Only do C: drive. Even then, it's being defragged in the background by Windows anyways. You can download Auslogics Disk Defrag program here for better (and more visual) results: http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/ Run the Defrag and Optimize option (just the drop down arrow) and you should be set.
Is C: drive your SSD? Go to my computer or just type windows key+e and see the drive space for C. If it's real small, it means that's your SSD on this particular machine. If so, do not defrag.
Assuming his SSD cache is setup correctly, the SSD will not be viewable so only his mechanical drive is shown with his OS partitions and restore/backup partitions.
the point is that I suspect the reason your poor performance is the fact that the parts are less than great. also, not sure how you can quantify "great specs for what you are doing," meaning what exactly? Do you mean that you believe that you can run what you intended to run? I suspect what you really meant was that you saw the processor and the gigs of memory and thought, great! I am upgrading considerably from what I had, without accounting for the fact that, windows 8.1, like all windows, is a resource hog. I mean, you should see the specs I have on my computer, and still windows 8.1 creates a slight lag in performance. That's windows 8.1 for ya.
A resource hog? Can you expand on why you think this? It runs quite well on low end hardware from my experience.
It does, to a certain extent, run well. Microsoft specifically made it a point to clean up windows once they took the operating system to the tablet pc. And, it is true, that a fresh install of windows 8.1 is usually pretty fast, but in my experience, the speed doesn't last. Other software (ie, firefox, chrome, office, etc) all of these work in conjunction to erode the operating system pretty quick. For example, office 2013 is terribly weighty compared to the previous 2010 version and even firefox and chrome seems sluggish on windows 8.1. I guess that's what I mean. Maybe that's not your experience.
No, the main reason for his poor performance is using a SSD cache/5400RPM drive setup. Stick a true SSD in there and speed will be considerably faster than using just an SSD as cache. 5400RPM drives are slow as ****. Most people use PCs for Facebooking, Youtubing, Tweetering, and what have you. You don't need an i5 or an i7 quad-core with hyperthreading to do those tasks. Today's Haswell/Ivy Pentiums are more effiecient in single threads than even AMDs highest offerings. Hell, most AMD APUs are more than enough for these tasks. Like I said, drop an SSD in an old ass PC, and it will make it feel like you bought a new PC. LAWL. Please stop talking. Hardware is hardware. An i5 (albeit mobile in this case) is still an i5. 6GB of RAM, is still 6GB of RAM even if it's 1333MHz compared to the common 1600MHz speed RAM found in notebooks today. That will not make a lick of difference in visual speed difference anyway. His specs are pretty mid-range for what he paid for minus the 5400rpm hard drive as I stated. All my machines have SSDs in them and I will never go back to a mechanical drive even if it had SSD express caching on it. I had RAID 0 Samsung 830s with an i7 3770K OC to 4.3GHz, 16GB RAM, and it was still getting hitches here and there in Windows 7. Here is a screenshot I took awhile back of my drives: Doesn't mean my hardware sucks, that's just the nature of the OS. OP, you have a good laptop. Just drop an SSD in it and your machine will fly.
no, i dont think it is. after pressing windows key + e, it says the C drive has 402/444 GB left - which i assume is the HDD. now what?
SSDs are like your USB flash drives on sterioids. No moving parts which means faster reads and writes. Uses less power so you'll save some battery power on laptops (not much unless you do your own testing). Less heat. Less prone to be damaged if dropped or moved around unlike those mechanical drives. Just to give you a visual reference of the speed difference, compare the speeds I posted of my SSDs above with the RAID 0'd Samsung 7200RPM mechanical drives:
the laptop mentioned it came with 24 gb of ssd, so dont i already have ssd? and you mentioned a few posts ago to defrag my hardrive (c) - why is that, and what will that do?
In Laymen's terms, it will reorganize your blocks of data so they closer to each other on the disk rather than being here and there on the disk. Imagine reading the numbers 123456789 in order. Easier and faster to read as I just typed it because they're next to each other and in order. Now trying reading in order them like this. 2 4 9 7 5 8 1 .
Yes, you do but it is only use as a caching drive meaning your OS and programs are still on the mechanical 500GB drive. However, the SSD caches frequently used data, so it can pull them up much faster than your mechanical drive can. Try rebooting your PC a couple of times in a row. This will allow the SSD to cache all the frequently accessed data so it will make your boot up time quicker and more efficient. This method gives you SOME speed benefits of an SSD with the added benefit of a cheaper yet larger-sized mechanical drive (500GB vs 24GB SSD) With an actual full-sized SSD (More than 64GB of space, but 128GB would be optimal), your OS and programs will be installed on the SSD itself, meaning everything will be accessed quicker because of the natural speed that an SSD provides. You lose the storage space unless you want to spend more money on a larger sized SSD. This method renders the 24GB SSD cache irrelevant because all your data is already accessible on the full-sized SSD.
When you install programs, updates, and whatnot, the drive places those blocks of data all around the drive. Some can be at the front of the drive, some can be at the middle, and some can be at the back. What defragging does is it finds those fragmented blocks of data, places them closer or near blocks that are in relation to each other at the front of the drive. This prevents the drive from actually having to "read" the disk in different areas to find all fragmented parts of data that belong to a program or file. This will speed up your PC because the hard drive won't be hunting for those multiple fragments of data. Defragging is more of a maintenance thing to keep your drive neat and tidy and easier for the drive itself to read the files. It's kinda like changing your car oil.
The thing to note is Windows 7/8 actually does this in the background unlike Windows XP or before where you actually have to manually run the defrag program. So everything should be quietly rearranging itself on your drive as you use it or leave it idle. ( as you can see by the 0% Fragmented on your screenshot) You can however run it yourself afterwards if you installed multiple programs, did some big updates, or added a giant chunk of data onto your hard drive (like thousands of MP3s or movie files in the GBs). This will immediately defrag those files so they'll be faster to access by your drive. Or you can just do it once a week just for peace of mind.
ok cool, i will defrag my hdd. scionxa mentioned that i could d/l the drive update for the touchpad by stating that my OS is windows 8 (since the touchpad update isn't available as an option if you say your OS is windows 8.1 - is that safe?
