My Crucial Ssd Is Only Reading and Writing at 250 Mb/s
With some modest tweaks, both prior to and after you install a new SATA solid state drive (SSD), yous tin gain performance boosts from your organization above and across those from the SSD upgrade itself. Proceed in mind these adjustments are optional, and with merely a couple of exceptions, the gains are and then small that most users may never see a difference and never bother to make them a priority. If you lot are unfamiliar with what is being discussed around a given variable, feel costless to disregard its contents rather than risk incorrectly adjusting a setting and introducing instability in your organisation. Where possible, links to documentation supporting these changes are included.
Some sections of this volition focus on Windows® settings and all-time practices. Equivalents are normally present in non-Windows operating systems, just slight variations in how another operating system (OS) or even different versions of Windows manage these mean you should cheque support or documentation from your OS vendor to ensure ideal settings and stability.
This commodity volition also focus on variables around your SSD's physical installation and your BIOS/UEFI. The screenshots featuring examples will most likely differ from your specific system configuration. Always refer to your manufacturer documentation for the about applicable information for your hardware.
Loftier-speed SATA ports and controllers
Familiarize yourself with the speeds of your individual SATA ports for your motherboard or system with the documentation from the system or lath manufacturer. In some cases, the ports are running on the aforementioned SATA controller, significant at that place's no deviation in performance. Other times, however, you may find a mix of SATA 3 (6.0Gb/sec) and SATA two (3.0Gb/sec) or slower. Ensuring you accept your SSD connected through the fastest ports in your system volition help y'all get as close as possible to maximum potential speeds with your SSD. This step is only necessary if yous have a ii.5 inch SSD.
BIOS SATA manner
This style is set prior to SSD installation and can be difficult to change after an OS is installed because drivers within your OS volition be configured around this setting during installation. We recommend using AHCI mode for our drives. This way offers high performance and easy setup and takes all-time reward of an SSD'due south features. This is usually the default configuration on an OEM-preinstalled OS or factory-new motherboard.
IDE mode may exist required in legacy hardware or may be the only bachelor option in older systems, but often has reduced operation and can impact Trim support on an SSD. This tin contribute to a loss of performance above and beyond what is already lost from employing an older standard.
RAID modes using multiple SSDs can provide all-time-in-class functioning and added protection against information loss, just in many cases RAID modes block Trim entirely depending on the RAID controller or motherboard chipset the drives are running under. RAID is also a more than involved configuration than a single bulldoze setup, and may not provide noticeable benefits under some types of usage. Some systems likewise let this to be gear up on predefined port ranges, for instance one mode for ports i-4 and another for 5 and 6. Keep this in mind when physically installing your drive onto your system's motherboard, if applicable.
SATA drivers
After your Bone is running on the new SSD, y'all'll want to update to your most recent Serial ATA controller drivers from either your system manufacturer's website or the controller manufacturer's website. On older SATA controllers running in AHCI mode in systems running Windows 7 or later, we occasionally come across faster performance, better stability, and amend Trim functionality by uninstalling manufacturer drivers and allowing your Os to install generic drivers instead. There's no hard rule on when this is the case, so your own testing and preferences might make a stronger case for manufacturer drivers instead.
SSD firmware
Crucial® SSDs feature user-upgradeable firmware which can provide improvements to bulldoze stability and performance. If not already current on the drive when y'all receive it, a quick update can amend your SSD or prevent possible future malfunctions. With about Crucial SSDs, this can also exist done afterward installation, as most of our SSD assortment allows for non-destructive updates to firmware which will leave your data untouched.
Cloning and recovery software
If you lot are using cloning or manufacturer recovery software, you might need to contact your system manufacturer for details on how to kicking from alternate media to run such software for best results from your cloning process. This is usually done by either adjusting a boot order bill of fare within your BIOS, or entering a boot manager to select your cloning/recovery media.
Defragmentation
Defragmentation moves pieces of files closer together on a deejay'due south physical surface, allowing a hard bulldoze to more efficiently load all the portions of a given file when it needs to exercise then. We recommend disabling defragmentation on any SSDs nowadays in your arrangement, assuming your OS doesn't by default during installation of the drive. Due to the lack of moving parts in an SSD, which improves seek times drastically across the physical space of the drive, operation losses from fragmentation on an SSD are negligible. Meanwhile, the act of defragmentation wears on an SSD heavily, performing an enormous number of small-scale write operations to the drive, which is the most important gene in an SSD's lifespan. While a single defragment cycle isn't annihilation to worry about, oftentimes doing this can cut months or even years from your SSD'due south lifespan in extreme cases.
Later versions of Windows volition acknowledge that yous are running an SSD in this screen, and will change defragment options to Optimize which volition run a Trim command on an SSD, which is perfectly fine.
Indexing
Indexing is a process by which your Os maintains a tape of your files and their contents, to speed up drive searches and similar operations. Early SSD users saw amend read and write functioning and drive lifespans past disabling indexing services in their Bone, both to reduce SSD activity and lower write article of clothing to the bulldoze.
Modern SSDs feature amend performing controllers, and then visible performance gains from disabling indexing have been reduced. Besides, with improvements in NAND and SSD lifespans in general, reducing indexing write wear makes a much smaller difference overall to your drive longevity. Indexing services are likewise required for many Os file and content search functions to run as intended. We have no official recommendation for this, just a bulk of SSD users today practice non make any changes to this (which is enabled by default in Windows) and never experience any problems with letting it operate as opposed to turning information technology off.
4K alignment
4k alignment is the procedure by which the data on a drive is aligned to the physical space on a disk to allow the nigh efficient processing of data. If the information is not aligned properly, the SSD has to admission twice every bit many physical sections of the SSD for any file operations. While this sounds similar to file fragmentation as discussed above, it'due south on a lower level and impacts SSD functioning by cutting your read and write speeds by 20-fifty% if not properly aligned.
On a make clean installation of a modern OS (using Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or subsequently, or Snow Leopard on a Mac® system) this will be done during the installation. Electric current versions of well-nigh cloning software volition also do this automatically, simply older revisions might not back up it or might require manually setting it. If not done during installation, you can manually align your drive using third-party software, simply for the most hassle-gratis experience, install a modern OS on your SSD.
Power settings
SSDs tin react poorly to an precipitous loss of power, which tin pb to data corruption or your Crucial SSD's controller locking itself, rendering the SSD inaccessible until reset with an SSD power cycle. Sleep modes, while helpful for some users, tin can cause similar problems if they power down the SSD completely. While firmware improvements and ability loss protection built into newer bulldoze models reduce risks associated with this, farther steps can exist taken to prevent potential issues. Besides disabling sleep in your system (not desirable for some users) changing your operating system'southward power settings to go on the SSD powered but in an otherwise idle state during slumber will minimize this gamble. A less serious malfunction seen from this is your system crashing when resuming from sleep, but the same ability management adjustment will eliminate the SSD as a potential source of such crash behavior.
Page file/ virtual memory
Understanding your page file, how it works, and how best to manage it tin both aid your operation and maximize infinite available on your SSD. Details of this function, how to manage information technology, and best practices are here.
System restore
Windows System Restore creates restore points allowing you to roll back to an earlier land in the event of a catastrophic organization event or an unintended malfunction introduced by system changes. While more than convenient and typically faster than manually repairing OS bug or starting from scratch with a full reinstall, restore points in some cases merely revert to an earlier state of a problem (for example a time when a virus leading to data loss was just less noticeable) leaving the user vulnerable to time to come failures. Also, Organisation Restore uses some space on your drive, typically three-5% of its total size, which some users prefer to go on available for their own use, leading to them disabling information technology.
Source: https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/optimizing-your-ssd