Thread: Computer has slowed down

Hi BobR, how do you turn Indexing on and off in Windows 7?

Under Windows Explorer right click on each drive in turn. Select properties. Bottom box under the General tab will be selected if Indexing is turned on - if it is deselect it. You will need to wait after deselecting for the system to run through every file on that drive changing the parameter. May take a few minutes per drive.

Yanis states above not to use defrag if you have SSDs. I assume that means solid state memory devices. Why shouldn't you defrag them?
On my desktop I use a hybrid 4TB hard drive, with an SSD at the front end. With the disk half full and with 6 partitions, it takes less than 2 minutes to load Windows 7, thanks to the SSD. Should one defrag this type of hybrid
drive?

Originally Posted by Dengue

Yanis states above not to use defrag if you have SSDs. I assume that means solid state memory devices. Why shouldn't you defrag them?

It does not matter speed wise if you read from one sector or another, proximity bears no relation to the speed of data retrieval. Its a digital retrieval - get cell 123, 124 and 125,444,444 is the same as 123, 124, 125 speed wise). With a physically rotating disk it IS important, for the location of the data means a physical moving of the reading head.

Additionally, each cell of a SSD can only be written to a certain number of times (changing its state). It can be read from "a billion" times, but only written to a few thousand (or hundred thousand). Defragging forces the cells to change state. You will not experience any meaningful speed improvement, just long term degradation.

SSDs use a thing called wear levelling in order to spread the frequency of cell change around amongst all cells. Like slaves, if one slave does all the work, he will burn out. Spreading the effort keeps wear to a minimum. Wear levelling is completely transparent. (I know of instances where SSDs will actually lie to the OS about the location of physical data to stop unnecessary wear)

Also, nothing is ever truly deleted from a SSD, but this is another discussion.

Originally Posted by Dengue

On my desktop I use a hybrid 4TB hard drive, with an SSD at the front end. With the disk half full and with 6 partitions, it takes less than 2 minutes to load Windows 7, thanks to the SSD. Should one defrag this type of hybrid drive?

Yes.

The chunk of SSD that is part of the drive simply caches the most frequently accessed files. The SSD part is a hundred times faster than the physical drive. The caching is transparent and the OS is unaware of it. Periodic defragging will always help a mechanical drive. You CANNOT wear out a physical drive by defragmenting it, but you can make the process a pestilence by having run too frequently slowing down your use while it runs. Once a week, or Month is plenty.

EDIT: I think this is a good read if you get 10 minutes and you feel like knowing a bit more on this type of thing: The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD? - Scott Hanselman

I forgot to add that I was running Windows 10 with one 4GB stick of RAM, I went to the fastest RAM my laptop supported and went with 2 8GB sticks and it made very little difference to the normal browsing and video watching that I do.



It did improve my benchmark score by about 10% and will no doubt help a lot with video and photo editing. Off topic a bit I know but I did expect a bit more of a difference, it seems to have reduced my battery life a bit, down to maybe 8.5hrs from 9(dual batteries).

I have not defragged a drive in years and performance has not suffered to any noticeable degree. I am not saying don't do it but just relating my experience.

The best thing you can do for performance is clone your machine to an SSD. It doesn't take too long and the difference is well worth the cost. I dont even tell clients they have an option with a new PC or laptop, I only give them SSD's. Any Windows PC will slow over time, faster if they dont have enough RAM or free disk space. After a few issues with certain brands of SSD, I am yet to see any Samsung EVO 850's with any issues, they have a 5yr warranty and cloning software is free from Samsung.
Cheers
Ben

Ben, what size SSD do you recommend for windows 7?

How long is a piece of string? It depends more on the amount of data you have. I would not recommend less than 250GB unless you have data stored on another drive in which case a 120GB system drive would probably do but watch things that are hard to move like iphone backups, offline files (on office networks), MS Exchange caches etc chewing up all your space on the C drive.

I used a 120GB SSD for WIN7 but I have 2 Terrabytes of files on another drive. A 250GB is not that much more expensive and you do not need to be so vigilant watching the free space on the drive. I never saved any files to C and I still had to watch it.

I currently have a 120GB SSD and agree it is too small but I have had it for close to three years and it was really only bought to speed up an old machine. It has ended up in my current laptop and I will get a new Samsung or Toshiba SSD to replace it in the near future.

They also make your computer silent and the fan fires up less often, great little things SSDs.

Originally Posted by Ubernoob

I forgot to add that I was running Windows 10 with one 4GB stick of RAM, I went to the fastest RAM my laptop supported and went with 2 8GB sticks and it made very little difference to the normal browsing and video watching that I do.



It did improve my benchmark score by about 10% and will no doubt help a lot with video and photo editing. Off topic a bit I know but I did expect a bit more of a difference, it seems to have reduced my battery life a bit, down to maybe 8.5hrs from 9(dual batteries).

Yes, the common wisdom was always to use matched pairs but when you do the actual benchmarks you get at most 10% under ideal conditions. In real world it appears to make so little difference as to not really matter. I have not worried about matched pairs for years now.

John

Originally Posted by Dengue

Ben, what size SSD do you recommend for windows 7?

I would say as big as you can afford. I keep a graph of best value for money and it sits around the 1T mark at the moment for about $350. You can get a 0.5 T drive for around $200.

John

For an external SSD the Samsung T1 is an excellent choice, and they're physically very small and blindingly fast.

My new Win 10 Toshiba laptop has a built in SSD, and to give an idea of the speed of the things:
a 130Gb folder copied to a new Sandisk 256Gb flashstick took about 90 minutes (through USB 3.0 ports both ends)
the same folder copied to the T1 (also USB 3) took 9 minutes......man I've never seen data move so fast!

From start up the puta is ready to rock in about 20 seconds - the slowest thing is getting the wireless connection to the modem (old Modem).

I purchased the 250Gb Samsung from here for $165:
Samsung T1 250GB 2 5" USB 3 0 Portable External Solid State Drive SSD 450MB S | eBay

and they probably have the larger versions of the T1.