Does Windows defragment your SSD?

The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD?

Storage Optimizer will defrag an SSD once a month if volume snapshots are enabled. This is by design and necessary due to slow volsnap copy on write performance on fragmented SSD volumes. It’s also somewhat of a misconception that fragmentation is not a problem on SSDs. If an SSD gets too fragmented you can hit maximum file fragmentation (when the metadata can’t represent any more file fragments) which will result in errors when you try to write/extend a file. Furthermore, more file fragments means more metadata to process while reading/writing a file, which can lead to slower performance.

As far as Retrim is concerned, this command should run on the schedule specified in the dfrgui UI. Retrim is necessary because of the way TRIM is processed in the file systems. Due to the varying performance of hardware responding to TRIM, TRIM is processed asynchronously by the file system. When a file is deleted or space is otherwise freed, the file system queues the trim request to be processed. To limit the peek resource usage this queue may only grow to a maximum number of trim requests. If the queue is of max size, incoming TRIM requests may be dropped. This is okay because we will periodically come through and do a Retrim with Storage Optimizer. The Retrim is done at a granularity that should avoid hitting the maximum TRIM request queue size where TRIMs are dropped.

Source

A Guy
 
Interesting! I sometimes disabled System Restore on my Win 8.1 machines, but I won't anymore!
 

My Computer

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    Windows 8.1 Pro x64
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    Whatever Dell put in there...
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The Samsung SSD I have has its own trim commands. I just would use that software I felt like I needed to.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
For garbage collection to efficiently work, I run my systems from time to time with only the BIOS on. Then there is no R/W activity on the SSD but the SSD is under power.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista and Win7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
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    5 SSDs and 12 HDs
I just installed the Samsung 850 EVO in 250GB in my PC and I'm using the Samsung utilities.
 

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    Win 10 Pro 64bit
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    Home built Intel i7-3770k-based system
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    Intel i7-3770k, Overclocked to 4.6GHz (46x100) with Corsair H110i GT cooler
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    ASRock Z77 OC Formula 2.30 BIOS
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    1GBps Ethernet ports
To those who like to turn off System Restore

For those who like to turn off System Restore, and have SSD drives, head this...

A bit of advanced info here - Defrag will only run on your SSD if volsnap is turned on, and volsnap is turned on by System Restore as one needs the other. You could turn off System Restore if you want, but that turns off a pretty important safety net for Windows.

Thus when you disable (turn off) System Restore, you disable Windows Storage Optimizer, which handles both Defrag and TRIM...

SSDs also have the concept of TRIM. While TRIM (retrim) is a separate concept from fragmentation, it is still handled by the Windows Storage Optimizer subsystem and the schedule is managed by the same UI from the User's perspective.

So if you're getting bad HD and SSD drive performance... you might want to re-enable System Restore. Or at the very least, manually run the Optimize Drives UI. The easiest way to get to it is to right click any HD, choose properties, and Optimize...

Disk Properties.PNG

Clicking Optimize gets you this UI...

Optimize Drives.PNG

You can also go get to the above by going Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Defragment and Optimize Drives. And clicking on Change Settings allows you to schedule and choose which drives to optimize.

At any rate, it really is worth reading the article A Guy linked to as there's some good FUD killing info there. Excellent article.

Peace :cool:
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom built by me
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    Haswell i7-4770K
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte G1 Sniper 5 (BIOS F9)
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    Corsair Dominator Platinum 32 gig (1866MHz)
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    Sapphire R9-280 Vapor X
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    Soundblaster ZXR
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    NEC PA242W - 24 inch
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    Samsung 512gig 850 Pro SSD (OS), Samsung 256gig 840 Pro SSD (photo editing), Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB HD
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    EVGA Supernova 1000 G2
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    Cooler Master HAF X
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    Corsair H100i Closed Loop Cooler
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    Logitech Wireless Wave
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    Logitech Performance MX
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    High Speed
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    IE11
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    Norton Security
    Other Info
    RAM Speed: 1866MHZ @ 9-10-10-27-2T, 1.5v
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