Overview

When it comes to storage there’s no doubt that, if money isn’t a problem, Solid State Drives (SSDs) are the big winners in matters of shock resistance, speed, temperature and dimension. This new technology may sometimes need a piece of software to push it to its highest potential performing several tricks.

Installation and support

SSD Tweaker does not require an installation process; it can be run from the moment it’s downloaded. The only shortcoming the free version of the program has is the fact that when one tries to exit the software, it displays a nag screen.

SSD Tweaker

Interface and features

The user-friendly, neat interface features easily accessible menus and options, but the user may feel a little disorientated by the number of checkable boxes. The main interface is organized into two panels, one of them displaying the options that can be accessed in XP, Vista and 7 and the other, the right one, showing some extras not available in Windows XP.

Let’s describe the most important tweak options and their usability. The first component we have to check is the Windows Prefetcher, which should reduce the boot time and the time in which the system launches applications. If your drive has a Jmicron chip, the option might actually slow down your SSD.

You’re also offered the option to “Clear Pagefile at Shutdown” you might notice the computer takes more time to shutdown, because that data was stored by your operating system to help the SSD to access it faster and to shut down the system.

When it comes to deciding to disable or enable the Large System Cache, you must know that the system will allocate some RAM for caching files, the background programs running faster but slowing down your main programs.

The NTFS file system is addressed by the next boxes to be checked or not: you have to choose to limit or not NTFS Memory Usage and check or not “NTFS 8.3 Name Creation”. In order to make or not this decisions, you should learn out that by imposing a limit to your NTFS File System you’ll limit the concurrent operations that can be performed, if the buffer will be full and that creating 8.3 filenames could cut down your directory enumeration performance.

You can also enable EFSD, which comes disabled, in order to track files. By enabling the “Boot Tracing” option you can monitor the activity or your kernel, drives and other applications when the system boots.

SuperFetch is supposed to do for the computers that run Vista or XP what the Prefetcher was going to do for older Windows operating systems: speeding up your system, boot faster and improve app loading.

Under the Superfetcher there is the Indexing service which can be checked or not. What it does for the user is recording the computer files and the SSD can theoretically speed up the searches, but the process through which the files are indexed take quite a lot.

Unfortunately, the TRIM command, which prevents file fragmentation by simply moving your data from one part of the SSD to another can’t be used in the free version, but you can at least see if your SSD supports TRIM by simply pressing the F9 key.

SSD Tweaker is not a resources-hungry program, using around 10-20 MB of Ram.

PROs:

-free SSD app;

-it doesn’t consume too many system resources;

- it’s pretty intuitive and user-friendly.

CONs:

-you have to be an advanced user, knowing what every options implies;

- there are a lot of options which aren’t available in the free version.