Will an SSD improve MS outlook search/indexing performance?

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Running MS outlook on a Win7 desktop, with many emails (more than 100k). I've archived the emails into blocks of about a year's worth but this is still something like 70k emails per year.

Outlook is slow to search, slow to index and sometimes when closed has to go through "verifying data integrity" which can take hours.

I suspect ideally that I'd be switching the system over to exchange and offloading this stuff to a server, but we're a small office and I'm the sole IT guy (and it's not even actually my job) so there's not really scope for this. Also this is the boss's computer and he's resistant to any kind of (visible) change.

I think the machine has 4gb of RAM but it's only used for very light-duty stuff - typically there'll be a spreadsheet or two, a word doc and a PDF or two open along with outlook. I could add more RAM if this is likely to be a limiting factor. I think the machine is about 5 years old and suspect it has a mid-range i3 or similar dual-core Pentium G[xxxx] processor.

All this in mind, will switching this PC to an SSD (was thinking an M.2 with a PCIe adaptor to get around 3000mb/s read speed) help with outlook search/indexing/verifying performance, or is the bottleneck likely to be elsewhere?

WhatEvil

Posted 2018-04-03T08:36:36.297

Reputation: 184

An SSID is almost always a good idea if space is not an issue - it greatly increases IOPS and throughput from the disk. If the hard drive light is solidly on when using Outlook functions then an SSD will make an order of magnitude difference. – davidgo – 2018-04-03T08:38:55.720

Answers

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An SSD will in most cases speed up your PC substantially, especially if you have old rotating HDDs in your system right now. It is my first question every time I get asked if there is anything to do about a slow pc - Do you have an SSD? if not, get one! Also, they're somewhat cheap now, unlike 5-10 years ago, so price shouldn't be the deterrent to get one.

You can go the M.2 way, but remember there's always a bottleneck somewhere, so you probably wont get the full 3000MB/s read speed.

After you replaced the old HDD with an SSD, you can, perhaps, add another 4GB of RAM - but you will likely not get a great speed boost from that.

chrisroed

Posted 2018-04-03T08:36:36.297

Reputation: 44

What about write/read-cycles? Indexing involves lots of IO operations on the SSD, reducing it's lifetime. – Ultrasonic54321 – 2018-04-03T09:09:38.837

Sorry, I down voted this answer because it just gives generic advice without focusing on the specifics of Outlook searching/indexing. – davidgo – 2018-04-03T09:11:16.450

@Ultrasonic54321 Only wtites reduce an SSD lifetime, and the SSD will be obsolete way before this is a concern - even heavy writes on DB servers get 5+ years life - SSD io issues are grossly blown out of proportion - especially as all modern OS's support trim and SSD's are fairly large compared to when they first came out (which matters for wear levelling) – davidgo – 2018-04-03T09:14:46.057

@davidgo You have a point. – Ultrasonic54321 – 2018-04-03T09:15:36.487

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SSDs are more reliable than most people think. https://ef.gy/statistics:ssd-write-endurance

– WhatEvil – 2018-04-03T09:16:09.467

@davidgo Yes, it is somewhat generic, but the answer is still valid. An SSD will no doubt improve performance across the board. I believe i answered the actual question quite well: All this in mind, will switching this PC to an SSD (was thinking an M.2 with a PCIe adaptor to get around 3000mb/s read speed) help with outlook search/indexing/verifying performance, or is the bottleneck likely to be elsewhere? – chrisroed – 2018-04-03T09:28:06.700

@chrisroed - quite probably - but you are making assumptions about the way Outlook works which may not be accurate - indeed it's not unlikely the problem is actually a corrupt POST file, and/or the index does not require substantial reads. – davidgo – 2018-04-03T09:32:04.093

Asked: 2018-04-03T08:36:36.297

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Active: 2018-04-03T09:05:55.170