Windows Defrag schedule / SSD maintenance query

Hi all,

As I posted in another thread (about another issue) a while back, I recently installed an SSD and did a clean install of Windows 10. Being my first experience of using an SSD, I did a lot of reading up on it, mainly about maintenance, such as defragmentation etc, and most reading has told me that generally, you don't need to really do anything - Windows 8 and 10 is built with SSD in mind and TRIM and as such should take care of all of this automatically.

But I noticed that in Windows Defrag (the UI) I have the schedule setting to perform maintenance weekly, as you can see on the screenshot at the bottom (I took this screenshot the other day and have only now got around to posting this) However, note at the top that it says 8 days since last run (and that was by me, manually) So this is obviously over a week. I left it a bit longer, and it still said that it hadn't been run. So when does Windows do this TRIM maintenance? Is it a case of it is doing it and not updating the date info in the defrag app, or is it something I'm going to have to go in and do manually? If it's the latter, how often should I be running this?



Many thanks

TRIM is performed immediately as needed without any indication to the user.

Verify that TRIM is working using this small program from this site:

TRIMcheck: Does Your SSD Really have TRIM Working? | The SSD Review

I've used it for years, it works great, small program that only uses a command prompt window.

edit: defragmentation is not necessary on an SSD

fdegrove said:

Hi,



Glad to see you're happy with it but does not guarantee that TRIM is actually working though.

Cheers,

Yes, it does show whether it's working or not. Try it and see how it works, or go to the site. I've quoted one of their forum members below with an excellent description of how it works and what it does.

BadMachine said:

“The title says it all. Fsutil will tell you if TRIM is enabled or not, but it won’t tell you if it is really functional. TRIMcheck will actually check and verify whether TRIM works or not. This program has no GUI, it runs in a command prompt window. You must copy it on the SSD that you are testing and run it twice, waiting at least 30 seconds to a minute between runs in order to ensure accurate results. When executed for the first time it will write on specific locations on the SSD. It will then delete the written data and exit. When you run it a second time a minute later, it will try to read the exact same locations.When TRIM works you’ll get zeroes on the sectors it wrote, plus a notification that TRIM works. If the data is still there, you’ll be notified that TRIM is not working. If you get a negative result and fsutil tells you that TRIM is enabled anyway, try to wait 10 minutes or so before running it for a third time. This program is great for cases where certain software use cheap workarounds that cripple TRIM in order to ensure SSD compatibility. In such cases fsutil will show that TRIM is enabled, regardless if it really works or not. With this utility you’ll know for sure.”

Sorry about that fdegrove I saw that too, it appears TRIM is working, to me it's a good sign TRIM is working even with the disclaimer "appears".

You're right, it's not a guarantee, but it beats the heck out of no indicators at all. :)

Hi,

CmmTch said:

Sorry about that fdegrove I saw that too, it appears TRIM is working, to me it's a good sign TRIM is working even with the disclaimer "appears".

You're right, it's not a guarantee, but it beats the heck out of no indicators at all. :)

No problem at all. The problem is that there's no way of predicting where a file's written on a SSD and so on.
For all practical manners we can safely assume that when TRIM is enabled it also does its job.
There are some more complex issues like optimizing UASP Win To Go drives but that's another topic entirely .

Best,