Speed Up SATA Hard Drives - Windows 7 & Vista
Optimizing SATA Hard Drive Performance in Windows Vista
Windows Vista inherently supports Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives. However, the operating system does not, by default, activate advanced write caching capabilities.
Enhancing your system's speed can be achieved by manually enabling this feature within the Device Manager.
Accessing Device Manager is simplified by typing "device" into the Start menu's search field. Alternatively, the command devmgmt.msc can be used from the command line.
Accessing Hard Drive Properties
Within Device Manager, expand the "Disk drives" section of the device tree. Then, locate and right-click on your SATA hard drive, and select "Properties" from the context menu.
This action will open the Properties window for your selected hard drive.
Enabling Advanced Performance
Navigate to the "Policies" tab within the Properties window. You will then be presented with a dialog box controlling drive settings.
To activate the performance enhancement, simply check the box labeled "Enable advanced performance."
Once this checkbox is selected, the changes are applied, and your SATA hard drive will operate with optimized write caching.
