Windows 10: Should SSD's be defragmented

An SSD is made up of a whole bunch of cells to hold data. Let's say that cell A1 has a 2 in it as part of a file. The file changes and that 2 becomes a 5. What the SSD does is look for the next open spot to shove that 5 into. So lets say that next open spot is cell A10. So what you have now is cell A10 with the 5 in it that is part of the actual file, and you still have the 2 in cell A1 that isn't attached to any file.

Over time the SSD is going to run out of empty cells to shove data into and there are going to be a whole bunch of cells with obsolete data in them not attached to any file. Then what happens? In order to write new data the SSD has to go to one of the cells with obsolete data, clear that out, then write the new data. That's going to make it close to twice the time required to write new data and slow down the SSDs performance greatly.

What the trim command does is it goes through and gets rid of all the obsolete data in one operation, resetting all those previously used cells so they can be written to again.

And that's why you run Trim on a routine basis - you slow down the SSD performance for say 5 seconds out of every month to clear out the garbage. If you don't, then the garbage just builds up until the SSD is full, at which time for each piece of data that needs to be written, one piece of garbage must be cleared out and now your SSD performance is slowed down on a permanent basis - until the Trim command gets issued.

Trim has nothing to do with moving data. Trim clears out all the garbage in one sweep to provide clean cells available to hold data again.

 

That's a very clear explanation of what is taking place on the SSD's. Consequently, I have TRIM all trimmed up and ready to go. Thanks for this.

 

I tend to run the internal defrag tool once a week to get TRIM going.

 

That's the usual reason to defragment a drive, but defragging typically does more than just rearranging sectors to make them contiguous, it also optimizes the file structures on disk (such as the MFT) to reduce wasted space and reduce the number of entries that have to be navigated to read an entire disks directory structure.

The Windows disk optimizer does, on occasion, defrag these structures in addition to performing a TRIM on SSD drives. However, this is not a full blown defragment.

Another reason to perform a defrag is to consolidate free space, so that you can shrink a partition. Suppose you have a partition that uses only a single block at the end of the disk space, then resizing won't be allowed even though you may have plenty of disk space. Having said that, it's a pretty rare circumstance for most people.

 

If you use a program such as MiniTool Partition Wizard, the program will move the files out of the way needed to shrink the partition. That's why you can remove space from the front of a partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard, but you can't with Windows Disk Managment. Windows Disk Management did not have the capability to move files written into it. I suppose you could call the partitioning program moving files as "defragging" to some degree.

 

I'm simple so I try to keep things simple and not over complicate things.

1. As far as I know their is no manufacture of SSD's that recommend using a defrag program on their SSD's. What I have read from manufactures is they do not want their SSD's defraged with any program.

2. I have not use all brands of SSD's but I would suggest just following the manufactures suggestion, tool boxes and instructions on how to maintain their SSD's.

 

I wouldn't say they "don't want their SSD's defraged with any program". That sounds like they are actively telling users what they can and can't do with their drives. It would be better to say they do not recommend defragging, as it normally serves no useful purpose and can (slightly) decrease the lifetime expectancy of the drive (although if you were to defrag it often each time would decrease that life expectancy).

Again, there are plenty of defrag tools that are smart and understand that SSD's don't need general defragging (though they sometimes need filesystem optimization).

So it's good to optimize drives, even SSD's, but you should only use an SSD aware optimizer.

 

IIRC, trimming is performed on your disk whether you like it or not, since it's integrated to the NTFS driver. The maintenance tool basically checks in case some remains to be done, which can be the case I suppose if some space was freed on the filesystem while the system is shutting down, or in case of a system crash, so it usually hasn't much to do.

 

I'll ask the question again. Has anyone ever heard of an SSD catching on fire because of some program like Diskeeper continually going at it to the point where it gets hot and explodes?

 

Uhhh.. No.

It wouldn't catch fire, unless some other component in the system caught fire first. SSD's are relatively cool operating. Even when writing to them (it doesn't use heat to do so, but some heat is generated just by accessing it).

SSD's "wear out" eventually after millions of write cycles, they just stop returning data.

 

There have been reported cases with plutonium-based SSDs.

 

Thank you for the two straight forward replies guys. Before I posted the question, I'm thinking maybe I should keep that Kidde FA110 Multi Purpose Fire Extinguisher on top of my desk because SSD's are supposed to be blazing fast.
After reading Mystere's reply, I thought maybe there was no real reason to keep that space-taking thing in my office afterall. Then NovHak hits the deck fast with his enlightening response and suddenly I'm all fired up to buy a Geiger Counter. I just might make a collect call to my long lost Aunt in Los Alamos and see what they do and use down there.
Summing this all up then, it would seem the general trend is to use TRIM. Presently, I have it enabled and shall leave well enough alone until it isn't. I want to mark this as solved but will wait to see if there are further suggestions to be offered. It's been a real experience thus far. Thank you ever so much.

 

I'm using my words and I don't care to play word games.
But I must agree that (do not recommend) does sound much better.

Either way I do believe my thoughts and suggestions were not hard to understand or were misguiding.

I flunked Grammar 101.

 

The reasoning I have seen is that two logically adjacent sectors S1+S2 could be physically in the order S2+S1, so to read both sectors, you may wait one revolution for the data to be under the read head. Multiply by a zillion for a large file, and that slows things up. With an SSD, physical location doesn't matter -- you don't have to wait for something to move under the read head. So there is no advantage to defragging. The disadvantage is that each location on an SSD can be rewritten a limited number of times, which is not a factor with spinning drives. Although that limit might be rather large, in the petabyte range, but some optimizing programs spend every waking / inactive second shuffling data around so they could chew through a mega-write in a week.

 

I'm amazed at how much you clams understand. Wowzer!!!