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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[TABLE=class:-grid,-width:-700][TR][TD]
Scheduled Time
[/TD]
[TD]
Description
[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]
Once a Month
[/TD]
[TD]
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.
[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]
Once a Week
[/TD]
[TD]
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.
[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]
Once a Day
[/TD]
[TD]
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.
[/TD][/TR][/TABLE]

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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

 

[TMM]

I have RAID 0 configration and when I enable these settings and go back to check them I see they are reverted back to their default values. How can I solve the issue? Thanks

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

On RAID, they don't always work. I would be very careful with RAID 0. If it fails, you lose everything.

 

[Brink]

Hi TMM,

I would not recommend trying to do this on a RAID setup either.

Shawn

 

[s99]

Thanks for this tut!! btw i'm on a lappy so i can safely enable HDD advanced performance since risk of power loss is minimal(battery!) !! :D

btw merry xmas !!

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

It is not always safe. If you OS is stable and not prone to lockups and forced reboot, try it. If you have any issues, don't. Data could be lost and your OS may crash due to errors writing to the registry from the cache. The battery they mean is a battery backup cache on your controller. It protects your data in the cache.

 

[Brink]

You're welcome s99.

It's your call, but it should be ok if you do not let it run out of power.

Shawn

 

[totalz]

Is it safe to "Enable advanced performance"? As it is only recommended for disks with a backup power supply. Does it actually increase the file system cache size? Where can I find the current setting for file system cache size?

thanks.

 

[Brink]

Hello Totalz,

That was not a recommendaton in this tutorial, but it is a good idea if you have power failures.

It is usually safe to do unless you are always losing power for whatever reason. It is not recommended for external drives that you unplug from the computer.

The cache that it uses cannot be manually adjusted. It is comppletely handled by Vista.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[PainlessTorture]

You could just get a surge protector. There is one that keeps your computer going for about 3 Min's. Just set your computer to shutdown on switch to battery power. I dont know if this would work, but I dont see why it wont.

 

[PainlessTorture]

Hmm, when I check the box saying write cache and advanced performance and then click OK it just goes back to unchecked. If there some sort of lock on it that attempts to prevent this change?

I just realised it says under the option that the device does not allow write cache settings to be modifed. Anyone know a way to override and do it anyway?

 

[Brink]

Hi Fmjc001,

If you are using RAID, then you will not be able to use this.

Do you have the latest motherboard chipset drivers installed? Check to make sure that you have SATA drivers and not SATA/RAID drivers installed for it. Double check the BIOS settings for that drive to see if it is set as AHCI.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[PainlessTorture]

Hi Fmjc001,

If you are using RAID, then you will not be able to use this.

Do you have the latest motherboard chipset drivers installed? Check to make sure that you have SATA drivers and not SATA/RAID drivers installed for it. Double check the BIOS settings for that drive to see if it is set as AHCI.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hey Brink,
Im not using RAID. I just recently bought this laptop and installed all the correct drivers. I have looked at my BIOS and cant see the AHCI settings. Do you know excatly where it is?

 

[Brink]

It may be a worded a bit different in your BIOS settings, but on mine it's under Integrated Peripherals to the right of the Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode listed item. I have a choice of either IDE, AHCI, or RAID/IDE.

 

[luke904]

when it says "increased chance of losing data"
does that mean stuff i was working on at that moment (open) or could i lose files that are not currently in use?

 

[Brink]

Hi Luke,

It is for the data that is currently being written onto the drive from the cache. It will not affect any files that are already saved on the drive.

Shawn

 

[luke904]

i see, thank you

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Luke.

 

[Gnys]

Thank you for the great tutorial on how to speed up performance in Vista
Lot's of vital keys in there.
I do have a question because I am almost close to concluding a minor issue I am facing with both of my hard drives in Raid 0. Upon installation of Vista I was battling with huge stattering issues but soluted that with an approved motherboard RAM. Much has helped and most stattering went away with the new RAM installation and the performance tutorial was a great help but unfortunately not all has dissappeared I thought it would. I'm certain that the rest of the stattering is coming from the hard drive.
Question is what could be possibly causing this minor stattering from time to time? I may have to defrag the C: but I just installed it a couple a days ago. Isn't it too early? What do you think?

 

[Brink]

Hello Gnys, and welcome to Vista Forums.

It may be something running in the background. You might test with System Restore, Index, and chkdsk auto schedule turned off to see if that clears up the stattering. Also check to see if you may have the hard drive set to shutdown to soon in the Power Plan settings causing a delay while the HDD spins back up.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Gnys]

System Restore - done. The hard drive works 3 times better since the installation of Vista.
Index & chkdsk auto schedule turned off.
I figured your talking about Indexing service. What should I check in there? Chkdsk auto schedule turned off, where is that option?
I do have to Power option of the hard drive set to never but my understanding could be mistaken.

Note 1: As I'm typing this I can hear that C: is searching/reading something in the background while this stattering happens! I'm assuming it's some Indexing issue.