SSD & Defrag

[Itaregid]

"Optimizers" I was talking about are likes of IObit, AVG system optimizer etc. There's tones of them and has been proven over and over that their usefulness is somewhere between nothing to downright dangerous and counterproductive.

I agree and that is exactly why I get frustrated when some automatically lump CCleaner with those "optimizers" that promise to make your system run better than new. CCleaner is probably the least aggressive, and IMO, that is a good thing. Not to mention, CCleaner always prompts you to backup the registry before making any changes and more importantly, its backup restore feature actually works.

As far as defragging starting right away, what I am saying is the system will start creating holes and filling holes as soon as you start using the computer again because every time you start Windows, temp files are created, temporary Internet files are downloaded, open files are locked and if modified, are then saved elsewhere, etc.

 

[Itaregid]

WE've been told over and over again, that SSD's to not need to be defragmented and that's good advise.

That's true, they don't and even though Windows Optimize Drives status screen may make it appear defragging is enabled on SSDs, the actual defragging of files feature is not.

 

[CountMike]

"Optimizers" I was talking about are likes of IObit, AVG system optimizer etc. There's tones of them and has been proven over and over that their usefulness is somewhere between nothing to downright dangerous and counterproductive.

I agree and that is exactly why I get frustrated when some automatically lump CCleaner with those "optimizers" that promise to make your system run better than new. CCleaner is probably the least aggressive, and IMO, that is a good thing. Not to mention, CCleaner always prompts you to backup the registry before making any changes and more importantly, its backup restore feature actually works.

As far as defragging starting right away, what I am saying is the system will start creating holes and filling holes as soon as you start using the computer again because every time you start Windows, temp files are created, temporary Internet files are downloaded, open files are locked and if modified, are then saved elsewhere, etc.

No I don't lump CCleaner in with those "optimizers" it is what it's name imply, a CLEANER and one of safest ones too. I have nothing against it, it's just that I don't have use for it because all of that could be done some other way, mostly thru windows own utilities.

 

[crawfish]

Oops. My apologies.

I see now what you are referring too and sadly, while trying to quickly respond here, I cannot find what I am looking for but I don't believe the problem is as bad as it seems. That is, Disk Optimize's consolidating free space feature is not as aggressive as it sounds - though it can take some significant time if not run in some time (another reason to let it automatically run in the background)

I will try to find the MS article that explains it detail.

Sorry again for not thoroughly reading and understanding your point.

It is too aggressive. While file defrag may complete instantly, it can then spend hours pointlessly thrashing a drive it reports as having 0% free space fragmentation. I documented this in that thread I linked to.

 

[Itaregid]

It is too aggressive. While file defrag may complete instantly, it can then spend hours pointlessly thrashing a drive it reports as having 0% free space fragmentation. I documented this in that thread I linked to.

I understand your point but I don't think your case represents the norm. If allowed to do its thing from day one after installation, it is not going to thrash a hard drive for hours on end. I have several W8 systems here and it is just not happening as you describe - nor do I see wide-spread complaints of that either.

I see this the same as Indexing. It can take almost forever for Indexing to completely finish indexing a large, loaded drive. But once done, it takes next to nothing to stay on top of it.

I would suggest you let it finish and see how it goes after that.

 

[crawfish]

It is too aggressive. While file defrag may complete instantly, it can then spend hours pointlessly thrashing a drive it reports as having 0% free space fragmentation. I documented this in that thread I linked to.

I understand your point but I don't think your case represents the norm. If allowed to do its thing from day one after installation, it is not going to thrash a hard drive for hours on end. I have several W8 systems here and it is just not happening as you describe - nor do I see wide-spread complaints of that either.

I see this the same as Indexing. It can take almost forever for Indexing to completely finish indexing a large, loaded drive. But once done, it takes next to nothing to stay on top of it.

As I wrote in that thread I linked to, "What really sucks is that this is a freshly formatted drive restored from a backup using SyncBackSE and file-based copying."

I would suggest you let it finish and see how it goes after that.

See the thread I linked to for why I will not. That was kind of the whole point of the thread, stopping Windows from grinding a drive for hours on end to no useful purpose.

 

[whs]

SSDs and Hybrids are two different things. A SSD should never be defragged but a hybrid is essentially a HDD with a SSD cache and should be defragged if really required.

Defrag is a strain even on a HDD - so use with moderation.

 

[Itaregid]

Still, if this were a common problem, there would be millions of complaints about it. And since that is not happening, it would seem it is something unique with your system. Even your other post got very little attention and this is a pretty busy site. So my recommendation stands. For the vast of users, just Windows manage handle it unless you are one who enjoys and does not mind regular baby sitting of your system.

As far as grinding a drive for hours on end, that would not bother me much. Even standard hard drives are designed for 8 hours a day of constant use. Enterprise class drives for 24/7. If every time Windows ran Optimize Disk, it ran for many hours on end, then it might concern me because it would lead me to believe something else is wrong with the drive - which is what I fear with your drive.

Have you run chkdsk /r on it?

 

[crawfish]

Still, if this were a common problem, there would be millions of complaints about it. And since that is not happening, it would seem it is something unique with your system.

As far as grinding a drive for hours on end, that would not bother me much.

Or, perhaps people don't notice it. After all, it's supposed to get out of the way and not decrease performance while it's taking place. My WD Green drive seeks are inaudible in my system designed for quiet computing, and IIRC, I only noticed it because I was looking at Task Manager at the time. Or, people do notice it, and like you, they don't care. God knows there are other Microsoft background tasks that regularly come alive to grind a disk endlessly. It used to drive me nuts back when seeks were audible, and if the cause of it was not worth it, like it is here, I would disable it.

Even standard hard drives are designed for 8 hours a day of constant use. Enterprise class drives for 24/7. If every time Windows ran Optimize Disk, it ran for many hours on end, then it might concern me because it would lead me to believe something else is wrong with the drive - which is what I fear with your drive.

Have you run chkdsk /r on it?

Oh please.

 

[Itaregid]

Or, perhaps people don't notice it. After all, it's supposed to get out of the way and not decrease performance while it's taking place.

That would be a lot of people not paying attention - especially with default sleep mode settings.

They may not hear it but they should see the drive activity light without going into TM.

Oh please??? I have to say the same to you if you honestly believe 10s (100s) of millions of users don't notice their computer's drive activity lights are busily flashing for hours on end, week after week after week after week as you would have us believe.

And for the record, I would care if it was doing that week after week after week. But what I am telling you is that is NOT happening on the any of the W8 (or W7) systems here.

So you can be convinced your system is fine, and that's okay. But I am not because what you describe is happening on your system is NOT normal. Whether you choose to accept that is up to you. But I would still recommend you run chkdsk /r (and expect it to take a long time to complete - overnight if a large drive.

And for sure, note that every defragging program uses their own algorithms. So if you, for example, defrag with Defraggler, then immediately defrag with CountMike's Disk Speedup, Disk Speedup will report the disk needs defragging and will take a very long time to complete because it uses different algorithms. Then run Windows Optimize Disk and it will report it needs defragging again and take many hours.

 

[MCPlayer18]

From what I have heard, SSD's can't be defragged. Since they don't write on random spots in the storage area, defragging would be useless and a waste of time. My friend claims that he had to get a new SSD because he defragged his 2 year old one.

 

[whs]

From what I have heard, SSD's can't be defragged. Since they don't write on random spots in the storage area, defragging would be useless and a waste of time. My friend claims that he had to get a new SSD because he defragged his 2 year old one.

That is not quite correct. You can defrag a SSD but it is useless because the access time to any point of the SSD is the same. The SSD does write to random locations, but it does not matter. Access time to all locations is the same - typically 0.1ms.

I don't think a SSD breaks when you defrag it but it is unnecessary wear and tear.

 

[Itaregid]

I don't think a SSD breaks when you defrag it but it is unnecessary wear and tear.

Agreed. It won't break a SSD, it just wastes write cycles while providing absolutely no performance gains, nor does it free up any space. As whs noted, when the SSD needs data, it goes directly to the storage location electronically and gets the data. With a hard drive, it has to physically move a mechanical arm to position the read/write head over the spinning platter.

While the latest generation of SSDs don't really suffer from their limited number of writes (because that limit is in the many millions) earlier generation SSDs were very limited so running defrag not only provided no performance gains, it could noticeably impact the life expectancy of the SSD.