Force 3 GT, How to restore performance

Guys, after reading like 10 pages on this forum, there are lots of mixed opinions as to which settings should be disabled or enabled for top performance. :bsflag:

I have the SSD listed in my spec for boot drive and the HDD listed for Data.

I have win7 x64 on the SSD along with a lot of junk programs so I want to format it in a way that is restored to factory settings.:nodding: secure erase.. which tool is better..parted magic or?hdderase? which is the best for corsair GT?

+ Do I just delete the partition or format it?

+ Which features should I Disable/Enable? (paging, pre-fetch.. etc.)

+ TRIM? does win7 automatically enables it?

I've read that win7 disables features automatically.. true/false? :bigeyes:

Please advise me as I am confused, everyone says something different :confused:

Parted Magic, as a tool, is better than HDDerase.exe. It has a lot of extra features and is a pretty useful utility. With regards to secure erasing a drive, they both operate the same way.

Just delete all the partitions and click next in the windows 7 installation. It does everything for you.

You should disable paging files on SSDs completely. Move any paging files to mechnical hard drives or if you have enough RAM disable them completely. If you're using a paging file, you're not running at optimal performance anyway. I have posted around the forums as to why I personally recommend this option. Although SSD are faster than HDD, SSD are still magnitudes slower than RAM. The difference in speed is marginal, and the amount of wear and tear you're going to put on the drive by having a paging file on it are going to hurt you more than do good. If you are running out of RAM and using a paging file on your SSD, your system is already running VERY slow and inefficient at that point. You will not notice a difference in speed between SSD and HDD paging files.

RAM -> 10,000 MB/sec

SSD -> 500 MB/sec

HDD -> 100 MB/sec

As for your last question, TRIM is automatically enabled in windows 7. As long as your motherboard, controller, and hard drive, (which it appears all of your hardware does) then it is enabled and active. There are sticky threads here on how to use command line to ensure that TRIM is enabled.

I'd recommend having a pagefile. It'll handle those border situations where you run out of RAM, and by having a page file you prevent a crash and potentially lost work. I've experienced this at least once with 8GB of ram.

I also recommend having the pagefile on your SSD. Why? Because the 'extra wear' it induces on your disk is absolutely irrelevant to the lifetime expectancy of your drive. Furthermore, what's the point of having a fast SSD and making your PC feel slower by moving the work which greatly benefit from a faster storage technology to a slower one?

Now, you could argue that the pagefile takes up space on your precious SSD. That'd be a valid concern. That's why I recommend the size of the pagefile to be set at 1024-2048MB; it's enough to catch those border situations and if a 1GB file is the thing that makes or breaks your SSD space demands, I'd argue you'd prolly be better off with a higher capacity SSD in the first place.

Despite the fact that Windows7 doesn't use the pagefile if it's got enough available RAM, I've also heard that some programs might just NEED a pagefile for whatever reason and don't function without the presence of one.

Tell you what - try without a pagefile for some time if you can afford to have your programs crash because you didn't have enough RAM available at the given time. If not, have one just for safety :)