5 hidden Windows settings that are secretly slowing down your SSD

Recently my PC didn’t seem as fast as it used to. Applications seemed slower to start and file operations were slow. I started digging in with the usual tools I trust, like Task Manager, Resource Monitor, and CrystalDiskInfo, and it kept coming back to storage. At first, my hypothesis was the most obvious. I figured the SSD might wear out or start to fail, which is where most people’s minds go when a system suddenly seems slow.

What surprised me was how wrong this assumption turned out to be. After going through a short checklist and fixing a few Windows issues, my system felt noticeably snappier again. No new hardware, no reinstallation, no drastic measures. Just a handful of quick checks that most people never think to do. If your PC seems slower than it should and you’re worried that your SSD is on its last legs, this is the same checklist I use before blaming the drive itself.

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What TRIM does and why it matters for SSD performance

TRIM is one of those SSD features that does a lot of work in the background. When you delete files on an SSD, the data is not immediately erased. Without TRIM, the drive has no idea which blocks are actually free, so it must do additional cleanup work before it can write new data. Over time, this extra overhead builds up and performance slowly decreases, especially with many small writes. TRIM fixes this problem by letting Windows tell the SSD which blocks are no longer in use, so the drive can clean them up in advance and stay fast instead of constantly playing catch-up.

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My PC took 30 minutes to boot until I fixed this SSD problem

SSD Problems Can Make Your PC Totally Unusable

On most Windows systems, TRIM is enabled automatically, so it may be surprising to see it disabled. This can happen after cloning a drive, restoring from an old system image, changing storage controllers, or upgrading from a much older Windows installation. In other words, this doesn’t mean your SSD is broken. This simply means that Windows stopped sending TRIM commands at some point, often without it being obvious.

Checking if TRIM is enabled only takes a minute. Open the Start menu, type Command Prompt, right-click it and choose Run as administrator.

In the command window, type the following command and press Enter.

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If you see a value of 0, TRIM is enabled and working as it should. If it returns 1, TRIM is disabled. On my system, TRIM returned a value of 1, meaning it was disabled for some reason. If you find this, enable it by running this command, hitting Enter, and you’re done.

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0

No reboot required and no hassle enabling it on an SSD. This is one of the quickest checks you can perform, and it removes a surprisingly common cause of slowdowns before they turn into larger performance issues.

How Firmware Affects SSD Performance and Stability

SSD firmware is another easy thing to overlook, mainly because Windows never introduces it in any meaningful way. That said, firmware controls how the drive handles caching, garbage collection, wear leveling, and even how it responds to certain workloads. When outdated, performance can suffer in subtle ways, especially after operating system updates or long periods of heavy use. In some cases, vendors also fix performance bugs or compatibility issues via firmware updates, but if you never look there, you’ll never know these fixes exist.

Checking your SSD’s firmware usually means speaking directly to the manufacturer. Tools like CrystalDiskInfo will show you the current firmware version, which you can then compare to the one listed on the vendor’s support site or in its official utility. Most major SSD brands provide a simple update tool that handles the process for you, but you should always perform a full backup before touching the firmware.

In my case, my SSD firmware was not up to date and updating it fixed another potential cause of the slowdown. This didn’t require anything to be replaced, but it was an important step before blaming the reader themselves.

How Low Free Space Affects SSD Write Performance

On an SSD, the available space directly affects how efficiently the controller can do its job. Without enough space to work, performance, especially write performance, drops much faster than most people expect. When a disk gets too full, it loses this headroom and performance, especially write performance, can drop. This is why an SSD that compares well when new can start to feel sluggish once it’s filled to the gills, even if the drive itself is still perfectly healthy.

The simplest solution is also the most boring: free up space and keep it free. Typically, I try to keep at least 15-20% of my SSD empty so that the controller has room to work. This means uninstalling software I no longer use, cleaning up large downloads, and moving media or archives from my drive if necessary. Fortunately, my SSD had plenty of room, so I was able to rule out this problem.

If you want to go further, some SSD tools allow you to explicitly reserve overprovisioning space, but even without that, leaving a good portion of space free achieves the same goal.

What is write caching for and why is it important?

Write caching is one of those Windows settings that most people never touch, but it can have a real impact on the day-to-day performance of SSDs. When enabled, Windows is able to group and rearrange write operations in a way that prevents the drive from constantly stopping and starting. If disabled, every small write must be committed immediately, which can noticeably slow down file copies, installations, and general system activity. Windows sometimes disables write caching after certain errors, driver changes, or power events, and it doesn’t always make this obvious.

Checking it is simple. Open Device Manager, expand Disk Drives, right-click your SSD and choose Properties.

Under the Policies tab, make sure Enable write caching on device is checked. For most desktop and laptop systems, leaving this option enabled is safe and recommended, especially if you are using a system with a reliable battery or power source.

Once I confirmed it was enabled, I was able to rule it out as another potential cause of the slowdown and continue going through the checklist.

How to Identify Background Disk Activity in Windows

Before assuming that your SSD is the cause of the problem, it’s worth checking if it’s simply busy. A healthy SSD can seem slow if something in the background is constantly reading or writing to it. Cloud sync tools, virus scans, search indexing, backups, and Windows updates can all keep disk activity high for long periods of time without explaining why. In my case, I use Syncthing to sync folders across multiple systems, and I initially suspected that this might be contributing to the slowdown.

A quick look in Windows made things clearer. In Task Manager, I looked at the Disk column and could see when usage remained consistently high rather than briefly increasing. Resource Monitor made it even easier to identify what was going on, showing exactly which processes were accessing the disk in real time.

Sync, in particular, performs many operations on small files when scanning or syncing, which can cause an SSD to run slowly, even if the drive itself is working fine. Once I took this background activity into account, it was much easier to tell the difference between a genuinely slow SSD and one that was just busy doing its job.

By the time I went through this checklist, it was clear that my SSD was not failing at all. It was a mix of small Windows issues, background activity, and a few easy-to-overlook settings that had slowly reduced performance over time. Once these issues were resolved, my system felt noticeably snappier again without replacing hardware or reinstalling Windows.

Storage capacity

2 TB

Hardware interface

PCIEx4

If your PC seems slower than it should and you’re worried that your SSD is on its last legs, these are the same checks I’d do first. Sometimes the fix is ​​a few minutes of cleaning and checking, not a new disk.