Is your computer's SSD disk starting to take some hits and slowing down? Here are some tricks to speed it up on Windows 10
Of course, fast is faster. And also less prone to messing around with fragmented files scattered here and there across disk cells. Over time, however, even SSD drives experience a not inconsiderable drop in performance. Nothing to worry about, of course: just do a little "routine" maintenance and everything will be back to how it used to be.
If you're using Windows 10, you're already a step ahead. The engineers and developers from the Redmond-based company, in fact, have included within the operating system several tools and features that help you "keep in shape" your PC's solid state drive. And, what's even better, they are able to do everything automatically: to optimize the SSD disk, in fact, you'll have to do little or nothing. Windows 10 itself will recognize the disk and evaluate, from time to time, what are its "conditions" of health. But, in case you still encounter some performance problems, you can decide to run a tool designed specifically to speed up solid state disks. Here's how it's done.
How to Speed Up SSD Disk
Since file fragmentation is no longer a problem on SSD disks, Microsoft has improved the defragmentation tool, also adding features for SSD disk optimization. Again, this is a set of automated controls, but they will have to be activated by the user whenever he wants. From various Microsoft developer blogs it is recommended to run the SSD optimization checks once every month or so, but if you don't have any problems and don't have a lot of time, you can skip it sometime.
To optimize and speed up your SSD drive, just type Drive Optimization in the search field of the Start menu bar and click on the most relevant result. In the tool click on the Optimize button and wait for the procedure to complete. Depending on the time that has passed since the last time it was run, it may take more or less time. If you want, you can also enable scheduled optimization, which is done on a weekly or monthly basis depending on your preference: just click on Change Settings and choose the one that suits you best.
Speed up SSDs with partition realignment
Another issue that may contribute to slow performance is the so-called partition misalignment. This is a problem that occurs when you copy a Windows partition from a magnetomechanical hard drive to a solid-state disk and, as mentioned, it heavily affects disk performance. To check if everything is in order, go back to the Windows search field (the one in the Start menu bar) and type the string "msinfo32" and open the System Information tool. Here, in the left column, expand the Components section by clicking on the "+" on the left and then in the same way expand Storage. Choose Disks and scroll down the right side of the window until you see the lines dedicated to partitions (easily recognizable because they start with the word Partition). Each partition has a start value, which you can see by the words Partition Startup Offset: if that number is perfectly divisible by 4096 (i.e., dividing the Offset value by 4096 gives no remainder), then the partitions will all be aligned and you won't have to optimize the SSD any further.
If, on the other hand, you get a result with decimal places, then there are alignment problems. To solve them you can use free tools like MiniTool Partition Wizard: right-click on the misaligned partition and click align. The software will take care of everything.