Hdd drive optimization
The Hard Disk Drive (in short: HDD), can be easily defined as the piece of hardware where all the user's data is stored. We won't discuss about how a HDD is made, what it contains or how does it store data, as I want this to be a fairly informative and not too much time consuming tutorial. We are going to discuss some tips to improve your HDD's speed and maybe free up some space.
1. Free Space for performance
Yes! You need to have some free space( well, mainly on your Operating System partition) in order for your system to perform at it's best. Why? Because ofPaging. This is a very important part of your system's virtual memory, and it affects performance drastically in most scenarios. So, I would recommend you to have at least 15% free space on your OS partition(for most people "C").
2. Virtual Memory
Virtual memory, is actually a memory management technique, that most modern day operating systems use to improve performance.In windows especially, our focus is based on Page file size.
This setting can be found by right clicking the "My Computer" icon > Properties > Advanced System Properties > Advanced > At the performance panel click Settings, and at the appearing tab, select advanced > in the virtual memory panel click Change.
As far as I noticed, not allowing the system to manage your computer's page file will improve performance a bit, because when windows manages the page file size, it continuously modifies it's size, decreasing performance. Instead, we are going to use our own page file size, in witch the initial size and the maximum size will be equal, so we have a static page file size. As far as i have tested, there are some values based on how much RAM your system has, that will offer the best performance; you can read them in the table bellow, and try them for yourself.
Recommended Page file size | Amount of System RAM
768 Mb | 256 Mb
1024 Mb | 512 Mb
2048 Mb | 1024 Mb
2048 Mb or 3069 Mb | 2048 Mb
3. Indexing
Another way to optimize your HDD's performance, is by disabling indexing. There is only one disadvantage: windows search would be slow or even disabled if you shutdown the indexing service too. To do so, right click on each of your system's partition and uncheck the "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" box, and the click apply, and select to apply the property only to the selected partition( the first option). Click ok. This will speed up your HDD's performance, but will slow down your windows search function. To further optimize continue reading this tip, but be aware but this will disable your windows search function.
To further increase your performance, open the "Run" box(found in the Start menu of the taskbar), write "services.msc" and click Ok. In the box that has opened, you have all the services on your pc(running or not). Search for the one named "Windows Search", right click on it, and select "Properties". Click on "Stop", allow it to stop, and then at the "Startup Type" select "Disabled". Click "Apply", Click "Ok".
4. Disable "Compress this drive to save disk space"
This one is easy to do.Right click on one of your system's partitions, and click "Properties". In the opened window uncheck "Compress this drive to save disk space", and click apply selecting the first option(to apply the property only to the selected partition not all files). You should do this for all of your system's partitions.
5. Clean your PC too, not only your house!
Your pc also gathers junk. Left over cookies from your internet browser, temporary files, and lots of other type of files that will only benefit your system if they are deleted. A great tool witch gets rid of all this junk and frees up space safely is "CCleaner" a free utility. I advise you to download and install it.
Once installed, run it! And on the "Cleaner" tab in the left, click "Analyze" and then after your system has been analyzed you can click "Run Cleaner" and CCleaner will delete all the junk
files from your pc. Your pc gathers allot of unnecessary files, files that can eat allot of your hard disk's space and also reduce performance.
You can also uncheck some cleaning options so you will not lose some of you data.For example unticking, from the Applications tab, the saved passwords under Mozilla Firefox, you will not have to reenter them when you access your mail for example.
Another great function of this small utility is the "Registry" tab, witch can drastically improve your system's performance. The files that CCleaner finds here, and wishes to delete, are safe to delete as they are leftovers from different programs and applications. This works just like the "Cleaner" tab, having two buttons: "Scan for Issues" and "Fix Selected Issues".
You should perform these two functions of CCleaner, at least once a week, in order to maintain your system's performance and health.
6. Defragmentation
Defragmenting your hard disk will probably increase your performance BIG TIME. If you wish to read more about fragmentation, it's very well explained in anarticle on wikipedia.
Windows offers a tool to defragment your hard disk, found in Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools> Disk Defragmenter.
There are also allot of alternatives to this basic tool that windows offers us, some free and some for sale. Being a freeware "fan", i would recommend you to use one of the following free alternatives: Defraggler, Ultra Defrag or Auslogics Disk Defrag. I am not promoting any of these, nor am I associated with any of the developers.
It's recommended that you defragment your hard disk at least once a week.
7. Formatting a partition wisely and general partitioning tips
When formatting a partition under windows, make sure to select under "Allocation unit size" the largest value(for example 8192 bytes). This can improve performance allot.
If using a large hard disk, try to create at least two partitions.For example we have a 320gb hdd. The best way to partition it would be: one partition of 120gb(operating system), and two partitions of 100gb each.
This concludes the first part of this article, and if you followed all the tips, you should now have a better performing hard disk, and a more responsive operating system.
Yes! You need to have some free space( well, mainly on your Operating System partition) in order for your system to perform at it's best. Why? Because ofPaging. This is a very important part of your system's virtual memory, and it affects performance drastically in most scenarios. So, I would recommend you to have at least 15% free space on your OS partition(for most people "C").
2. Virtual Memory
Virtual memory, is actually a memory management technique, that most modern day operating systems use to improve performance.In windows especially, our focus is based on Page file size.
This setting can be found by right clicking the "My Computer" icon > Properties > Advanced System Properties > Advanced > At the performance panel click Settings, and at the appearing tab, select advanced > in the virtual memory panel click Change.
As far as I noticed, not allowing the system to manage your computer's page file will improve performance a bit, because when windows manages the page file size, it continuously modifies it's size, decreasing performance. Instead, we are going to use our own page file size, in witch the initial size and the maximum size will be equal, so we have a static page file size. As far as i have tested, there are some values based on how much RAM your system has, that will offer the best performance; you can read them in the table bellow, and try them for yourself.
Recommended Page file size | Amount of System RAM
768 Mb | 256 Mb
1024 Mb | 512 Mb
2048 Mb | 1024 Mb
2048 Mb or 3069 Mb | 2048 Mb
3. Indexing
Another way to optimize your HDD's performance, is by disabling indexing. There is only one disadvantage: windows search would be slow or even disabled if you shutdown the indexing service too. To do so, right click on each of your system's partition and uncheck the "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" box, and the click apply, and select to apply the property only to the selected partition( the first option). Click ok. This will speed up your HDD's performance, but will slow down your windows search function. To further optimize continue reading this tip, but be aware but this will disable your windows search function.
To further increase your performance, open the "Run" box(found in the Start menu of the taskbar), write "services.msc" and click Ok. In the box that has opened, you have all the services on your pc(running or not). Search for the one named "Windows Search", right click on it, and select "Properties". Click on "Stop", allow it to stop, and then at the "Startup Type" select "Disabled". Click "Apply", Click "Ok".
4. Disable "Compress this drive to save disk space"
This one is easy to do.Right click on one of your system's partitions, and click "Properties". In the opened window uncheck "Compress this drive to save disk space", and click apply selecting the first option(to apply the property only to the selected partition not all files). You should do this for all of your system's partitions.
5. Clean your PC too, not only your house!
Your pc also gathers junk. Left over cookies from your internet browser, temporary files, and lots of other type of files that will only benefit your system if they are deleted. A great tool witch gets rid of all this junk and frees up space safely is "CCleaner" a free utility. I advise you to download and install it.
Once installed, run it! And on the "Cleaner" tab in the left, click "Analyze" and then after your system has been analyzed you can click "Run Cleaner" and CCleaner will delete all the junk
files from your pc. Your pc gathers allot of unnecessary files, files that can eat allot of your hard disk's space and also reduce performance.
You can also uncheck some cleaning options so you will not lose some of you data.For example unticking, from the Applications tab, the saved passwords under Mozilla Firefox, you will not have to reenter them when you access your mail for example.
Another great function of this small utility is the "Registry" tab, witch can drastically improve your system's performance. The files that CCleaner finds here, and wishes to delete, are safe to delete as they are leftovers from different programs and applications. This works just like the "Cleaner" tab, having two buttons: "Scan for Issues" and "Fix Selected Issues".
You should perform these two functions of CCleaner, at least once a week, in order to maintain your system's performance and health.
6. Defragmentation
Defragmenting your hard disk will probably increase your performance BIG TIME. If you wish to read more about fragmentation, it's very well explained in anarticle on wikipedia.
Windows offers a tool to defragment your hard disk, found in Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools> Disk Defragmenter.
There are also allot of alternatives to this basic tool that windows offers us, some free and some for sale. Being a freeware "fan", i would recommend you to use one of the following free alternatives: Defraggler, Ultra Defrag or Auslogics Disk Defrag. I am not promoting any of these, nor am I associated with any of the developers.
It's recommended that you defragment your hard disk at least once a week.
7. Formatting a partition wisely and general partitioning tips
When formatting a partition under windows, make sure to select under "Allocation unit size" the largest value(for example 8192 bytes). This can improve performance allot.
If using a large hard disk, try to create at least two partitions.For example we have a 320gb hdd. The best way to partition it would be: one partition of 120gb(operating system), and two partitions of 100gb each.
This concludes the first part of this article, and if you followed all the tips, you should now have a better performing hard disk, and a more responsive operating system.