Disk defragmenter running even though it's disabled

I just caught disk defragmenter running when I didn't want it to. Windows seems to love running things without my permission. I just doubled-checked the settings under "defragment and optimize drives" and it is off for all drives:

Drives are not being optimized automatically

Also under task scheduler, defrag is disabled.

Yet when my drive stared grinding away all of a sudden I checked task manager and this was running:

service host: disk defragmenter
optimize drives

Which stopped running shortly after I opened task manager.

So why is this running if it's disabled?

And it just started running again while it was in idle. Why?!

I just went into services and checked the "optimize drives" setting and it was set to manual and it was running. I stopped the service and set it to disabled. I'll see how that works. I'll have to remember to set it back to manual when I want to defragment the drives.

But I'd love to know what is triggering it to run if it's set to manual and it's disabled under the "defragment and optimize drives" setting. Something is triggering it and it shouldn't be running.

Behavior like this is why people hate Windows. Set it to disabled, it runs anyways when it wants to.

A small amount of disk defrag must run periodically in order to keep the NTFS file system itself from crashing. Windows will even defrag on SSDs every now and then to keep the file system from crashing. It's only defragging the file table, though, not the entire drive.

https://

lifehacker.com/

windows-does-defragment-ssds-but-its-okay-1666753409

-----------------------

You need to join up the 3 lines to produce the URL, which you should then copy and post in your browser.

If I post the URL in a single line within the TenForums reply box, I get millions of lines in the reply, looking like this:

embed__caption:focus,.post-content figcaption:focus{outline:none}.above-headline-image :not(.jwplayer)+.video-embed__caption,.editor .editor-inner :not(.jwplayer)+.video-embed__caption,.featured-post__featured-media-caption :not(.jwplayer)+.video-embed__caption,.post-content :not(.jwplayer)+.video-embed__caption{margin-top:-0.5rem}.above-headline-image .featured-post__caption,.editor .editor-inner .featured-post__caption,.featured-post__featured-media-caption .featured-post__caption,.post-content .featured-post__caption{position:absolute;top:100%}.ad-unit--featured-recirculation{opacity:1;pointer-events:auto;-webkit-transitionpacity 0.2s ease-in-out;transitionpacity 0.2s ease-in-out;z-index:97}.ad-unit--featured-recirculation .ad-container{background:#f5f5f5;width:300px;height:250px}.ad-unit--featured-recirculation .ad-container--hidden{opacity:0;pointer-events:none;visibility:hidden}.ad-unit--fixed-bottom{position:fixed;bottom:3.5rem;right:1.125rem;height:auto;width:300px;opacity:1;-w

Callender said:

You can just post the URL by linking.

I think it depends on which hemisphere you're in.

I tried two methods:

- Post the URL directly into the reply box. Before I could click "Submit Reply", the box filled with lines and the timer spinner continued for minutes.

- Post 3 separate bits. As soon as I joined them up, the same thing happened.

Honest.

NavyLCDR said:

A small amount of disk defrag must run periodically in order to keep the NTFS file system itself from crashing. Windows will even defrag on SSDs every now and then to keep the file system from crashing. It's only defragging the file table, though, not the entire drive.

Well I use a mechanical drive, not SSD.

I did set it to disabled under services and it's much better. So does this mean the file system could become unstable just because it's not defragging automatically? I mean, why does it have to defrag so often? It always seems to kick in if it's left alone for a few minutes.

rivre said:

Well I use a mechanical drive, not SSD.

I did set it to disabled under services and it's much better. So does this mean the file system could become unstable just because it's not defragging automatically? I mean, why does it have to defrag so often? It always seems to kick in if it's left alone for a few minutes.

The reason why Windows MUST defrag an SSD is the same reason why it also MUST defrag an HDD:
"Actually Scott and Vadim are both wrong. 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."

The same statement is true for HDDs. It has to do with the metadata keeping up with all the file fragments, rather than putting together the actual file fragments. I believe if you want to stop the defrag process altogether you have to turn off the Volume Shadow Copy service.

Okay, so then the question is, if I leave it disabled under services, will it still run when it needs to? Because so far it has not run again since I set it to disabled under services.

If I keep it disabled, can't I just set it to manual like it was previously, or run a defrag manually, when it's convenient for me, rather than always leaving it on manual and it running at the worst most inconvenient times?