6. Optimizing Your System

There are a number of optimization tips available for PC users, here are a few that are tested and proven. Obviously, with so many different configurations of PC systems in the world, some of these tips will help tremendously, and some might not make a noticeable difference. Try some experimenting to see which ones help you and your system.

Disable Write Behind Caching
Go to the Control Panel and choose the SYSTEM icon. Next, click the Performance tab, then the File System. Now choose the Trouble Shooting tab. Select the last option, “Disable Write Behind Caching For All Drives” and click OK. This forces Windows to write data immediately to disk rather than holding it in memory and writing it later.

By disabling this function, you can increase your performance a great deal, because the data is not being buffered before going to the disk. This feature could be helpful if you have a very slow RPM hard drive, in that it could buffer the data until the slower drive was able to “catch up”. The flip side to this data buffering is a greatly increased processing delay.

Reducing Read Ahead Optimization
When the hard drive is accessing and retrieving data, it is able to grab some “extra” information that it views as sequentially necessary…basically, it figures you will need the next packet of information in addition to the specific data you asked for.

This can be helpful if you are running only one application, but in the world of computer audio recording, you constantly need a variety of information from different areas of the disk. If the system is retrieving data that it thinks you need, but don’t, this can slow your system down tremendously.

Go to the Control Panel and choose the SYSTEM icon. Next, click the Performance tab, then the File System. Now choose the Hard Disk tab. Decrease the slider to the smallest setting.