[Muessig]

So I just bought my first SSD to replace my current Hard Disk, it's a Samsung 128GB 840 Pro which I've done some research on and should fit my needs really well. It should be arriving very soon so I've been reading up on what exactly I need to do to prepare for the SSD (stuff like turning AHCI on in the Bios) but I'm curious what I need to do once I've got it running on Windows 8 to keep it running well.

12 Things You Must Do When Running a Solid State Drive in Windows 7

That's a slightly old guide I've come across and I'm not sure if any of those things are needed or a good idea for an SSD these days. I heard that Defrag in Windows 8 just runs the TRIM command so I'm guessing I need to keep that on?

Any help guys?

[Josh Mackey]

If I recall correctly, Win8 should handled everything automatically. I assume this will be a fresh install yes?

Also, most of those 12 things are actually not that good of an idea.
#1 is about the only one that holds true.

Windows knows best, don't turn features off unless you completely understand the ramifications of doing so.

[BIGPADDY]

That kinds of a wield list the only one which I use to maximizing overall performance is the power option mode to high performance I did that with my laptops and it does make it faster but eats up the battery a lot I would estimate it last for half the normal life of the battery.

SSD will still be fast without any of those items on the list anyway so don't worry to much my friends has an SSD for gaming and says it extremely fast.

Also this is for Windows 7 I would not think this would be suitable for Windows 8 so my advice would be just to change power setting to high performance

[Muessig]

I was literally just pointed to this site: Windows 8 SSD Settings, Etc. » TweakHound seems to look full of good advice?

Edit: Quick question.. SSD's get firmware updates so how do you apply a firmware update to a drive that's running your OS... I guess it must schedule the update on next restart or do it through proprietary software or?

[Josh Mackey]

I was literally just pointed to this site: Windows 8 SSD Settings, Etc. » TweakHound seems to look full of good advice?

Edit: Quick question.. SSD's get firmware updates so how do you apply a firmware update to a drive that's running your OS... I guess it must schedule the update on next restart or do it through proprietary software or?

That page I agree with. However, its mostly just commands to run if you transfer a Win8 installation to a SSD. If its a fresh install, you should be fine.

As for firmware updates, don't unless you have an absolute need to. Firmware updates can be destructive which would lose your data. Plus, they rarely give performance boosts, most updates are for compatibility issues.

If we assume you need to do an update, according to OCZ, you cannot do it if the SSD is the OS drive so you'd have to use another copy of windows somewhere to run the update tool.

[Muessig]

I guess the drive will ship with the most recent firmware so I don't think I'd need to touch it for a while. I'll have to keep my ear to the ground to see if there are any worthwhile firmware updates over the next year or whatever. Good to know they're not mandatory though.