Minimizing Windows XP harddrive access

[justice]

Wrote up this article after spending a few days trying to get a netbook performing. Thought some of you on here might find it useful either for yourself or for a relative. Feedback is welcome.

Recently I had to prepare a Windows XP installation on a netbook with a very slow SSD so I went looking for tips on how to speed up Windows by minimizing the amount of data it writes to the harddrive. Linux OSes like Ubuntu Netbook Edition or Jolicloud are much speedier but they're not always an option.
There are many sites with tips but as always it's important to seperate the chaff from the corn as tips are usually posted without any verification if they make the system faster or just add issues. So, the following quick tips helped me make the system more bearable.

http://bardybard.posterous.com/minimizing-windows-xp-harddrive-access

[yksyks]

As I already mentioned, I had the same problem with Acer Aspire One. I tried all the tips you mentioned, but frankly, even all those applied together brought a hardly noticeable improvement. I'm sure all of them add something, and it's definitely measurable, but you almost won't notice it in a real service. The problem is in a terribly slow SSD cumulated write operations, so even if you minimize the number of disk writes, it's still terribly slow. As I wrote, the only thing that helped and speeded up the machine literally dozens of times, was the fantastic and freeware FlashFire driver that turned the machine from a useless toy to a quite useful PC. My wife is still using it everyday to her complete satisfaction. The only quite bearable drawback is you have to temporarily turn it off should you need to run chkdsk during a boot time.

[Bamse]

Have you tried FancyCache http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/index.html ? Should be especially useful to limit writes since it accumulates them. I have read all forum posts about it and seen happy people at a SSD forum. Some bugs, features missing but most seem to like it. How much it helps probably depends on amount of ram and what apps can benefit. To limit task for sensitive SSD is a main feature. Last beta now have accumulates writes trick. Have also tried it on normal hd and yes benchmarks are on Ramdisk level. Works much like the more known SuperCache http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/supercache.php from what I can see but for now it is free. Looking at their prices for ramdisk I doubt that will continue.

Can also use flash drive, any other drive as cache btw. Or may be only SSD, Flash - look it up... I uninstalled yesterday! Level II cache is another drive where Level I is main memory, including "invisible" part.

Not to be tested on "production" computer

Must say I am a bit surprised how XP can be so noisy but I guess it must be due to how SSD is handled. XP is dead quiet compared to Vista/7.