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| Thread ID: 148475 | 2020-01-19 08:24:00 | Should I defrag SSD? | Bryan (147) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1466114 | 2020-01-19 08:24:00 | It is said that defragging will shorten the life of an SSD. Is this correct? If not, what program would you suggest I use? | Bryan (147) | ||
| 1466115 | 2020-01-19 09:28:00 | Do not defrag SSDs: as you say, it shortens life and is pointless on an SSD anyway. Windows won't even let you defrag one. | pcuser42 (130) | ||
| 1466116 | 2020-01-19 20:28:00 | Defragging doesn't even make much sense on a modern hard drive, unless it's very full and is your boot drive and maybe not even then. The OS does a pretty good job of managing the drive in the background. When I've run defrag and it's told me the drive is whatever % fragmented and needs fixing I've had a look at what files it refers to and they tend to be things like temporary files and windows updates and other such unimpotant files that are not frequently accessed. The actual amount of fragmented system files has never seemed significant to me. But on topic, no do not defrag an SSD. The point of defragging on a spinning disk is to put all the pieces of each file in one continuous block as much as possible so the read heads don't have to physically move all over the drive to retrieve a file. An SSD has no read heads and is not spinning and does not have to physically move a head to retrieve files. On top of that each memory address on an SSD has a limited amount of write cycles before it wears out so unecessary writing will shorten it's life. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1466117 | 2020-01-19 20:44:00 | Im sure Win10 wont actually defrag an SSD anyway :-) In general, on a modern HD , with NTFS , defrag is pretty much a complete waste of time regardless . In fact, you can actualy loose data defragging a drive if it has issues . |
1101 (13337) | ||
| 1466118 | 2020-01-20 08:05:00 | As above, defragmenting is only useful on a spinning hard drive where keeping contiguous files will give higher performance. An SSD does not need defragmenting, and doing so will only waste erase/write cycles on the flash memory. In fact, given that the inbuilt wear-leveling algorithms will spread data around to ensure even wear of the memory, your files are always fragmented on an SSD no matter what you do. But it doesn't matter, because the seek time on flash memory is nonexistent. It may be worth noting however that certain Samsung SSDs had a firmware bug (www.eteknix.com) which caused slower and slower performance over time. This has been addressed in a firmware update. If you have one of these drives with early firmware and are experiencing slow data transfer rates and believe defragmenting may fix the problem, what you really need to do is upgrade the drive's firmware. (backup your data first if it hasn't been already!!) |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
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