installation of Windows 8 was on a 5400 drive, but not an SSD. After suffering for a long time, I moved Windows 8 to an SSD and was a little freaked out, because... There is about 3GB left on the SSD. Knowing that over time the W8 would swell and it would be necessary to fight for space, I returned everything back, transferred the TEMP and Page file to the SSD, plus installed frequently launched programs.

Still, you just had to buy a laptop with an SSD and not worry about it. They gave me an SSD for NG and now I’ll stuff it into an old netbook, install W8 and be happy.

Thank you for the articles about SSDs, our entire department reads them.

Alexei

You, Vadim, have done a great job of going through SSD myths; we can hope that there will be fewer fans of SSD perversions now. I have Win8 on an SSD, it works just the way I installed it, I’m happy and I don’t bother myself with all sorts of optimizations whose output is questionable.

PS: Answer to the question: 1Gb.

Alexey, thanks for your response. You can’t put your head down on everyone, but I’m not trying to :)

The answer to the question is incorrect. How did you come to him?

madgrok

Before buying an SSD, I read a mountain of forums, benchmarks, etc. And I came to the conclusion that all the tweaks are in the firebox.
Why do people buy SSDs for themselves? Of course it would be faster! :) And most optimization tweaks basically negate all the performance gains, which is what Vadim wrote about.
I use my Vertex 4 256 GB as a regular disk for the system. I bought it sometime in the fall. Excellent flight, 100% health
Excellent article, I will recommend it to all my acquaintances and friends to read so that they don’t suffer. :)
And in general, thanks to the author for an excellent blog. I really like the fact that he tries to “disassemble the topic to its bones.”

Andrey

Vadim, at the end of the article there is a survey about the presence of SSDs on our computers, I think that this topic is still relevant - there are those who do not intend, at least in the near future, to acquire a solid-state drive for a number of reasons - someone does not see the point of installing it on an old one computer - saving for a new one, or as in the survey point - satisfied with the HDD, or like Pavel Nagaev - he thinks for a long time which to prefer....
What would you recommend? Is it worth moving the OS to an SSD to “increase system performance,” so to speak?

Andre

Hello Vadim, I think a lot of people are now looking at buying an SSD, and it would be very cool if you wrote an article on choosing an SSD!

Alexey Matashkin

Vadim, thanks for the article.
In my practice, I have never encountered these myths, I only heard some advice separately, so I read it with pleasure.

I don’t quite fit into the survey :) The main PC is not a home PC, and it has an SSD. But at home, the usual is enough for now.

There is nothing to add regarding questions, because I don’t use tweaks, all installed SSDs work normally with the system.
Although, an important detail is updating the firmware on the disk. In my practice, there are 3 cases of serious failures that were resolved with firmware version updates.

Valentine

Pavel Nagaev,

Your 24 SSD was most likely designed for caching, which is why it is so small, maybe you needed to use it as a cache, in which case you will get the benefits of both media - capacity and speed. Vadim, do you have an article regarding hybrid hard drives or combining HDD and SSD operation? I think many readers might be interested in such an article. I think the topic about 12 myths is very useful, as I have many friends who consider themselves experts, but make such mistakes and impose these mistakes on ordinary users, thanks to a link to this article it will be possible to convince them to make such mistakes

Vadims Podāns

Good and useful article.

Sergey

Yes, it’s really surprising people who buy SSDs to speed up work, but then transfer everything and turn it off and again lose performance.

MythBusters are in action! We had a great run through all these myths.

Alexey G

At first I fell for disabling hibernation, but then I realized that it was inconvenient.
I remove the 8.3 marks. Because I use new versions of the program, and I don’t need it)

From life: when I assemble a PC with an SSD, I transfer user files to the HDD. If the PC for unknown reasons (playful hands, viruses) starts to not boot, then if I am nearby, I will restore the configured image of the installed system (thanks to the blog), but if a person called another “master”, then the first thing he will do is format the disk:(More Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a smart method in my city, so this is a necessary need to preserve the user’s files.

Answer to the question: 2834MB?

Dima

Thanks Vadim.
As always, intelligibly and with a light sense of humor.
As I promised, I part with myths easily and see you off on your last journey. I'll turn everything back on.
Best regards, Dima.

PGKrok

I agree on all points, but I myself had to transfer the index files, some programs and personal photos and videos to the HDD, because... SSD - only 60 GB (I've already mastered it :))
For comparison (to the question of “keeping a picture in mind”)
Result CrystalDiskMarc (HDD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/HDD1301020_6347406_6812031.png
Result of CrystalDiskMarc (SSD)
http://pixs.ru/showimage/OSZ3010201_4238885_6812055.png

SATA-3 SSD controller - SATA-6

Dawn

I bought a 60gb ssd and left only Windows 8, program files, appdata, program data on it. The rest is on hdd.
Reason: the system partition is growing too quickly, and just like that, the space will go to zero.
When purchasing, there was one goal: to speed up the cold boot of the system. That's what I achieved - 8 seconds.
Vadim, the article is excellent, thank you!

Ruby

About transferring TEMP and cache - I stupidly moved them to a gigabyte ramdisk - this is a real speed increase, incomparable with an SSD.

Denis Borisych

I’ve been working in IT for a long time and I still never cease to be amazed at woe to optimizers.

I've had an ssd in my home computer for about a year now and it's still going strong. 7 starts in 10 seconds, programs load quickly and easily without any optimizations. Well, except that the folder of necessary and important documents is not on the ssd (its size is 500 GB). And in the “My Documents” folder there is usually a list of documents.

As a person very close to IT, sometimes I am not enthusiastic about MS innovations (the inability to use Explorer without a mouse alone is worth it). But I must objectively admit that in terms of optimizing the operation of the OS on an ssd and stability of operation, they are undoubtedly great.

Ruby

I would also transfer the search index, but on the Windows blog they write that it is still kept in memory, so there is no point.

SuperFetch is needed in any case; it preloads files into RAM in advance, increasing speed and reducing the number of accesses to the drive.

Valery

Vadim, I read your articles quite regularly and often put the advice from them into practice.
Having bought an SSD (Intel 520 120GB), I also first read about all sorts of optimizations and even applied some, but now I left only the indexing transferred to the HDD and Intel’s recommendations for its drives, and this is where some of your advice and Intel’s recommendations diverge:
http://123foto.ru/pics/01-2013/42746566_1358157387.jpg
Who should I listen to?))

Alexei

Vadim Sterkin,

Came at random :-)
My paging file takes up 1 Gb per 16Gb of RAM (size selected by the system). Moreover, the system monitor shows almost zero % load. I decided that 8Gb should have at least 1Gb.

Oleg

Hello Vadim. I always look forward to new articles from you, this article was VERY useful for me and for my friends. To my regret, my arguments and advice do not reach some friends, for some reason they trust more forums where they do not always write useful information.
I hope this article will convince you.

I'll be waiting for an article about choosing an SSD.
Thank you.

Georgiy

Thank you for the article.
To be honest, I didn’t quite understand about Superfetch - what is the increase in performance on an SSD?

As for the size of the paging file, the answer seems to be this: the line allocated says 10.7 GB. The amount of RAM must be subtracted from this figure.

Alexander

I recently bought a Kingston Hiper X 3K 120GB SSD. I installed Seven sp1. I did not see any increase in download speed or program performance.
Previous configuration: Asus P5Q, 2 WD 500Gb Raid 0, DDR2 2 1GB each.
My conclusion: when connecting an SSD to a “slow” Sata 3Gb/s port, the increase in system performance compared to that installed on stripping is insignificant. You will have to upgrade to a motherboard with Sata 6Gb/s and at least 8GB DDR3 memory.

GlooBus

Pavel Nagaev,

SSD drives of 16-32 GB sold on laptop motherboards are of no use. The best thing in this case would be to take a laptop in a simple configuration with an HDD and do the upgrade yourself. I did just that, took an ASUS X301A with 2 GB of memory, 320 GB HDD and upgraded to 8 GB of memory and 128 GB SSD. The laptop worked completely differently! Loading the computer from pressing the button until the password entry window appears 6-7 seconds. I didn’t make any tweaks, except that I turned off indexing, because... I don't use search.

Alik

The other day I installed VERTEX 4 128Gb on it with Win 8, applied optimizers and after a week I realized that it was in vain, incl. you'll have to reinstall. And here is also a sensible article.

The rapid growth in popularity of solid-state drives has led many personal computer users to decide to migrate Windows 8 to an SSD. But how exactly this can be done is a rather broad question.

Subtleties of the process

First of all, it is worth mentioning that transferring Windows 8 from HDD to SSD is not just one procedure, but a whole complex of different actions. Therefore, before you start, you need to think about whether you can handle everything required. Regardless of the method used to move data, you will have to:

Disassemble the system unit of a personal computer or, which is somewhat more difficult, a laptop.
Work with regular or UEFI BIOS.
Make a physical connection or replace one memory storage device with another.
In some cases, you will need to use USB-SATA adapters.

Not every more or less experienced user will be able to do everything necessary, not to mention beginners and inexperienced users. Based on all of the above, you should carefully consider whether to undertake this yourself or whether migrating Windows 8 to an SSD will require contacting a service center.

The type of device is also of great importance: personal computer or laptop. A priori, working with a laptop will be both more difficult in some places and much easier in some moments. So, depending on the manufacturer and design, in one case you can unscrew just two screws and use a proprietary utility, but in another you will need to disassemble the entire device and spend a long time fiddling with moving data with third-party applications or a system utility.

Methodology

Cloning a hard drive with Windows 8 has several fundamentally different patterns. Which one is simpler is decided by the one who plans to carry out such an operation. In general, the choice of algorithm depends on the available tools at the disposal of the device owner, both software and purely physical ones.

This section will outline everything that concerns the non-software component, and in the next one you will find exclusively a description of applications and the intricacies of working with them.

So, possible algorithms:

Of course, when choosing any of the above sequences of actions, you will need to disassemble your existing computer, since even after connecting using an adapter, the solid state drive will need to be installed in place of the old HDD.

Depending on the selected type of algorithm, some steps may simply be missing, which, in turn, will affect the subsequent BIOS setup. In some cases, it may simply be absent, for example, if the first pattern was used, but provided that the SSD is first installed, the laptop is started, and then the HDD is added.

Both additional fasteners and special adapters for working with a personal computer may be required.

Software side

There are a sufficient number of ways in which you can transfer absolutely all information from one memory storage device to another: from simple disk cloning to manual transfer using the command line. The most difficult ones to implement will not be considered here, since just mentioning all the stages will take the reader a lot of time.

Here we will consider 2:

Through branded applications.
Utilities from third-party developers.

Branded Applications

Almost every laptop manufacturer tries to add applications of its own design. The degree of their quality and ease of use varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, and sometimes only in some specific individual lines or models.

Samsung, ASUS, ACER, Lenovo, HP, Packard Bell, Dell and IBM add utilities to the operating system for fine-tuning and convenient work with a personal computer. The name of the desired program often contains the word Recovery. You can find it both in “All applications” and using “Search”.

We find, launch and look for the column, item or block where “Disk cloning” or “Operating system migration” appears.

After which it will be sequentially proposed:

The original storage device.
Target disk.
Transfer form:
- Full movement.
- Partial with the ability to select one or more sections, as well as specific folders and files for transfer.
Additional settings.

In some cases, the order may be changed, but these are the required steps.

Third party programs

Their choice is very large, and there are both specialized and general ones. Specialized utilities include Paragon Migrate OS to SSD or Samsung Data Migration.

Also, some applications for working with storage devices and images have built-in tools that allow you to clone both images of the system and the entire disk.

How to install Windows 8-8.1 yourself?

It is assumed that you already have an installation DVD or USB flash drive with Windows 8. Boot from the installation disk. Lyrical digression: all modern computers have a Boot Menu (a menu for selecting the device from which to boot). To call it, there are hot keys: F8, ESC, F12 or others (see the motherboard manual) immediately after turning it on during BIOS initialization. Select the language and keyboard layout. Further:

Then we begin the installation process:

We accept the license agreement:

At this step, you must select the installation type: update or full installation. You must select Upgrade if you are upgrading from previous versions of Windows to Windows 8. Full installation - if you are installing Windows 8 for the first time. It is this type that I consider next:

In our case, we install the system on a new clean (new) hard drive without a file system. Let's create 2 partitions on it. The first is for the system, and the second is for other data. Click on Disk Setup:

Let's allocate 64GB for drive C:

The Partition Wizard will ask you to create additional partitions for system files. We agree, since this 350MB partition is necessary to accommodate the Windows 8 boot loader:

In the same way, we create a second partition from all the remaining space on the hard drive for games, movies, music, etc. Do not pay attention to the sizes allocated for these partitions in this article, they are given only as an example. In fact, choose “according to your taste and color”

Congratulations! Your hard drive is split into 2 parts (not counting the bootloader). Let's select the partition on which we will install Windows 8:

The installation of Windows 8 begins, which will take place automatically. You might even have time to make yourself a cup of coffee. The installation will reboot.

Installation is almost complete! The final touches remain - personalization and initial settings. Select the design color and name of the computer on the network:

Configure basic system settings. You can use the standard settings and configure them later, or configure them right away. I recommend doing the setup right away, especially since it only involves a few steps.

The last step of the installation is to configure the login method. We are asked to use a Microsoft account or without it. What to choose - decide for yourself. I chose to sign in without a Microsoft account to create a local account, as was the case in previous versions of Windows

Buying an SSD (solid-state drive) and installing Windows 10 on it is perceived by many users as moving to a new level. This is partly true, because traditional hard drives are, to some extent, outdated technology. However, they remain an excellent way to store large amounts of data that do not require constant access. Thus, an SSD is a drive, first of all, for installing an operating system, programs and games on it.

It is most often used for this purpose. Therefore, do not rush to roll your eyes when looking at prices and think that the usual railway is more profitable. Large volumes from SSD are not required. 64 GB is enough for Windows 10 and everyday software. To also play modern games, 120 GB of free space will be useful. For everything else (videos, photos, installation files, etc.), a 1TB or more hard drive is ideal.

As a result, you will get high loading speed and ease of operation of the operating system and programs. And in terms of reliability, SSDs are better than traditional storage media. But the widespread use of solid-state media has given rise to quite a few rules regarding their use. Installing and configuring them is supposedly different from the good old hard drives. Needless to say that a considerable number of such rules are ordinary myths?

In fact, the newest Windows 10 is perfectly friendly with SSDs, and many stories about how they wear out and waste their working life in the process of overwriting files on them come from the times when the main OS on home PCs was XP. 10 is a completely different matter. It is optimized to work with the most modern equipment and SSDs - just such devices. But a little optimization still wouldn’t hurt, would it?

This short article is dedicated to debunking myths and revealing the truth about the main points regarding the operation of SSDs in modern Windows 8 and 10.

First steps

So, you have purchased the long-awaited disc. We connected it to the required connector in your PC or laptop, turned on the machine, and saw a new icon in the list of connected devices. Before you start using an SSD drive, you should change its firmware. This step is optional, but if you see newer firmware than the factory one on the official website of your purchase, it is better to install it. It often happens that standard firmware is made in haste and can lead to glitches.

Very important: New firmware for any device is a responsible matter, so you need to use software downloaded only from the official website and follow the instructions from there. You alone are responsible for any problems that may arise during the firmware installation process.

It is worth noting: Some manufacturers disable the ability to update the firmware when the SSD becomes a system drive (after you install Windows 10 or 8 on it). Therefore, it is worth taking care of this issue in advance.

Frequent overwriting of files: is the danger imaginary?

There is so much information on the Internet that an SSD quickly wears out and fails when the OS installed on it (Windows 8, 10 or another version) overwrites its temporary files (and it does this almost constantly during operation). To avoid this, an important system setting is provided that reduces the load on the drive. Actually, this is where everything that is written about in the title of this article lies. The entire setup is aimed precisely at increasing the life of the solid-state drive.

Briefly it is:

disabling indexing;
disabling hibernation;
disabling defragmentation;
transferring a folder with temporary files to a classic hard drive;
turning off paging.

Before proceeding to a more detailed description, let's figure out whether we should worry at all? Many of these points are true for older versions of the OS, but Windows 8 and 10 are good at distinguishing between SDD and HDD, and how to treat each of the drives. The rewriting resource of SSDs is large, and besides, modern wear leveling technologies extend the already long life of solid-state drives (if you got an old model somewhere, then perhaps this ability does not exist).

Therefore, it’s up to everyone to decide for themselves whether to delve into the Windows settings or not. If you have 7 or, especially, XP, then it's worth tinkering with. With Windows 8 or 10, this is only relevant for particularly thrifty users. Although, with the current prices for computer components, it is worth doing everything to ensure that the disk “lives” as long as possible. So read on.

Extending service life using standard OS tools

Installing Windows 7, 8, 10 on a solid-state drive is no different from the same procedure with an HDD. The SSD setup is much more original. It’s worth starting by disabling file indexing so that the system does not overwrite new data every now and then. For this:

Open Start.
Find the "execute" line.
Enter s services.msc.
Press Enter.

A service management window will open, in which you need to find Windows Search and disable the service by selecting the startup type “Disabled” in the properties.

It’s also worth looking into the properties of the SSD itself and unchecking this box:

If you do not use hibernation, then disable it so that the OS does not create the hiberfil.sys file on the disk. Open Command Prompt with Administrator rights and use the command:

powercfg.exe -h off

Restart your computer. The setup is complete. Resetting hibernation back to the active state is done with the command (logically):

powercfg.exe -hon

There is no time to talk about what defragmentation is and why solid-state drives don’t need it, but if you want your SSD to work in more “hothouse” conditions, disable it (or rather, check if it is disabled by default). This setting is done like this: Run - dfrgui. You need to disable optimization for the SSD.

As you can see, setting this parameter is simple. It's also easy to drag and drop the temporary files folder onto your HDD.

Open Start and go to Control Panel.
Open "System".
Go to "Advanced system settings".
Open Advanced and Environment Variables.

Here you can change the folder paths. Simply select the folder you want, click the "Edit" button and specify a new path.

For the new settings to take effect, you must reboot.

What else you should do is turn off the page file. To do this, follow this path: folder My computer - Properties of the system - Additionally - Performance - Options. A window will open Performance Options. Here go to Additionally - Virtual memory and press the button Change. Another window will open Virtual memory. Uncheck the box next to this Automatically detect volume and, conversely, check the box next to No swap file.

Among other things, it is sometimes recommended to install all software and games on the HDD, and keep the SSD itself only for Windows (7, 8, 10). By the way, take a look at: Run - regedit.exe. In the Registry Editor that opens, go to: