Problem with SSD and "Delayed Write Failed" error. How to fix / optimize XP for SSD?

Question

I just installed a Crucial SSD (120GB) on Windows XP (SP3). It's been operating without any problems for about 3 weeks. This morning I started getting "Delayed Write Failure" on various system files.

So the question is this...

How can I optimize WinXP so as to best work with and avoid problems with an SSD drive as the main drive?

Corporate Laptop so I can't upgrade to Win7.

Answer 1

There are two major things to consider: run in AHCI mode and make sure the partition is aligned correctly.

For your particular problem you might try disabling write-back caching on the drive but I don't normally recommend this. Depending on the particular SSD you have (can you post the model?) it may make no difference anyway.

It's also important to manually run TRIM if your SSD supports it (again, this depends on model and firmware). And, of course, turn off automatic defragmentation of the disk.

(I do STRONGLY recommend an upgrade to Windows 7 if you're serious about running with an SSD boot drive. It's much better at handling these things.)