Windows 10: Defragging a mechanical HDD - How much free space do you need?

So, some people, such as the person in this article:

https://www.howtogeek.com/324956/how-much-free-space-should-you-leave-on-your-windows-pc/

Are suggesting 15% free space for a mechanical hard drive defrag.

However, I believe it was here or else where that people are saying that this practice has been irrelevant since Windows Visa, and a few GB is enough to defrag a mechanical hard drive.


I have a 10 TB HDD, so 15% of that would be 1.5 terabytes. That's an insane amount of storage space I'd be giving up if this were true.

Since this is an internal HDD, I assume Windows schedules an automatic defrag?

:)

 

Defrag


Defragging SSD and Flash drives will wear them out faster. I do not suggest doing this. Defrag mechanical HDD's only

 

" Defragment and Optimise Drives "

Never defragment a SSD.

In the Disk Defragmenter tool, 'optimize' means defragment for a mechanical hard drive, and it means run the TRIM command for a SSD.

There's no need to manually defragment a HDD. Modern hard drives don't need defragmenting as older ones did. Whatever Windows does on its own is entirely sufficient.

 

Defrag

Windows 10 defrag.exe will defragment HDD, optimize SSD (issue trim) and perform slab consolidation on VHD. SSDs are also automatically defragmented monthly if you have system restore configured. Source

@no1yak - what does it say under task scheduler?





Has your PC been plugged in, turned on and not being used overnight?