MAXIMUMpcguides – Windows Vista tips, tricks, help, and how-to guides » Enable Advanced Performance on Your Hard Drive

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Enable Advanced Performance on Your Hard Drive

Posted By Brent Trahan On July 19, 2007 @ 11:44 am In All, Customization, Vista, Windows | 13 Comments

By default Windows Vista reads from a cache on your hard drive ^[1] and writes directly to the hard drive, bypassing the cache. Reading and writing from your hard drive’s cache is much faster than from it’s platters. When you enable advanced performance on your hard drive it reads and writes from your hard drive’s cache making some operations faster.

This guide shows you how to speed up your hard drive by turning advanced performance on which makes Windows Vista use the hard drive’s cache as a buffer to read and write on your hard drive.

Warning: It’s only recommended to enable advanced performance on laptops or computers with redundant power supplies or battery backups. ^[2] If your computer suddenly looses power you could corrupt or lose data.

Enable Advanced Performance

Right-click Computer in the Start Menu and then select Options.
Click Advanced system settings on the left.
Select the Hardware tab in the System Properties window.
Click the Device Manager button.
Expand Disk Drives.
^[3]
Right-click a hard drive under Disk Drives and select Properties.
Select the Policies tab in the Device Properties window.
Check off Enable advanced performance.
^[4]
Click OK to save the changes and restart your computer.

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[1] hard drive: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26rs%3D172282%26sort%3Dpmrank%26ref%255F%3Dsr%255Fst%26keywords%3Dhard%2520drive%2520internal%26qid%3D1246322404%26rh%3Di%253Aaps%252Ck%253Ahard%2520drive%2520internal%252Ci%253Aelectronics%252Cn%253A172282%252Cn%253A%2521493964%26page%3D1&tag=comptorials-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

[2] battery backups.: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26rs%3D172282%26sort%3Dpmrank%26ref%255F%3Dsr%255Fst%26keywords%3Dups%2520battery%2520backup%26bbn%3D172282%26qid%3D1246322487%26rh%3Dn%253A172282%252Cn%253A%2521493964%252Ck%253Aups%2520battery%2520backup%26page%3D1&tag=comptorials-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

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[4] Image: http://www.maximumpcguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/enable-advanced-performance2.PNG

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