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Only time I ever had to defrag a HDD (since W7) is when I had to do something with drives that were not mine but here for repairs. Badly (15% and more) fragmentation can slow them down or make them unreliable.
Only time I ever had to defrag a HDD (since W7) is when I had to do something with drives that were not mine but here for repairs. Badly (15% and more) fragmentation can slow them down or make them unreliable.
Hi there
@fdegrove
maybe because I've always found imaging a system and restoring it always does the job far better and faster than any defragmentation. Things like Macrium are excellent for this. IMAGE don't CLONE the HDD. Restoring an image rebuilds all the cluster chains properly so HDD is reasonably optimised. CLONE copies every cluster as it was before (including errors etc).
Usually (in fact almost since day 1 of any release of Windows) I've always had OS + Pgms on their own partition / HDD.
Data alone on a Non OS partition even on a "defragmented" HDD rarely if any makes any difference -- even when streaming a movie the other aspects of a system including network speed will render inefficiency by the HDD as fairly minimal.
For things like Scratch areas for video editing / photoshop etc then a contiguous area is important but as these are created each time and are temporary files you won't run into problems unless HDD's are really full (>85%).
It's important of course to have the OS on the FASTEST device possible -- SLOW HDD's with insufficient cache space are usually the cause these days of poor system performance -- fortunately legacy small capacity IDE spinners are increasingly rarer now and will usually only be seen in older systems or used for archiving data where speed is irrelevant.
However all this is a moot point since the OP mentions SSD's which for obvious reasons as explained by several people in previous posts in this thread do not need any sort of defragmentation applied to them.
Cheers
jimbo
Hi there
also a good idea !!!! - I think though with large RAID arrays e.g (4, 6, 10 TB etc) that method might take a while !! but certainly feasable for more "normal" size HDD's and a lot quicker than defrag. However things like Macrium have optimized the process and speeded it up so much compared with say a Windows / File explorer copy that the backup and restore still gets my vote.
On large RAID arrays I wouldn't even THINK of defragging them -- let the RAID hardware / I/O controller handle all that stuff - otherwise I think you'll certainly Break the array losing a LOT of data !!!!!.
Cheers
jimbo
[QUOTE=jimbo45;840736]Hi there
As for SSD's -- since essentially accessing data is really like reading a 2 dimensional array where any address is just as likely as any other and the access time the same (no heads to move or seek cylinder / sector stuff to perform) then there's nothing to do.
The best you can do with an SSD is JUST LEAVE IT. Any fiddling with it is more likely to break it than just by using it normally. [Quote]
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According to MS, SSDs do get defragged but only the file table. This is done during maintenance once a month apparently. There is a limit to the number of fragments the file table can hold. Can't find the ref at the moment, but it is here on this site somewhere. I also seem to remember that some old SSDs do benefit from a Trim.
Bob F.
Hi,
SSDs do get fragmented just like a HDD.According to MS, SSDs do get defragged but only the file table.
The difference being that SSDs have little latency retrieving data from its medium.
Add to that the fact that every time you would defrag it you would reduce its usable life as cells wear out every time they're written to.
Cheers,
Defraging HDDs puts more stress and wear on them too. One full defrag with optimizing makes them work as much as months of normal use. Particles on platters also have life span to say nothing about mechanical parts.
I love how people that claim to have no experience with something can authoritatively make claims about it. If you've, as you said, *NEVER* defragged a drive, how exactly would you know whether or not makes any difference? You're like someone saying "I've never taken a vitamin in my life, so I know they are useless"
Also bad advice. SSD's need to be TRIM'd on a regular basis, or you won't get the full capacity of the drive out of them.
If Windows thinks and says it needs it, why can't it do it?