How to Speed Up If SSD Slow on Windows 10

SSD, short for solid-state drive, is a storage device that appears and has become popular in recent years. It adopts integrated circuit assemblies (typically flash memory) to help people store data for good. The most important reason that drives people to use SSD is its fast speed (especially fast startup).

Find Your SSD Slow on Windows 10

Nevertheless, it’s easy for you to find SSD slow on Windows 10 or other operating systems. Why does this happen? How to speed up SSD? In the following paragraphs, I will demonstrate the possible solutions to speed up a slow SSD yourself.

SSD Running Slow

By adopting an SSD, your computer should boot up and run quickly. That’s why a large number of Windows users decide to get an SSD. However, problems like SSD drive running slow may arise during usage. An important reason why your SSD drive becomes slow is the improper boot sequence – if the hard drive (not SSD) is set as the first boot device, you’ll experience an obvious decrease in the fetching and loading speed.

There are 2 situations of SSD running slow on Windows:

• SSD runs slow (SSD suddenly slow): the write performance of the solid-state drive will be decreased dramatically if you fill your SSD to near-capacity or something is wrong with the SSD. This happens frequently when the SSD is used as the second storage.
• SSD boots slow: if you’re using the SSD as the main drive, the bootup speed is supposed to be faster than that of a traditional hard drive. However, you may feel an obvious decrease in the PC boot time if the SSD gets into trouble. Besides, sometimes, users may find the computer slow after SSD installation directly.

Why Is My SSD So Slow

In this section, I will mainly focus on the possible causes of the problem – SSD slowing down.

Cause 1: filling the drive. This means the space on your SSD is just about to run out. You can go to check the capacity and used space of your SSD.

Cause 2: the TRIM command doesn’t exist or has been disabled. The TRIM command is necessary for the stable performance of an SSD; if it is disabled, you’ll get a poor-performance SSD.

Cause 3: AHCI mode is disabled. This mode is very essential for you to get the best out of the SSD; if it’s not enabled, your SSD will run slow.

Cause 4: Onboard VGA is enabled. The VGA feature will greatly affect the boot speed of your computer.

Cause 5: the boot sequence is incorrectly configured. If your computer boots from a hard drive instead of an SSD, it will run slowly.

Cause 6: the computer or SSD is infected with a virus. It is well known that a virus can make your drive and computer very slow.

Cause 7: the BIOS/firmware is outdated. If the BIOS or firmware is outdated, it will also lead to the poor performance of an SSD.

Cause 8: SATA port or cable is in trouble. If there’s something wrong with the connection port and cable, the speed will naturally be affected.

Cause 9: RAM is low. If your RAM is at a very low level, the cache size will be decreased; then, it will cause the SSD to slow down.

Cause 10: PC settings are improper. There are also chances that your SSD is in good condition but it runs slow on Windows 10 since the computer is not set to the best for SSD.

Note: When finding SSD slow down, data security should be your priority; the slow speed can be a sign of a damaged drive. Taking that into consideration, I advise you to back up existing data and recover lost data from SSD first before you try to speed up SSD.

SSD Data Backup

Certainly, the most direct way to back up SSD data is copying existing data from SSD and pasting them to another drive. You can back up data to the Cloud or by using reliable backup software. Here we recommend MiniTool ShadowMaker. This is a handy tool that simplifies the process of backup and provides multiple types of files to back up, including files, folders, systems, and drivers.

Step 1: Download and install MiniTool ShadowMaker.

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Step 2: Launch the software and click Backup.

Step 3: Choose the data you want to back up by clicking the SOURCE button, and then click DESTINATION choice to select where you want to back them up.

Step 4: Click Back Up Now to start the backup process.

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SSD Data Recovery

MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a free data recovery software, works well with all Windows operating systems and storage devices and gives support for many file types. With a clean operation interface and high efficiency of data restoration, MiniTool Power Data Recovery can be your first choice. You can follow this tutorial to perform an SSD data recovery.

Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2: Double-click on the software to launch it and enter the main interface.

Step 3: Select a certain partition to scan on SSD.

Step 4: Wait until the scan process ends, browse the result page to find your wanted files. You can filter files or folders by Filter and Type functions, check your required files by the Preview function, and locate wanted files by the Search function.

Step 5: Click the Save button and choose an appropriate path to restore your data.

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How to Speed Up SSD

It’s easy to find your SSD becomes slow when running on a Windows 10 computer. Users want to speed it up in every possible way but they don’t know how. In this section, several methods are provided to help you optimize SSD for faster speed on Windows. Please try them one by one until you find one that works.

Accordingly, the methods are divided into three types. Considering different situations, you can choose different methods to speed up your SSD. Please go on the following content.

Speed up my SSD Windows 10 when the space is running out

Method 1: Delete unnecessary files and folders from SSD

Method 2: Disable Hibernation

Hibernation is enabled by default in computers. But enabled hibernation will reserve some disk space for its file, which is about 75% space of the installed RAM in your computer. So when your computer doesn’t have enough space, you can disable it to free up your computer.

Step 1: Press Win + R to open the Run window.

Step 2: Type cmd and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to run Command Prompt as administrator.

Step 3: Type powercfg -h off and hit Enter.

If this is not the reason for slowing down your SSD, please move on to the next part.

Speed up Windows 10 Boot Speed

Method 1: Disable Onboard VGA

According to the feedback from Windows 10 users who suffered a long boot time delay, the Onboard VGA feature is responsible for slowing the SSD speed down. It is said disabled Onboard VGA can reduce 20-25 seconds of boot time.

How to disable it:

Step 1: Restart your computer and boot it into BIOS settings.

Step 2: Find the Advanced BIOS Features/Advanced Chipset Features section.

Step 3: Look for Onboard VGA feature and disable it.

Step 4: Exit BIOS and click Yes to save changes.

Notice: the exact titles for the options vary from one motherboard to another.

Method 2: Adjust the Boot Sequence

If the order of the boot device is not configured correctly, you will also find SSD slow on Windows 10 startup. In this case, you need to change the boot sequence to give priority to SSD by following the steps:

Step 1: Reboot your PC and enter BIOS.

Step 2: Navigate to Advanced BIOS.

Step 3: Access Hard Disk Boot Priority.

Step 4: Choose SSD as the First Boot Device by using the up and down arrows.

Step 5: Press F10 and Enter to exit BIOS and save changes.

Method 3: Update Firmware of the SSD

You may find your SSD becomes slow due to its outdated firmware. Firmware is important in keeping SSD performance in stable and efficient status. Thus, you need to check its updating from time to time. you can follow the next steps to update your SSD.

Step 1: Press Win + X and select Device Manager.

Step 2: Select Disk drives choice and right-click on your SSD.

Step 3: Select Update driver.

Step 4: Choose Search automatically for drivers to let it update.

After the process ends, you can check whether your issue is solved or not.

Method 4: Check for Defective Hardware

You should try to disconnect all the unnecessary hardware from your PC and see whether the speed of the SSD can be improved.

• VGA card
• USB device
• Sound card
• DVD-ROM
• Etc.

If one of the hardware connected to the PC is damaged or can’t be recognized, the operating system will keep searching for its cache to get the relevant driver. That’s why SSD becomes slow.

Speed up Windows 10 Running Speed

Method 1: Check SATA Port & Cable

The speed of different SATA controllers is different: 3Gbps or 6Gbps. This has a close relation to the performance speed of SSD. You can go to the motherboard’s manual to determine your SATA port. Besides, ensure the quality of your SATA cable because a defective or poor cable will affect SSD’s performance as well. Please connect the SSD to the first SATA port since it has the highest speed.

Tip: For the motherboards built on Intel chipsets, there will be an Intel SATA controller with a super-high speed. You’d better connect the boot device to this controller. After that, you should go to check whether your SATA cable is broken or encounters poor connection problems.

Method 2: Enable AHCI Mode

AHCI, an abbreviation of Advanced Host Controller Interface, specified the register-level interface of Serial ATA host controllers in a non-implementation-specific manner. This specification shows the system memory structure that exchanges data between the host system memory and an attached storage device. If the AHCI is disabled, your computer may run slow.

Step 1: Reboot your PC.

Step 2: Enter BIOS Settings.

Step 3: Look for the OnChip SATA Type option or anything similar.

Step 4: Enable the AHCI mode.

Method 3: Check TRIM Support

The TRIM command enables SSD to erase blocks of data that are no longer used. This operation can ensure the stable operation of computers, and avoid slowing down the writing speed of computers in future use. Therefore, we need to check whether TRIM runs properly.

Step 1: Press Win + R to open the Run window.

Step 2: Input cmd and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to run Command Prompt as administrator.

Step 3: Type fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify and hit Enter.

If it is 0, TRIM is enabled. If it sets to 1, TRIM is disabled so you need to type fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0 and hit Enter to enable it.

Method 4: Optimize Drivers

Step 1: Open Windows Search.

Step 2: Type Defragment and Optimize Drives and hit Enter.

Step 3: Select your SSD and click Optimize.

Method 5: Choose High Power Plan

Compared with the Balanced power plan, High performance power plan uses more energy to provide better performance for your computer.

Step 1: Press Win + I to open the Settings window.

Step 2: Navigate to System > Power & sleep > Additional power settings.

Step 3: Select Create a power plan in the left pane.

Step 4: Choose High Performance and follow the instructions to complete.

For more methods to speed up Windows 10, you can read this passage: How to speed up your Windows 10?

Last Words

To sum up, your SSD may become slow all of a sudden due to various reasons. When that happens to you, you should first back up or rescue your data (at least the important data) since the SSD may corrupt at any time.

After that, you ought to try the methods mentioned in the previous part to try to troubleshoot SSD slow on Windows 10 effectively. If you have any questions about using MiniTool software, please contact us via [email protected].