Some Notes on the Machines

The command is FSUTIL.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753059.aspx

The following usages enhance speed. There are caveats for each.

• Don’t do this if you use compression :-)
  FSUTIL behavior set disablecompression 1

• Don’t do this if you use Microsoft built-in encryption!
  FSUTIL behavior set disableencryption 1

• This one interferes with some backup and file-sync systems.
  FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1

• This will interfere with very old software, or software whose updates do not comply with Microsoft’s recommended practices, especially involving DOS-style short filenames.
  FSUTIL behavior set disable8dot3 1

• Designates more RAM for disk cache. Only use if you have ample RAM. Default is zero, 1 is an option.
  FSUTIL behavior set memoryusage 2

This one may decrease speed a tad, but should increase reliability. Does not work with system drives, it is unclear as to why.
FSUTIL resource setconsistent E:\

This one resets NTFS transaction logs at reboot, this can eliminate many issues of filesystem slowdown over time which have to do with a kind of corruption which CHKDSK does not catch.
fsutil resource setautoreset true c:\

This one reserves more disk space for file tables; can be 1, 2, 3, or 4. Makes handling of large quantities of files more efficient. Unfortunately only helps for partitions created after the setting is made.
FSUTIL behavior set mftzone 4

Here is a procedure which reportedly does a full wipe and recreate of the NTFS transaction record for a system drive. The commands below need to be run in an administrative CMD, then the machine rebooted. ‘setautoreset’ tells the system to do a smaller-scale reset at every boot, it is not known whether there is any reason to set it back to ‘false’ after the reboot is complete. The procedure appears to be able to eliminate some extremely stubborn Windows Update errors, as well as alleviating some situations where NTFS volumes become very slow in accessability. Setting setautoreset to true, all by itself with a reboot, has been seen to help quite a lot too.

fsutil resource setautoreset true %SystemDrive%\

attrib -r -s -h %SystemRoot%\System32\Config\TxR\*
del %SystemRoot%\System32\Config\TxR\*

attrib -r -s -h %SystemRoot%\System32\SMI\Store\Machine\*
del %SystemRoot%\System32\SMI\Store\Machine\*.tm*
del %SystemRoot%\System32\SMI\Store\Machine\*.blf
del %SystemRoot%\System32\SMI\Store\Machine\*.regtrans-ms

Apparently, corruption in Windows filesystem transaction support will cause many different kinds of errors, ranging from IIS not starting to scheduled task creation failing to Windows updates failing. To fix this, one can do the following in an administrative command prompt:

fsutil resource setautoreset true c:\

In some circumstances it is reportedly helpful to repeat the above for E:\ and any other NTFS drive in production.

If you have a Seagate hard drive and want to find out whether it is under warranty, try this:

http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-US/warranty_validation.jsp?form=0

And if you have more than one, use the Multiple Drive Form:

http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-US/warranty_validation_multi.jsp

CrystalDiskInfo:

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

really hits the spot. It’s small and powerful, includes email notification, handles multiple kinds of RAID, many kinds of USB drives too.