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#11
Hi there
SSD's don't ever need any fragmentation fixes - no moving parts -- the whole disc works like a 2D array (map like the X-Y co-ordinates) so any address is just as reachable as any other in the same time frame. With an HDD if bits of file are scattered all over the HDD then you have rotational delay to reach the bits of the file, read time etc.
That said though -- in over 30 years of using Windows I can honestly say I've never found defragging a drive has ever resulted in any significant improvement whatsoever - and these days with much larger HDD's with bigger caches fragmentation is not an issue -- The OS can pre-read a lot of data into the HDD's cache which eliminates a lot of the delay with having to access all the chains in a file - the algorithms for pre-fetch and read are very sophisticated these days.
Windows 3.11 !!!!! Still works on a VM.
If you feel the need to defrag a disc - it's a lot quicker to simply image it with something like Free Macrium (Image - not CLONE it) , optionally reformat but not necessary in fact and then restore.
Just my take on this -- others might have different experiences but from a technical point these days with the modern W7/W10 type of Windows OS'es from a technical standpoint I can't see what defragging really buys you.
As for portable apps - these are usually done to avoid "installs" - but beware as people often use these to get round "Locked down PC's" where you can't install your own software -- corporate PC's for example are usually locked down.
To create some portable apps there are often things written that bypass all the ususal rules of windows so be careful if installing and using these.
However there's no reason why any of these would cause any more / less use on a Disc than a normal app -- usually the app is read from the storage device into memory and then executed - only if you have a severe shortage of RAM should it need to access the disc a lot -- editing programs like photoshop etc - especially video editing will need a lot of "scratch space" --that's a different issue - but usually there are settings in the program where to allocate that and it's only used as temporary or wok storage and is dispensed with when you end the application.
Cheers
jimbo