OT: SSD's and Defrag

[mr_es335]

Good day,

The question is, "Should you defrag an SSD?" Also, why or why not. What is the consensus here?

Note: I am aware of "trim - but it with regards to defragging that I am interested in.

For my part - at present anyhow, I would say "No".

[cgrafx]

Good day,

The question is, "Should you defrag an SSD?" Also, why or why not. What is the consensus here?

Note: I am aware of "trim - but it with regards to defragging that I am interested in.

For my part - at present anyhow, I would say "No".

Defragging an SSD doesn't really mean or accomplish anything. SSD's are not rotation/mechanical devices and memory is accessed randomly unlike a spinning hard drive that has to wait for the disk to spin to be under the read/write head.

Defragging a spinner helps by putting all of the data in track sequential order allowing large blocks of data to be read without having to move the head all over the disk surface and wait for the disk to spin to the correct location to read the data.

[Dave Labrecque]

Defragging an SSD doesn't really mean or accomplish anything. SSD's are not rotation/mechanical devices and memory is accessed randomly unlike a spinning hard drive that has to wait for the disk to spin to be under the read/write head.

Defragging a spinner helps by putting all of the data in track sequential order allowing large blocks of data to be read without having to move the head all over the disk surface and wait for the disk to spin to the correct location to read the data.

Phil -- so there's no benefit if the data is contiguous, say, on an SSD in terms of read or write performance? I'd think that'd take a little less processing time or something. No?

[Dave Labrecque]

Good day,

The question is, "Should you defrag an SSD?" Also, why or why not. What is the consensus here?

Note: I am aware of "trim - but it with regards to defragging that I am interested in.

For my part - at present anyhow, I would say "No".

This article seems to agree with you, Dell.

[mr_es335]

Dave,

The reason why I am asking is that all Windows OS's - including Windows 10 enable a defrag schedule by default.

For those that do not know, or are simply interested, here is the procedure for Windows 10:
Note: The procedure for Windows 7 is a bit different.

1. Right-click on a drive
2. Select: Properties
3. Select: Tools
4. Select: Optimize
5. Select: Change settings
* Observations: [Run on a schedule ...] is enabled. However, as with Windows 7, you can choose what disks you want to defrag.

As we know, most new systems that come with Windows 10 use SSD's. I know this for sure as I have just recently setup three laptops and ten desktops all with SSD's.

Most of the information regarding SSD's is dated - going back to 2014. One fellow stated that Windows 10 knows the type of drive and trims or defrags the drive accordingly. In a discussion with Microsoft, I was unable to ascertain a definitive response to this query. A lot of sites reference Scott Hanselman, but his article dates back to 2014. It is true that Windows 10 does acknowledge the type of drive however:

Attachment 2926

Until I know for sure, I will continue to disable scheduled defrag.

One final point, is that if I had to defrag my drives, there are much better tools out there than what comes with Windows. Ultradefrag is one - but I am sure there are others.

I hope you find this information - if nothing more - interesting!

[cgrafx]

Phil -- so there's no benefit if the data is contiguous, say, on an SSD in terms of read or write performance? I'd think that'd take a little less processing time or something. No?

The concept of continuous data on an SSD is meaningless. Data is written to the SSD flash memory in what ever location the internal controller deems best from a wear-leveling standpoint, not in physical geographic order. Even though the external computer sees the drive effectively as a physical hard drive, it doesn't have any control over where data is stored on the SSD, that is handled entirely by the SSD storage controller in the SSD itself.

[cgrafx]

Dave,

The reason why I am asking is that all Windows OS's - including Windows 10 enable a defrag schedule by default.

For those that do not know, or are simply interested, here is the procedure for Windows 10:
Note: The procedure for Windows 7 is a bit different.

1. Right-click on a drive
2. Select: Properties
3. Select: Tools
4. Select: Optimize
5. Select: Change settings
* Observations: [Run on a schedule ...] is enabled.

As we know, most new systems that come with Windows 10 use SSD's. I know this for sure as I have just recently setup three laptops and ten desktops all with SSD's.

Most of the information regarding SSD's is dated - going back to 2014. One fellow stated that Windows 10 knows the type of drive and trims or defrags the drive accordingly. In a discussion with Microsoft, I was unable to ascertain a definitive response to this query. A lot of sites reference Scott Hanselman, but his article dates back to 2014. It is true that Windows 10 does acknowledge the type of drive however:

Attachment 2926

Until I know for sure, I will continue to disable scheduled defrag.

I hope you find this information - if nothing more - interesting!

Not sure if windows 10 correctly disables defragging for SSDs or not. By all means disable it, it doesn't serve any purpose and can in fact reduce the life expectancy of the SSD.

[Dave Labrecque]

The initial tab talks about defragging and optimization, but the dialogues deeper into disabling this for each drive only use the term "optimize" or "optimization." Is there a difference or is one a subset of the other? Not very well thought-out by whoever did the technical writing for this bit of the interface.

I turned it off for the available lettered partitions of my SSD, but there are other partitions (non-lettered, Windows reserved) that exist on it, too. Can anything be done to turn off optimizing or degfragging those?

Thanks for the heads-up on this, guys. You'd think Windows 10 would be the wiser and disable this stuff by default.

UPDATE: July 2017 someone was saying that Windows 10 does know what it's doing. Apparently, it optimizes but doesn't defrag when it sees an SSD. Seems like a trim operation to my novice brain.

https://www.howtogeek.com/256859/don...hat-its-doing/

That plus the fact that newer SSDs seem to have crazy big write capacity before failure has me thinking that I can leave the SSD partitions set to be optimized by Windows periodically.

[mr_es335]

Dave,

If a partition/drive is not listed in the defrag/optimize schedule "Select disks..." option, then those partitions/drives would not be part of a schedule.

Am I understanding this query correctly, Dave?

Regarding the use of the terms, I asked a very knowledgeable acquaintance of mine and he stated that the difference that he has been able to ascertain is that defrag only refers to that function, while optimize refers to both trim and defrag - with Windows determining what type of drive gets what operation.

[Dave Labrecque]

Dave,

If a partition/drive is not listed in the defrag/optimize schedule "Select disks..." option, then those partitions/drives would not be part of a schedule.

Ah, so no harm/no fowl for those partitions, we're thinking?

Regarding the use of the terms, I asked a very knowledgeable acquaintance of mine and he stated that the difference that he has been able to ascertain is that defrag only refers to that function, while optimize refers to both trim and defrag - with Windows determining what type of drive gets what operation.

Sounds right to me. See my updated post.

Now I'm worrying that Windows isn't optimizing my non-lettered partitions!