Windows 10: Do I need to defrag my Hard Drive?

Ok I've been following this thread. With Windows 8, 8.1 and 10, all you have to do is connect all the drives you are going to use, internal as well as external. Then you open up an Admin Command Prompt, and copy & paste winsat formal into it.- This will run tests on your CPU, Graphics and all your drives , and set Windows up(i.e. your indexing, disk optimization and hibernation and a few more things) when it's finished, reboot and the settings will be applied. The best thing you can do is "Let Windows take care of Windows". Don't tweak, change, or turn off any settings(specially if you are not an advanced user).

 

What's difference between allowing W10 defrag and only optomize?

And how do I tell W10 defrag to ONLY optimize and not defrag once per month?

 

Ok well if that is accurate and true and your words are valid, then I will just leave it ON seeing W10 will NOT defrag the SSD anyway.

Weekly or monthly? It was on weekly, but I changed it to monthly? Good or bad idea in Your opinion?

 

It will not defrag it as it knows that it is an SSD drive.

 

I have been looking over this on the Net and there is nothing but confusion about this. Below is what was said at a Crucial site:

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-...oss/ta-p/71051

 

As long as you run "winsat formal" as Cliff S has recommended and, considering you've already shown Win10 recognizes your SSD as such, there is no way you'll ever see Windows defragment your SSD the way others have been using the word. In effect, there IS no distinction to be made as WIndows will only "OPTIMIZE" it. Notice they purposely have renamed the module to "Optimize Drives". They don't call it Defragment Drives and they don't call it TRIM Drives.

 

You needn't judge the validity of my words as I quoted my primary source. You can judge Scott Hanselman's words against the credibility of the understandable hysteria strewn across the internet on this touchy subject.

My words in another thread were to the effect that, we shouldn't use the words "defrag" and "SSD" in the same sentence any more as it just tends to set people's hair on fire.*really

Monthly is likely plenty, IMO.

 

No doubt excellent advice for April of 6 years ago when people didn't know any better and MS had perhaps not quite caught up the OS with the technology...

And still excellent advice today, as long as the word in focus is defragment. However, that by no means says that you shouldn't let Win10 optimize an SSD - which is the point of OP's inquiry.

If OP had named the thread "Do I need to defrag my SSD?", there probably would have been about 12 NOs posted and that would have made short work of it.

 

So W10 will NOT defrag the SSD drive, it will only "optimize and trim" it?

Should this be set for weekly or monthly?

 

Thank you Word Man*Smile

 

Windows does recognize any SSD and ONLY uses the trim command. Windows would never defrag a SSD. My Intel SSD in my 2nd computer, comes with a nice utility made by Intel for their SSD's and it automatically checks and trims the SSD every 8 to 10 days.
Those are Intel's defaults for their SSD's, not mine. Trim command will not hurt your SSD.

 

Monthy.

 

Guess I was posting msgs over others, that I didn't see....sorry folks. *Smile Weekly or monthly might just depend on how much use your SSD gets. Either one is fine I think. *Smile

 

An ssd, by design, is always fragmented anyway. In order to not use the same set of cells all the time (thereby wearing them out prematurely), the controller purposely spreads writes to random locations. This is referred to as wear leveling.

 

Thank you everyone for your feedback.

I learned through you all that my SSD drive is not defragged, and I did actually notice they replaced the word "Defrag" with "Optimize".

I also noticed W10 said a message about "Trimming" when I selected to Optimize the C:, and it took around 1 second to complete the process.

I have set schedule for once per month and will just leave W10 to take care of my SSD drive for me*Smile

Thanks again*Smile