SOLVED Windows Defrag

[Norton]

There was a discussion on our forum this morning about Windows Defrag. One member mentioned that Windows 10 disables the defrag feature if you have a SSD drive installed. Is it true that defrag will damage SSD drives by writing them to their death.

 

[Trouble]

Is it true that defrag will damage SSD drives by writing them to their death.

Nope.... not true.
The method used by Windows to address fragmentation of an SSD is not the same as we normally associated with older spinners.
It simply issues a "trim / re-trim" command and not the more elaborate .... relocate, defragment and consolidate functions we are used to seeing on spinners resulting in contiguous files, used space and contiguous free space as that particular result is no longer needed on SSDs.

TRIM is a way for SSDs to mark data blocks as being not in use. Writing to empty blocks on an SSD is faster that writing to blocks in use as those need to be erased before writing to them again. SSDs internally work very differently from traditional hard drives and don't usually know what sectors are in use and what is free space. Deleting something means marking it as not in use. TRIM lets the operating system notify the SSD that a page is no longer in use and this hint gives the SSD more information which results in fewer writes, and theoretically longer operating life.

SOURCE: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRealAndCompleteStoryDoesWindowsDefragmentYourSSD.aspx Worth a read as it might provide some clarification

Not something that worries me. I just let the OS tend to it and blissfully ignorant, fingers crossed, hope for the best.

 

[Norton]

Trouble Thanks for your sharing your expertise and clarification with us. I think it's important for members to know.

However, I see many members on here that claim they have upgraded from the old style drives with spinning platters to SSD.
Does the Windows 10 upgrade come with the new method used to address fragmentation of an SSD and defrag safeguard features.

From what I see in (Windows 10 upgrade) Administrative Tools is the old Windows 7 defrag tool.
Would that cause damage to an SSD if used?

Do new PC's with Windows 10 OEM install come with the new method defrag safeguard feature?

Thanks for the link on defragging SSD's good article. However, I'm still confused as many of the readers that replied to the blog are on the issue.

 

[Trouble]

Does the Windows 10 upgrade come with the new method used to address fragmentation of an SSD and defrag safeguard features

Yep you're good to go.
No reason for concern or actually any confusion the Windows OS is SSD aware and has been for a while now.
I think since Windows 7, although I recall some discussion with Windows 7 about a one line command to check or make sure TRIM is turned on in Windows 7. It's been a while so I really don't remember exactly.

 

[Tim Locke]

Norton, Windows 7 'understands' SSDs as does 8/8.1 and 10. I am not sure if Vista did when it came out but I'd bet $$ that both XP and Vista were updated sometime in their life. SSDs just don't get defragged. You'll notice that Windows 10 can 'optimize' a SSD which I believe is just a trim/re-trim as Trouble says.

See these two articles. The 2nd one if you want to know EVERYTHING about SSD


http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...garbage-collection-so-i-dont-need-trim-right/


http://arstechnica.com/information-...revolution-how-solid-state-disks-really-work/

 

[Norton]

Thanks guys for your input and links. I now have a better understanding of how SSD's operate.
I think I'll be using my old spinning platters for some time and not worry about the garbage collection from SSD's

 

[Tim Locke]

The whole point is that you don't need to worry about garbage collection on SSDs. The combination of Windows and the firmware in the controller does everything that is needed.

 

[Norton]

Tim Thanks! This is just another thing that bugs me about the Windows 10 user information. I understand it will take out the garbage and optimize the SSD but isn't that only if the automatic maintenance is turned on? I wonder how many users even know how to enable automatic maintenance, Also how many users are out there running Windows 10 that are not aware that the Windows 10 upgrade turned their restore is turned off by default.
Maybe this topic is worthy of a tutorial "Optimizing SSD's" ?

 

[Tim Locke]

Think of an SSD as if it were RAM. You don't care or notice when you edit a file or run an app that it may be loaded in many segments in RAM. SSDs are not quite RAM but they have a very fast intelligent controller built in that makes all this stuff a) invisible and b) extremely fast.

I didn't post the link but there is another article on SSDs in arstechnica where they show the results of destruction testing SSDs where they ran many of them for months with continually high speed reads and writes until they ceased to work with the NAND logic no longer being capable of being written to. It took a long time!

So the tutorial of which you speak would read like this:

Buy a name brand SSD (Intel, Samsung, Crucial are my faves) . Plug it in. Forget about it. Maybe once a year or so run something like CrystalDiskinfo.

In a laptop replacing an HDD with a SSD will increase battery life AND run cooler which will increase the life of the laptop itself.

 

[Norton]

I can see replacing a laptop drive with an SSD, laptops do take a lot of abuse an SSD will handle that kind ob daily user abuse. The best bang for the buck appears to be Crucial SSD's. Generally speaking, I think SSD's are way overpriced, consumers pay dearly for newer green technology. I could buy 3 brand name spinners for my desktop or 1 SSD. For now I'll stick with a spinner.
Thanks to all who contributed to my post, and insight into SSD's.