Keeping Windows XP happy on a 1st gen SSD (minimizing writes)

SHORT VERSION:

Minimize writes to the SSD to keep the speed fast...

• install the EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) using this tool
• manage the EWF using the EWF Administrator program
  
• create a ramdisk, set 'temp'/'tmp' and windows 'temp'/'tmp' environment variables to point to it
• eliminate pagefile (caution, might be good or bad)
  

1st Gen SSD's and Windows XP don't support the 'trim' command, which means that the drive will slow down once all the internal pages have been written/erased, so the best plan is to minimize writes wherever possible.

In order to keep my HD-playback PC in top shape, I try to minimize any writes to the hard drive, which keeps the drives nice and quiet and reliable. Even before I got my SSD I had installed the EWF filter, which sends all writes to a hard drive to ram instead, and when you shutdown, you have the option of saving the changes to the drive, or discarding them. By default the EWF tries to protect your 'C:' drive (or whatever your OS is on), but leaves the other partitions alone, free to be written to.

The advantage of this is that once you have your pc set up just the way you like, every reboot brings you right back to it, since you can discard all changes that were made between reboots, perfect for running a pc as a reliable appliance. This is especially good since it minimizes the writes to the SSD, which slows it down.

The downside is that you can't do anything that takes a lot of RAM or resources, like Photoshop, but thats ok, since this is for my HTPC partition. I have Win7 installed on a different partition not using EWF for 'real' work.