Improve SATA (Serial-ATA) Hard Disk Drive Speed Performance in Vista

Windows Vista with SATA HDD (hard disk drive) can be optimized to run faster. If your system has a SATA (Serial-ATA) hard disk, which in fact, most new computers bought and delivered during the last one or two year should be configured with SATA disks, the following hack will guide you how to enable setting to improve SATA hard drive speed and performance.

  1. Logon to Windows Vista with an Administrators group user account.
  2. Go to Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Device Manager. Alternatively, right click on “Computer”, and select “Properties”. Then click on “Device Manager” on the left Tasks pane. Give User Account Control permission to Continue.
  3. Expand the “Disk drives”, and find the SATA hard disk installed on the system.
  4. Double click on the SATA HDD device or right click on the S-ATA HDD then select “Properties”.
  5. Click on “Policies” tab.
  6. Tick the check box of “Enable advanced performance” nested under “Enable write caching on the disk” to enable the SATA harddisk performance improvement. You may also have to select “Optimize for performance” instead of “Optimize for quick removal” if it’s not selected.

    SATA Advanced Performance in Vista

    This option is only selectable on SATA hard disk, else if using PATA or IDE hard disk, you won’t see the options, or the settings are grayed out or disabled. As pointed out in the illustration, enabling of advanced performance will hold more writable data in the memory cache to further improve disk performance, so it’s recommended only for disks with a backup power supply, such as system protected by UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) or notebook and laptop computer with charged cell battery pack to fall back. This configuration will increase the risk of data loss if the disk loses power.

  7. Click OK, then exit from Device Manager.

Improved hard disk speed and performance will generally help to increase the system speed and improve performance of Vista.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Improve SATA (Serial-ATA) Hard Disk Drive Speed Performance in Vista”

  1. Tanmay
    September 3rd, 2007 21:19
    1

    Is there any such option for Windows XP Pro????

  2. Bluhound
    September 3rd, 2007 22:39
    2

    Only in Windows XP Pro 64 bit Edition.

  3. thecatman
    September 5th, 2007 01:23
    3

    why, if i have a sata2 raid0 configuration, the performance degrade when i check this options? in some blog i have read a limit of 120Mbit when this option of cache is on. is it true? thanks

  4. admin
    September 5th, 2007 01:28
    4

    I believe it’s more to caching rather than speed. You may try enable the setting then benchmark the drive.

  5. thecatman
    September 5th, 2007 23:34
    5

    sorry! the problem is the read caching not the write caching.

  6. Pietro
    February 20th, 2008 00:15
    6

    I tried to enable this feature under my Windows Vista, with a asus motherboard (P5K-E) and a WD hdd, but it’s impossible. I put the mark on “Enable write caching on the disk” and on “Enable advanced performance” but this functions dont want to activate. If i check again the disk option, this features are always disabled….

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