Should SSD's be defragmented

jimbo45 said:

I still don't see the need for TRIM on modern SSD's

IIRC, trimming is performed on your disk whether you like it or not, since it's integrated to the NTFS driver. The maintenance tool basically checks in case some remains to be done, which can be the case I suppose if some space was freed on the filesystem while the system is shutting down, or in case of a system crash, so it usually hasn't much to do.

I'll ask the question again. Has anyone ever heard of an SSD catching on fire because of some program like Diskeeper continually going at it to the point where it gets hot and explodes?

Maggidon said:

I'll ask the question again. Has anyone ever heard of an SSD catching on fire because of some program like Diskeeper continually going at it to the point where it gets hot and explodes?

Uhhh.. No.

It wouldn't catch fire, unless some other component in the system caught fire first. SSD's are relatively cool operating. Even when writing to them (it doesn't use heat to do so, but some heat is generated just by accessing it).

SSD's "wear out" eventually after millions of write cycles, they just stop returning data.

Maggidon said:

Has anyone ever heard of an SSD catching on fire because of some program like Diskeeper continually going at it to the point where it gets hot and explodes?

There have been reported cases with plutonium-based SSDs.

Thank you for the two straight forward replies guys. Before I posted the question, I'm thinking maybe I should keep that Kidde FA110 Multi Purpose Fire Extinguisher on top of my desk because SSD's are supposed to be blazing fast.
After reading Mystere's reply, I thought maybe there was no real reason to keep that space-taking thing in my office afterall. Then NovHak hits the deck fast with his enlightening response and suddenly I'm all fired up to buy a Geiger Counter. I just might make a collect call to my long lost Aunt in Los Alamos and see what they do and use down there.
Summing this all up then, it would seem the general trend is to use TRIM. Presently, I have it enabled and shall leave well enough alone until it isn't. I want to mark this as solved but will wait to see if there are further suggestions to be offered. It's been a real experience thus far. Thank you ever so much.

The reasoning I have seen is that two logically adjacent sectors S1+S2 could be physically in the order S2+S1, so to read both sectors, you may wait one revolution for the data to be under the read head. Multiply by a zillion for a large file, and that slows things up. With an SSD, physical location doesn't matter -- you don't have to wait for something to move under the read head. So there is no advantage to defragging. The disadvantage is that each location on an SSD can be rewritten a limited number of times, which is not a factor with spinning drives. Although that limit might be rather large, in the petabyte range, but some optimizing programs spend every waking / inactive second shuffling data around so they could chew through a mega-write in a week.

I'm amazed at how much you clams understand. Wowzer!!!

DavidOdden said:

The reasoning I have seen is that two logically adjacent sectors S1+S2 could be physically in the order S2+S1, so to read both sectors, you may wait one revolution for the data to be under the read head. Multiply by a zillion for a large file, and that slows things up. With an SSD, physical location doesn't matter -- you don't have to wait for something to move under the read head. So there is no advantage to defragging. The disadvantage is that each location on an SSD can be rewritten a limited number of times, which is not a factor with spinning drives. Although that limit might be rather large, in the petabyte range, but some optimizing programs spend every waking / inactive second shuffling data around so they could chew through a mega-write in a week.

Yep!

I second the "yep" or in French, "Yeppier!"