Do you have old programs that have slow disk performance on Windows Vista or Windows 7? If so, you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hard disk by enabling what I call compatibility mode for your file system. This speeds up the performance of your hard disk by changing how write caching works. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. Let's get started:
- Click on the Start Button and key in Device Manager and hit Enter.
- Expand Disk Drives.
- Right click on your hard drive and select Properties.
- On the Policies tab:
Windows Vista: Check Enable advanced performance
Windows 7: Check Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device. - Hit OK and close Device Manager.
Read about the interesting history of this feature on Windows Confidential
