SSD Optimization: Still Needed?

When SSDs first become available, many tech websites gave suggestions about how to optimize your SSD to get better performance and longer lifespan. Many optimization tips are focused on reducing read/write amount because of the fact that each cell of flash memory on the drive only has a finite number of writes before it reaches the cap and can't work anymore.

These tips may include:

1. Disable System Restore
2. Turn off page file
3. Disable Indexing or the Windows Search Service
4. Turn Off Windows Write-Cache Buffer Flushing
5. Deactivate Prefetch and Superfetch
6. Disable Hibernation

But according to How-to Geek, most of these advice is outdated, and some of it was never necessary.

Reduce writes to your SSD?
As Solid State Drive (SSD) has been available for years, Microsoft has done a lot of work to make Windows run fast with SSD. Also modern SSDs have much larger capacity now and are more resilient than before. Tech Report conducted a 18-month stress test and pointed out that " Errors didn’t strike the Samsung 840 Series until after 300TB of writes, and it took over 700TB to induce the first failures. The fact that the 840 Pro exceeded 2.4PB is nothing short of amazing, even if that achievement is also kind of academic." At 700TB, you'll have to contentiously write 100GB to the SSD everyday for 19 years to encounter the first error.

You still need to keep a regular backup of your important because SSDs may still fail due to other unforeseeable factors but optimization by tweaking Windows to write less won't make an appreciable difference.

Enabling TRIM?
Enabling TRIM is important if you are switching to SSD. TRIM is a command that allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.

However, with Windows 7 and higher, TRIM is default on if SSD is detected.

You can check if TRIM is on by typing“fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify” into Command Prompt. If result is 0 then TRIM is on. If result is 1 by any chance, then you have to manually enable it by typing "fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0" into Command Prompt.

No Defragmentation?
Another important tip regarding managing SSD is defragmentation. Many websites claim that defragmentation on SSD is bad and should be turned off completely. HDD defragmentation is necessary because too many fragments actually slow down read/write speed and may wear mechanical parts. It is true that traditional type of defrag is useless to SSDs.

But according to Microsoft employee Scott Hanselman, "Windows does sometimes defragment SSDs, yes, it's important to intelligently and appropriately defrag SSDs, and yes, Windows is smart about how it treats your SSD." He concluded that these defrag operations are important to maximize SSD performance and prolong life. By disabling defragmentation completely may lead to potential troubles.

Inclusion, SSDs are not as fragile as they used to to and Windows seems to be smart enough to know how to properly handle your SSDs.