Windows 10: To defrag or not to defrag? (non-SSD)

My secondary drive in my system is a 2TB standard hard drive. Windows 10 defrag (both UI and the command line) tells me that I do not need to defrag the disk, as it is "0% fragmented" but upon delving a little further (adding the /V switch) I notice that it doesn't include files above 64MB in size in the statistics. So I checked in Piriform's Defraggler app and after analysis on the disk says it is 80% fragmented (and shows a lot of red on the disk pattern graphic)

I'm only really curious because that disk does chug away a lot and it also does include a backup (of sorts) of Windows 7 on there which I keep as a fail-safe option and whenever I boot into that it is incredibly slow to get going.

So my questions are, should I actually defrag the drive or just leave it as is seeing as my main OS isn't running from it? Is there any benefit in defragging these days?

:)

 

Defragment & SSD

Hi.

I have installed a Samsung SSD 850 Evo on a Windows 10 build 10.0.14393.

In the Defragment software, I saw "trimmed" instead of "defragmented".

What is trim? Is it necessary to run defragment on SSD?

Running defragment makes any problem to SSD or not?

Thank you.

 

Windows Defrag

When running defrag, there is a drive listing for Windows RE Tools. It shows as a solid state drive and that it has never been defragged. It will not optimize. Clicking on it does nothing. Any suggestions?

 

Stop windows from defragmenting my SSD!!!

Hi Bob I get this all the time when I teach the Windows 10 course and I will tell you what I tell my students.

Yes, Windows does put all your drives even if they are SSD in the Weekly defrag schedule.

However, Windows will NOT defrag an SSD weekly, at the most it does this once a month. And you are right that SSD drives don't get fragmented as often but they still can get fragmented. So the defrag utility will first check to see if if requires a defrag before
defraging. It actually does that on all types of drives.

And for SSD drives it doesn't do the same "traditional defrag" as with HDD drives.

It actually uses a TRIM feature to defrag SSD drives.

So you don't need to disable it all. I have a laptop that has a SSD drive and it has been running Windows 10 for 2 years with defrag enabled it is absolutely fine.

I hope this helps. Take care.