Windows 10: Should SSD's be defragmented

I have 3 Samsungs installed on my 2 computers, along with Samsung Magician . Windows will still use the trim command as long as you allow Windows too. *Smile Weekly or monthly which ever you prefer.

I would NOT use Diskeeper at all on any SSD ...but its your choice.

 

I agree with whats been said. Never run defrag on an SSD. The defrag tool that comes with Windows will recognise if you have SSDs and will change to say optimise instead of defrag and will just run the trim command for you.

If you want to use third party software, make sure that they can differentiate between an SSD and a hard drive. If they dont label a drive or just call it an HD then dont use the program.

I've been running the internal defrag program to optmise my 3 SSDs without issue.

 

You do mean "Optimize Drives" don't you?
The one that comes with Windows 8 though 10?
Its called Optimize, because if it sees a SSD, it will execute the re-TRIM command, if it sees a HDD, it will defragment, when it's needed, even if set to daily or weekly, if it's not needed, it won't do either of these, until certain criteria are met when Windows runs the daily Auto-maintenance.

 

Hi there

Why would an SSD need to be defragmented. Te only reson to defrag an HDD is that parts of the file exist over physcally different sectors and the HDD has to rotate to position the read mechanism to pick the file up -- obviously the more chunks scattered over the HDD the more the seek and Read accesses are required to get the file.

With an SSD it's all in an equivalent of a 2-D array -- no physical movement so to simplfy - no difference if data is at say E 51 of J 27 (assuming a 2-D array).
The best thing you can do with an SSD is LEAVE IT. !!!

If you are paranoid a system Image and Restore will be fine. Actually that's better than defragging an HDD too -- NOTE don't CLONE the HDD - IMAGE IT, reformat and restore - then your HDD is optimised better than a defrag and it's usually a lot quicker too.

SSD's - simply restore - no need to re-format.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I just want to expand on Jimbo45's comment:

Onew of the jobs of an SSD's controller is, TOO LIE IT'S BUTT OFF to the operating system.

It makes the OS see the SSD partitioning physically as a HDD, where as, the data is ALWAYS scattered on the SSD like bird shot from a shotgun.
If you run a defrag, the controller will tell the OS: "Yeah yeah, the data is on the disk, in the place where you think it is!", and that cannot be, because there is no disk, there are integrated circuit cells.

 

Good! I'll avoid Diskeeper, which by the way has not updated nor can I get an update for that since 2012. It doesn't appear they're putting any emphasis on that anymore whatsoever.
I'll take the advice given here and use TRIM. Thank you again everyone for the very helpful advice!!!

 

@jimbo45 and @Cliff S This is why its important to use the included defrag/optimise tool so you know its not going to mess your SSD up by defragging it when it should've have been optimised.

 

You're welcome, if you have a 2nd internal disk that's HDD, or an external HDD, you could use Diskeeper for them, but I have tried many(only one at a time, for a couple of months of course, so the different tools defrag algorithms didn't try to defrag what the other did), and found Windows own to be the best actually.as Windows is set to place boot files to the beginning, for a faster boot, and system files in the order of use & importance. For normal data, such as pictures, music, documents, it doesn't matter where they are placed, as they are read into memory. And prefetch also loads parts of most used programs into memory, or places what might be needed later into virtual memory for fast opening(Win10 sees the SSD and turns prefetch off for the SSD, but not for any HDDs you might have.

Basically, I'm just saying, Let Windows take care of everything.

 

Hi there .

I've a few SSD's -- never done the TRIM / OPTIMISE in any way whatsoever and they are fine. I've got a few older ones too that I use as testing for various OS'es - booting from USB or e-sata slots. Never a problem.

In Normal use SSD's are these days inherently more reliable and faster in every way compared with older HDD spinners.
I've never used any of these so called optimisation utilities either from Ms or any 3rd party and my HDD's / SSD's probably get far more robust use than typical users give theirs.

My advice is to really leave al "The clever stuff" to the hardware I/O controllers and the HDD's will be just fine -- and as I said for Spinners an image restore will work far faster than a slow defrag.

The other thing of course is to always have decent backups so you can recover from any eventuality - from a Disk going defective to a stupid error like deleting a critical file.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I backup once a week to my NAS and my user files are stored on drive e:.

 

Hi Cliff, Yes the one that comes with windows 10 when I click optimize it will start trimming, or I should use the Samsung Magician one to trim SSD? Once in a month is not necessary I think once In a while I think it's better?

 

Unlike defragging, Trim on an SSD is just Trim, it doesn't matter which program initiates it the results will be exactly the same. Trim doesn't move files, trim resets storage locations on the SSD that have had data previously stored there. There are two steps required to make a storage location available on an SSD. The first step is to delete the previous data. The second step is to reset the storage location for reuse. The first step is done on-command at the moment it is required. The second step is only performed when either there are no more reset data locations available for use or periodically, hopefully during idle periods. By waiting for an idle period to do the second step, the SSD performance is increased. The second step is the trim operation.

 

Hi there
I still don't see the need for TRIM on modern SSD's -- why does one need to reset storage location when given that an SSD is basically like a LOT of RAM -- any location is equal to any other location so why should moving data make any difference at all epcially since most of the index can be held in RAM - and even a simple binary search can give very fast access to a HUGE number of "addresses" in a very few number of operations.

It's like the 6 in 49 lottery numbers -- 123456 is just as likely to come up as any of the other 14 million or so combinations.

The electronics in the I/O controller will take care of any specific firmware improvements.

A lot of these old utilities and ideas came from the early days of HDD's and ist gen of SSD's -- these days you are much more advised to leave this stuff well alone !!.

Of course like everything else YMMV but when using things like DEFRAG you need to know why those utilities existed in the first place and make sure that you really need them.

Cheers
jimbo

 

So Jimbo, I gather you wouldn't prefer to have Diskeeper set loose on any type of SSD. Here's a different question. Is there a chance an SSD might catch on fire if letting a program like Diskeeper optimize it every day?

 

The one in Magician is turned of on Windows 8 and higher(8, 8.1, 8.1 Update, 10), because Windows will handle it as part of automatic maintenance. I have mine set to daily, but Windows won't do it for weeks, it just looks at it every day, and executes when needed, just like defragging with a HDD.




If it makes you feel better you could do it manually.