Solid-state drives (SSDs) were meant to change the world. They were to remove all the moving parts you'd typically find inside a mechanical hard drive, such as the motor and head. They were great when they first hit the market. It paved the way for more compact devices such as the modern smartphone, media players, and SD cards. Boot times into your favorite OS were near instant, and everything was silent. It was almost perfect, but even with an SSD, your PC can start to feel somewhat sluggish after some time has passed.
Software can start to feel less responsive, file transfers slow down, and boot times increase slightly. This could be a cause of concern that could lead one to believe their SSD is wearing out and pick up a new one to replace it. But before you think of doing that and ignoring SMART status and the fact your SSD should outlive your entire PC if not hammered with constant writes, I've got some hidden settings you could try to improve performance. Here's what I changed on my PC.
Make sure TRIM is enabled
It could be disabled for some reason
For some reason, and I'm still not sure how, but TRIM was disabled on a Windows 11 PC. This is usually enabled by default on Linux and Windows, but there may be a case when it's disabled by accident or through some glitch in the matrix. For some reason, it was disabled on my system and this could cause issues since TRIM allows the OS to tell the SSD which blocks on the SSD are no longer required. It's great for the drive to free up space and erase cells with advanced knowledge.
Modern systems running Windows 10 or 11 and some Linux flavor should be good to go, but it's worth checking. My install had TRIM enabled, but it wasn't running as scheduled and optimizations were left on the table. The fix was to fire up Optimize Drives and manually run TRIM on the SSD, confirming it was active via Command Prompt. This wasn't a drastic improvement to overall performance and responsiveness, but it made a notable difference. Use fsutil to make all the necessary changes.
You're likely good here, but just in case you've not heard of TRIM or know where to look if you've migrated your drive and/or data. TRIM is great for SSDs as it optimizes performance, maintains faster write speeds, and extends the drive's lifespan. Like TRIM, you should absolutely check to ensure your Windows installation isn't defragmenting your SSD, which could be the case when migrating through major versions of Microsoft's OS.
Here's why your old SSD feels slower than it used to be
Your SSD performance can drop with time, but you can do something about it
Stop unnecessary apps from starting up
Reduce OS boot times
Over time, as more and more software is installed and used on the PC, it can cause boot times to lengthen due to some of them wanting to start when your system does. One app starting up is fine, but when you have a few going at it and some of them can be quite the package, it can slow everything down. This may seem like an obvious point to help your boot SSD out, but it is often left on the back burner. I know I hadn't checked what was firing up at the start for a while.
Each software that boots up when your OS does takes valuable resources, consisting of CPU cycles, RAM, and disk reads. Even the fastest NVMe drive could struggle if enough heavy apps wish to open up simultaneously. This is fine when you're opening up a laptop after closing the lid for some time and wish to crack on where you left off, but it's not desirable for a desktop PC to boot up slowly each time due to unnecessary bloat being added to the startup list.
I ran through the app startup list and disabled cloud services I no longer use, including OneDrive. Redundant update checkers and other processes installed and configured by apps can also be removed, and I'm tired of messaging apps that love to automatically add themselves to this list as if they're some app royalty. No, I don't want Discord to start up without me wanting it to — though this app in question has been removed. Instead of waiting some time after the OS finishes booting, I can now make a start almost immediately.
SATA SSDs are the smartest budget upgrade nobody talks about anymore
They are fast enough for most workloads, and more affordable at high capacities
Free up space and check for updates
Yes, obvious, but do you do it?
This may seem counterintuitive since you're effectively restricting how much of the SSD can be used, but I like to free up some space on SSDs and only use up to a certain threshold, such as 75%. Going above this could result in degraded performance, which is precisely what I encountered when using SSDs inside a NAS. Once they were all pretty much full, things started to take a turn for the worse when accessing everything locally. Unlike HDDs, SSDs rely on unused space for wear leveling and trash.
Get rid of those old Steam games you'll never play, even though you keep telling yourself you will eventually get through the ever-growing library. Clear out temporary files that may be taking up valuable space, and how about emptying the recycling bin every so often? I cleared out some files and immediately saw a difference. The same will occur on a desktop or laptop PC. Bear this in mind when moving files between systems that rely on flash storage. For Windows specifically, it's worth looking at search indexing.
This is a handy feature that helps make it easier to locate files, but it can have a detrimental effect on your SSD. Indexing lots of larger files can cause low-level writes and background disk usage, which can interfere with daily usage or even cause unnecessary wear on the drive itself. Windows allows for specific folders to be excluded from indexing, and I'd remove those that you'll never actively want searched altogether.
When was the last time you updated your SSD firmware? It had been a fair while for me, but luckily, this is an easy fix thanks to most manufacturers offering firmware update packages that can be quickly installed. These updates can improve trash handling, enhance wear leveling, fix performance-related bugs, and improve other areas of the drive.
Other things to watch out for
Though not strictly settings, these pointers can help you make the most of your flash-based storage. Ensure there's no thermal throttling taking place. NVMe drives, especially PCIe 5.0, can get really hot. Checking that write caching is enabled, and no other heavy processes are hogging your I/O bandwidth, is another good shout to maximize SSD performance. That said, if you have a speedy NVMe drive, you'll likely be fine for years.