Windows 10: Optimize and Defrag Drives in Windows 10

Hey Mooly, *Smile

It seems to still be running on schedule for me in build 17046.

 

Thanks Shawn. I wonder if it being an SSD has anything to do with this. I'll not run it manually yet, I'll keep a watch and see what happens.

 

It shouldn't. My SSD has been optimized, and HDD's defragged on schedule.

Has your PC been awake and running during the scheduled time?

 

Some news on this. Wouldn't you just know it *Smile This morning I checked, and it has actually run by itself. It must have known we were talking about it *Wink

Is there a specific scheduled time for this to run beside the vague 'Weekly' description ? I always assumed it would/or should run at the first opportunity after 7 days have elapsed. When you do run it manually it is so quick anyway, just a couple of seconds per partition.

The PC is certainly left to its own devices, typically a couple of times a day and perhaps for an hour or more so it has plenty of opportunity. It puzzles me because all previous clean installed versions of W10 have had this issue for me (on this PC with SSD). When I was running W10 on my old PC with traditional HDD it did always run to schedule. I can't begin to imagine why this happens... SSD brand ? or is it running some routine of its own in the firmware... I have no idea.

We'll see how long it goes this time......

*Smile

 

Hi folks.

I have NEVER - even as far back as Windows 3.1 bothered with defragging drives -- total waste of time - especially these days. I can say I NEVER found defragging a drive made the slightest bit of difference in spite of the time taken to perform the operation.

If you really INSIST on doing this process the simplest and quickest way is simply to use Free Macrium to image the HDD and then do an "Intelligent restore" -- and as far as an SSD is concerned -- absolutely ZERO point in defragging as there's no moving parts and the speed of access is so fast that any problem with long file chains will be totally insignificant.

The Macrium intelligent restore will ignore free space and re-build where possible any long file chain -- to make doubly sure you can re-format your drive and restore the image with bootable Macrium restore -- FREE MACRIUM works really well and really is FREE -- i.e ZERO USD/EUR etc.

IMHO if there's problem with SLOW I/O on computers it's INVARIABLY because one has HIDEOUSLY SLOW HDD's installed with tiny cache values -- and that's my experience in over 30 years of using Windows.

Of course don't run too many concurrent applications on your machine for the processor you have and also I assume there's a reasonable amount of RAM.

Given those features you should have ZERO need EVER to run a defrag -- a quick Macrium backup image and restore will work MUCH FASTER plus the advantage you will have a backup too.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I defrag my drives when I feel like I want to.

My computer has survived without at least a defrag for 2 years, then I defragged for the first time because of boredom.

 

LOL, isn't that about how it always goes. *chuckle

A scheduled defrag shows as part of Automatic Maintenance....

*Arrow View All Automatic Maintenance Tasks in Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

...so setting your Automatic Maintenance settings to the time you want and to wake the PC or not may have it run when wanted better.

*Arrow Change Automatic Maintenance Settings in Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

 

Thanks for the links Shawn. The 'View All Automatic Maintenance Tasks' gives an identical result to your example apart from Verify Windows Recovery Environment... which is unrelated to this.

I'm going to leave things as they are for now and see what happens next time. I certainly give it enough time idling to run maintenance tasks, and I'm sure it does this as there is other evidence that this happens. Its just the Optimise Routine that appears not to run weekly.

 

I just looked in Task Manager at Defrag and it has "%windir%\system32\defrag.exe -c -h -o -$" and option "-$" is not listed in defrag; what is it???

 

Hello rdwray, *Smile

$ = Tells defrag.exe that it is being called from the task scheduler. It's not a new parameter for the command prompt.

 

Ok, then why does it have to tell "defrag.exe that it is being called from the task scheduler"? *Huh

 

The "-$" means it is being called from task scheduler. What difference this makes is unclear - reduces priority perhaps.

command line interface - Defrag options in Windows Server 2012 - Server Fault