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Instant Hard Drive Performance Boost

This article will describe the easy process required to gain the maximum performance from your USB drive. The tweak itself works on any external USB storage device, i.e. a pen drive or an external hard drive.

Please be sure to read the important note at the bottom of this article to ensure you do not suffer any loss of data.

By default, USB drives are optimised for quick removal. For folk like myself who have their USB drive permanently connected to their computer, this is not required, so we want to optimise it for best performance.

When I applied this change to my external USB drive, it had a noticeable positive impact on performance. To optimise your USB drive for performance, do the following:

1. open Windows Explorer (use the Windows key + E)
2. Right-click your USB drive and select Properties
3. Select the hardware tab along the top of the window
4. Select your USB drive from the list and click Properties
5. Select the Policies tab along the top
6. Select "Optimize for performance" and click Okay

You'll most likely be told to restart your computer. Do so and you're all set. After the re-boot, you should detect a noticeable performance improvement.

This tweak is reversible. If you wish to revert to the original settings at any later stage, simply follow the method used above but select "Optimize for quick removal" at stage 6.

Important note: as your drive is no longer optimised for quick removal, if you do want to remove it, you MUST do so by using the "Safely remove" option from your status bar, otherwise you risk data loss.

posted by 4414 @ 3:42 AM