Defrag SSD

[Redeye1 5]

I've read the many opinions on whether or not to defrag SSD's and the predominate one seems to be that you don't need to and it actually may shorten the life.  I have used O&O defrag for my storage HDD for quite a while and it seems to be a very good product.  They are now advertising their newest addition is suitable for use on SSD's.  Just wondering if anyone has tried this, and especially, if it makes any difference with the speed of operation.  I certainly don't want to shorten the life of my SSD if it's not going to speed things up.  Thanks for your attention. BTW, I'm running Windows & Pro, if that pertains.

Regards,

Mike

[edpatino 1,960]

Not recommended. They're probably advertising that, because a lot of people are moving to SSD drives and they could possibly be losing market.

Cheers, Ed

[Bob Scott 7,715]

An SSD is truly random-access...no waiting for a head to move to a part of the physical platter to begin it's read/write.  It does not make a difference in access time or transfer speed whether or not the data blocks in a file are spread across the drive or right next to each other.  In fact, in most SSDs, the block addresses are virtualized anyway, so the defrag software might get virtual block addresses that are contiguous, but in reality the wear-leveling firmware has moved the data to different physical addresses on the devices to spread write cycles out evenly.

Wear-levelling and trimming of the SSD are well-handled by the SSD's internal firmware and the OS, unless you're still using Win XP or Vista.  Honestly, it sounds like marketing snake oil to me.

Regards

[martin-w 3,234]

O&O are being naughty. Not required at all!

I was very sceptical of their claims for mechanical hard drive defraging too if I'm honest.

[wedgantilles 76]

Non sense. SSD don't need defrag even if they have a so called SSD defrag that's just marketing to get more money and make it look like they are still needed. You can't put data closeby together for the head to read as there is no head at all.

Stay away from this kind of things.

[Redeye1 5]

Thank you all!  I'll save my $

[vc10man 732]

19 hours ago, martin-w said:

O&O are being naughty. Not required at all!

I was very sceptical of their claims for mechanical hard drive defraging too if I'm honest.

Precisely. Well stated.

[wedgantilles 76]

19 hours ago, martin-w said:

O&O are being naughty. Not required at all!

I was very sceptical of their claims for mechanical hard drive defraging too if I'm honest.

I just checked a bit their doc and basically all they'll do is doing the Trim command 🙂

[BlueStar 323]

My SSDs are Intel and I use Intel SSD Toolbox for their maintenance. 

Grace and Peace, 

[martin-w 3,234]

1 hour ago, wedgantilles said:

I just checked a bit their doc and basically all they'll do is doing the Trim command 🙂

 

Oh right. 🙂 

 

Certain gurus used to rave about O&O, but I never found any benefit to their mechanical hard drive super defrag. Never been a fan of theirs, less so now with this SSD defrag. How much are they charging for this unnecessary tool?

Edited November 14, 2018 by martin-w

[SoJourned 65]

Yes its safe to 'defrag' an ssd drive. The OS/Software knows its an ssd drive and really just does a trim rather than a traditional defrag operation.

[vortex681 806]

18 hours ago, SoJourned said:

Yes its safe to 'defrag' an ssd drive. The OS/Software knows its an ssd drive and really just does a trim rather than a traditional defrag operation.

Samsung still advise not to. See ”Will defragmentation improve my Samsung Solid State Drive's performance?" here: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/support/faqs-03/

"Please disable any defragmentation utilities on your computer because they will only wear down the performance of your SSD. Visit the OS Optimization section of Samsung SSD Magician for help doing this."

I'd rather not risk it personally. Better to let the manufacturers software do the job.

Edited November 15, 2018 by vortex681

[AAN1718A 20]

I actually have been defragging my SSD since SSD's existed and while it is true that defragging an SSD (in non-SSD mode) does cause unnecessary writes to the drive, however MTBF lifespan of a drive is quite long and still took me three years to 'wear it down' to where I needed a new one.

SSD's do not like small files and performance take a nose dive when trying to locate and read 1,000 really small BGL files for flight sim scattered throughout the drive (yes I know there are no moving parts 😀), however your best read/write performance is for larger files.

Perhaps it's a placebo for me thinking that by defragging my drive, that flight sim runs smoother and loads scenery quicker, but I haven't had an issue using them. *Perfect Disk is my choice, I found O&O takes way to long to defrag a drive.

 

 

[vortex681 806]

3 hours ago, AAN1718A said:

I actually have been defragging my SSD since SSD's existed and while it is true that defragging an SSD (in non-SSD mode) does cause unnecessary writes to the drive, however MTBF lifespan of a drive is quite long and still took me three years to 'wear it down' to where I needed a new one.

This highlights the problem with defragging SSDs. Three years is a very short lifespan for an SSD used in a desktop computer. Take a look at this write test to destruction of a number of popular SSDs: https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead. Even the worst drive lasted for 700Tb of writes. My main (boot) SSD has a number of games, several Office-type programs which I use regularly and all of my documents. So far I've written 43Tb to it in 28 months - that's just over 18Tb per year. Even if it only lasted as long as the worst SSD in the torture test, that's potentially over 30 years of writes. You'd have to be writing over 19Tb every month to reach 700Tb in the 3 years it took your drive to die, so it's quite likely that defragging your drive is what caused it to fail so early. SSDs can obviously fail for other reasons but defragging them significantly hastens their demise.

Edited November 15, 2018 by vortex681

[AAN1718A 20]

I don't disagree, however I doubt it was from defragging, which isn't something I do on a regular basis anyway, but some other failure on my end.