Questions About Optimising SSD

Hi,

I recently got a new windows 10 system with a 512 GB M.2 SSD and just got around to doing a defrag. I notice it's a bit of a different animal now, optimise seems to be the new defrag. I'm not very technically minded and I'm hoping to get some pointers.

On my old HDD I used to just do a manual defrag every now and then, however the new system is set to optimise automatically on a weekly basis. I'm concerned that (as it's obviously been doing this), I haven't been getting any notifications when it's running, and if I've been shutting the system down before it's completed it might not re-initiate the process when next I boot up, and I never actually complete an optimise. My concern is compounded by the fact that sometimes when I shutdown, a message comes up about, 'closing down with programs running - might lose any unsaved data' etc, and to my knowledge there isn't any applications running , so now I'm concerned that might be to do with an optimise running in the background that I'm not aware of, (although not sure it's connected at all). Is it perhaps better to just set it to do manually? that way I know it will be completed and also it won't be initiating when I'm streaming soccer or something.

Also, I've read around a bit and there's talk about a garbage collection process which I think seems to be a standard part of the optimise function, but there is also talk about TRIM, which may or may not be something I need to do over and above optimise? I don't really understand it all. Simply put, is TRIM really something I need to worry about with my relatively modern M2 SSD?

Lastly, in the optimise section there are 3 drives listed, C drive, Recovery D drive, and something else that starts \\?\Volume(047c…. and I don't know what this is. It's listed as being, 'never run' and 'needs optimisation'. When I type it out it automatically displays as hyperlink. Can anyone tell me what it's likely to be, and do I need to do anything with it?

Thanks

Here you can read up about Trim and Garbage collection. It is bit more complicated than you thought.

Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained - An SSD Primer | The SSD Review

And never defrag an SSD - unless you want to ruin it. Just make sure the SSD is aligned. Then you will be OK.

SSD Alignment - Windows 7 Help Forums

Well you NEVER defrag any SSD for starters. 2nd the only command you can use for any SSD is the TRIM command.
That other drive that shows you "never optimize" is a partition on your c-drive.....which is never optimized. This should answer your questions I hope :)

OldMike65 said:

Well you NEVER defrag any SSD for starters. 2nd the only command you can use for any SSD is the TRIM command.
That other drive that shows you "never optimize" is a partition on your c-drive.....which is never optimized. This should answer your questions I hope :)

Never say Never. See:-

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

cereberus said:

Never say Never. See:-

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

Windows 10 does NOT defrag any SSD it finds....period. That article that you post, was written Dec 3, 2014 Long time ago. :)

ouroboros72 said:

Lastly, in the optimise section there are 3 drives listed, C drive, Recovery D drive, and something else that starts \\?\Volume(047c…. and I don't know what this is. It's listed as being, 'never run' and 'needs optimisation'. When I type it out it automatically displays as hyperlink. Can anyone tell me what it's likely to be, and do I need to do anything with it?

It is most likely your WinRE recovery partition. You could optimize it or not - as the contents don't change it doesn't matter either way.

Hidden Partitions are Displayed by the Windows Disk Defragmenter Tool

Word Man said:

Hi, ouroboros72.

As long as Windows is correctly identifying the type of disk you have (SSD in your case) in the Optimize Drives GUI, you can optimize at any time by clicking the Optimize button. It will not normally optimize drives such as the "\\?\Volume(047c…. " labeled one you mentioned. That drive would not normally see much write traffic and may not actually need it as much as the GUI leads you to believe . However, it MAY optimize by running "defrag /C /O" from an elevated (admin) command prompt.

Note: 1) Neither of these methods will defragment an SSD, whether it be clicking "optimize" or the defrag command as specified. 2) I say the command line MAY optimize that one drive/partition because I've seen it work on mine before but it's not clear to me it will do it for each person's system - it was a try it and see result of my own.:)

For reference see Brink's excellent tutorial here: Optimize and Defrag Drives in Windows 10 , especially "Option Two" regarding the command line method.

Well I have to disagree with this Word Man. Windows 10 WILL start the TRIM command on the SSD if you click on the Optimize option, but it will NOT defrag a SSD drive. That Command you list "defrag /C/O" if you look at the description posted by Brink, it states this:

/O	Perform the proper optimization for each media type.

The words "proper optimization" is important, Windows knows what type of drive is in use, and will only use the TRIM command on any SSD.

Word Man said:

Don't understand at all what you're disagreeing with, Mike.

I never said the TRIM command WOULDN'T be run by clicking "Optimize" and I never said it WOULD defragment anything.

I'm very well aware of what the "/C" and "/O" switches for the "defrag" command are for and that's why I recommended those specific switches for OP to see if they might optimize the hidden partition that doesn't really need optimized.

Brink's tutorial covers both options well and clearly explains the meaning of those switches - so I don't see any mystery or basis of debate there.

So, while I agree with the technical part of what you posted, I disagree with your disagreement of what I posted. Agreed?

Dam it Kenn, I read some of your post WRONG for that I am sorry, as I thought you were saying it would defrag the ssd, again my mistake. I also checked volume shadow copy (VSS) in my computer and found it set to manually run. That could actually defrag an ssd a little.....I read....??? Anyhow, I disabled it. along with Superfetch which I found enabled. Which it should not have been. Guess this is one of the differences between a Intel SSD and a Samsung SSD as my Intel SSD disables this without any user intervention. ..... I like that phase .... "I disagree with your disagreement" :)
Mike...