SSD Evo 850 and Windows 10

[Pilsner73]

So recently I made the plunge to a Z170 motherboard and an SSD drive (500gb 850 evo), i installed windows 10 and am now reading a ton of information about settings for best SSD performance and life. I installed Samsung Magician and clicked for best performance but doing more reading on the net I can honestly say I'm a bit lost which is the best way to setup Win10 for SSD. Some sites go into great detail on setting changes, pagefile moves, and such but other sites say nothing needs to be done.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

BTW I have a 1 TB WD HDD also installed as a secondary drive.

 

[KingFatty]

What is your worry regarding lifetime of the SSD?

I think there is merit to various strategies, but only in the sense that they are strategies to accomplish reduced wear. but my issue is those strategies are obsolete because there doesn't seem to be any reason to be concerned about SSD lifetimes.

 

[Elixer]

Yeah, don't worry about most of the so called SSD 'tuning' stuff, it just isn't an issue these days for the vast majority of the people. Those only come to play if you write a ton of data per day to the SSD, like over 40GB/day for that model. Then, you only have a few years of life on the SSD.

You still need to make backups though with whatever storage device you have.

 

[nerp]

I wouldn't even bother with the Samsung Magician software. Windows 10 will take care of everything required for peak performance.

 

[billbillw]

Magician is good for checking/updating firmware and possibly if you want to do a secure erase. Don't need it to do trim though.

It found a firmware update for my 850 EVO just yesterday.

As for the optimization stuff, most of it doesn't matter much. I like to keep off system restore to save space. I keep Acronis backups regularly and I trust it more than Microsoft to restore a mistake. I don't like hibernate either. Samsung wants to turn that on if you select maximum performance. What does hibernate have to do with performance?

 

[LTC8K6]

So recently I made the plunge to a Z170 motherboard and an SSD drive (500gb 850 evo), i installed windows 10 and am now reading a ton of information about settings for best SSD performance and life. I installed Samsung Magician and clicked for best performance but doing more reading on the net I can honestly say I'm a bit lost which is the best way to setup Win10 for SSD. Some sites go into great detail on setting changes, pagefile moves, and such but other sites say nothing needs to be done.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

BTW I have a 1 TB WD HDD also installed as a secondary drive.

Just let it ride. Don't overthink it.

 

[Pilsner73]

Thanks to everyone. Some more research and I see Windows 10 has built in a lot of optimizations for SSD drives since the days of Win7. I will let it go with stock config and see how it performs.

 

[JimmiG]

I wouldn't even bother with the Samsung Magician software. Windows 10 will take care of everything required for peak performance.

This. It seems Samsung haven't updated this section of the software in years, so a lot of the "optimizations" are outdated and no longer apply unless you're still on Win7.

I ran the Magician software when I got my 850 Evo, but I've ended up undoing most of the changes it made because they were either unnecessary or even counter-productive, such as disabling the prefetcher even though it has been written to recognize SSD's since Windows 8 and later, or turning of search indexing which makes searches painfully slow.

 

[pcgeek11]

Magician is good for checking/updating firmware and possibly if you want to do a secure erase. Don't need it to do trim though.

It found a firmware update for my 850 EVO just yesterday.

As for the optimization stuff, most of it doesn't matter much. I like to keep off system restore to save space. I keep Acronis backups regularly and I trust it more than Microsoft to restore a mistake. I don't like hibernate either. Samsung wants to turn that on if you select maximum performance. What does hibernate have to do with performance?

Faster boot time.

 

[corkyg]

Faster boot time.

There are pros and cons. Hibernate is not exactly the same as Fast Start Up.

http://www.howtogeek.com/243901/the-pros-and-cons-of-windows-10s-fast-startup-mode/

 

[jhansman]

Also, you'll want to turn on Rapid Mode in Magician. Might as well squeeze out all the performance you can out of that drive. As for other settings, all the above should do the trick. Win10 is now optimized for SSDs; I boot from a 500GB 850 EVO and my system has never been anywhere close to being as quick as it is now. The shut-down sound I have set never gets a chance to play, so quick is shut down (and start up) now on Windows. Love it!