Thanks Mike. Now I know a little about SSDs and that they function so differently from the traditional HD, therefore no defragging .
You need not reply but I wonder if you can try to defrag and that it would damage the drive or is there a built in feature disallowing defragging.
Yes, you can try and even defrag it conventional way but internal SW would again do it it's own way so it would be just an exercise in futility and introduce more wear and tear to SSD. Windows 7 and 8 when installed clean will recognize SSD and provide support for it providing it's connected to SATA port in AHCI mode which most modern MBs support and appropriate drivers in Windows. Win7 and 8 will also turn off auto defrag for SSD if all conditions above are met.
W7 and 8 also have a "TRIM" command built in that sends SSD message that some cells and data is free to erase as that data is no longer needed because it's marked for deletion. SSD's firmware will than write zeroes to those places at it's leisure without interfearing with other operations. It's called GC (Garbage Correction or Collection). Other things with modern SSDs is "Load Leveling" where periodically firmware moves data around, using special part of memory not available to computer (Over provisioning) to make sure that all the cells are used equally and so prolong it's life.
For best performance of SSDs is best to be connected to SATA3 (SATA 600) ports as hey are fast enough to use all the speed SATA3 can provide, which ordinary HDDs are not and it does not matter if SATA3 HDD is connected to SATA2 port.
Just raw writing and reading of SSDs is not as important as it's speed at handling files of about 4KBs which make most of system files plus it's access speed which is several hundred times faster than with HDDs and that's why SSDs are so good for operating system and make whole computer much more responsive and seemingly faster.
Virtual memory also works much faster than with HDD and that's another big plus, specially on systems without much RAM. Hibernate works much faster too so system hibernation, wakeup, shutdown and startup are faster too.
Because of no mechanical, moving parts, life expectancy of SSDs is much longer than mechanical drives and if nothing burns out because of power or heat they should outlast their usefulness before they actually get worn out.
Big plus is that they use much less power than HDDs and so prolong battery charge in laptops and also work much cooler.
