How often I should Defrag?

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Briefly explain your current issue(s)
How often should I defrag?
Steps taken to resolve, but have been unsuccessful
PerfectDisk
How often I should Defrag?

My DefragSoftware is Perfect Disk

Specs:
i7 4770k
GTX 1060 6GB
16GB DDR3 Memory
1x 60GB SSD DREVO X1 (Windows)
1x 500GB HDD WDBlack (Games)
1x 500GB external hard drive (Pictures - Videos - Etc)
 

Weebarra

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I just use windows defrag on a weekly schedule but i would like to say thanks to the OP and everyone who posted replies on here as even though i don't have an SSD (yet), i wouldn't have known that about it, also useful tips for HDD's too. (y)guys.
 
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BoraMurdar

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I have to disagree with you. A full space SSD will not going to last long than an SSD with 10% space left. TRIM is only needed when your SSD is full, other than that, you don't need to TRIM your SSD at all if it is not full.

Don't trust anyone with that haircut!

Now seriously, TRIM is actually a good thing to do once per month (for example, Windows suggests scheduling it weekly or monthly) as it will make your SSD last longer regardless if it is full or not just because it will reduce read/erase/modify sequence in blocks where data is already deleted.
 
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Don't trust anyone with that haircut!

Now seriously, TRIM is actually a good thing to do once per month (for example, Windows suggests scheduling it weekly or monthly) as it will make your SSD last longer regardless if it is full or not just because it will reduce read/erase/modify sequence in blocks where data is already deleted.
So you think I should keep PerfectDisk? I mean it's a very good program and you notice a serious difference to before
 
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Digerati

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I have to disagree with you. A full space SSD will not going to last long than an SSD with 10% space left.
I have no clue what you are disagreeing with. I didn't say anything about that.
TRIM is only needed when your SSD is full, other than that, you don't need to TRIM your SSD at all if it is not full.
Well, that is just not true. TRIM ensures the same storage location on the SSD is not constantly being used for writes - as might happen with Windows temporary files throughout the day, day after day. TRIM moves less used data to make sure writes are evenly distributed. It has nothing to do with the disk being full or not. It is all about the number of writes to each storage location. It ensures a single location is not written to once and another location is written to 10,000 times. I recommend you read up on garbage collection, wear leveling and TRIM.

For external HDDs defrag every 6 months and for internal HDDs every 3 months should be more than enough.
Sorry, but that makes no sense. First, it does not matter if internal or external. It is all about the percent of fragmentation and that is totally dependent on how much the disk is used, the amount of free disk space, and the amount of contiguous free space - not how long since last defragged.

Second, unless the user dinked with and disabled the feature, it does not matter because Windows automatically and periodically defrags hard drives anyway.

Guys, if the OP already bought Perfectdisk, then let him keep using it if he wants to.
Fair point. Also fair is noting I have no personal personal experience using Perfectdisk but I will say this. If Perfectdisk works by constantly defragging disks, then its claim of "Extending Storage Lifespan" if bogus marketing hype! Excessive defragging causes unnecessary wear and tear on the mechanical components in a hard drive.

i know, i didn't want to go into details, just make it simple to the novice. But im glad you did
(y)
 
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Digerati

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If you believe that the difference is noticeable, you should keep it.
This reminds me of another point most don't consider.

Do some 3rd party defraggers do a more efficient job of defragging than Windows built-in defragger? Yes. But does it matter? No. Not unless you are critically low on free disk space and then the proper solution is to free up disk space or buy more.

As soon as you start using the computer again after defragmenting, the fragmentation process starts all over again. So any advantage you eked from the more efficient defragger is soon leveled out.

Hard drives made in recent years have much faster seek times than older drives (~5ms vs 25ms). They also tend to have larger integrated buffers. Then Windows is much better at managing virtual memory (RAM plus your page file) and most computers today have considerably more RAM than older computers. All that leads to better/faster drive performance.

So if there is any actual, noticeable performance increase with a 3rd party defragger, then it is probably a good time to migrate to SSDs because the drive itself is the bottleneck, not the defragger.
 
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BoraMurdar

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I always post this article when this theme is discussed, a kinda old test, but algorithms didn't change much since
The results turn out pretty disappointing. Only MyDefrag 4 improved the performance by 13%, which is in the range of where an improvement is even noticeable. O&O Defrag Pro 16 just managed to get to 8%. But the results should be considered relative: Only the boot time and the start time of Civilization could be noticeably improved, there was no noticeable improvement for other applications, though.

DiskTrix UltimateDefrag 4 stood out rather negative: The manufacturer advertises a performance improvement of 400-600% (even for Windows 7), but the defragmenter managed to improve the performance by only just 1%.
Diskeeper 12 also stood out slightly negative as it increased the boot time by 2 seconds. This is probably the price you have to pay for the extra features, since the Windows 7 Defragmenter is nothing more than a stripped down version of Diskeeper.
Update 1.1:But even with few features Auslogics Disk Defrag 3.6.1 Free managed to influence the performance rather negative.
Update 1.2: The negative list is now joined by Priform Defraggler 2.18.945 and IObit Smart Defrag 3.1.0. The latter in particular extended the boot time significantly.

The SSD is constantly on the 1st place, indicating that a piece of hardware can bring more performance than software ever could.

In terms of data movement or processing time one can see as a trend: The better the performance, the more data needs to be moved, and the longer the optimization takes. However, MyDefrag 4 moved less data and achieved a better performance than O&O Defrag Pro 16.
The Big Windows 7 Defragmenter Test - The Benchmarks
 
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SumTingWong

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I have no clue what you are disagreeing with. (y)

You did say it. I highlighted and underlined it for you.

I agree with BoraMurdar - Windows knows how to manage and maintain disks (HDs and SSDs) just fine. 3rd party defrag programs just wastes disk space.

So just let Windows manage it. More important is to keep a big chunk of free disk space available on your drives. Don't pay attention to any advice that says you need some percent of the entire drive. That's a silly arbitrary number that has no basis in fact. You often seen people advise keeping anywhere from 10 to 30% free. That's just dumb! Note with inexpensive monster drives common today like this 4TB WD costing ~$100, that would mean setting aside a whopping 400GB to 1.2TB :eek: of space! What a waste! :rolleyes:

I generally recommend 20GB to 30GB, regardless the over all disk size. That is plenty of room for Windows to manage open files, temp files, the page file, and still have enough room to keep fragmentation (on HDs) in check.

TRIM is a SSD optimization routine (which is why it is managed via Windows "Optimize Disk" feature, along with HD defragging routines) but it is not equivalent to hard disk defragmentation. TRIM is implemented as a "wear leveling" routine to distribute the number of "writes" across the entire SSD instead of just repeatedly writing to (and potentially wearing out) the same storage location over and over again. So TRIM will move file "segments" around, but it does not assemble those segments in any sort of defragged order. It just does not need to because of the way data is accessed on SSDs (electronically instead of mechanically).

So again, just to avoid confusion, SSD TRIM and HD defragging are both disk optimization procedures, but they are nothing alike in their purpose.

I have no clue what you are disagreeing with. I didn't say anything about that.Well, that is just not true. TRIM ensures the same storage location on the SSD is not constantly being used for writes - as might happen with Windows temporary files throughout the day, day after day. TRIM moves less used data to make sure writes are evenly distributed. It has nothing to do with the disk being full or not. It is all about the number of writes to each storage location. It ensures a single location is not written to once and another location is written to 10,000 times. I recommend you read up on garbage collection, wear leveling and TRIM.

Sorry, but that makes no sense. First, it does not matter if internal or external. It is all about the percent of fragmentation and that is totally dependent on how much the disk is used, the amount of free disk space, and the amount of contiguous free space - not how long since last defragged.

Second, unless the user dinked with and disabled the feature, it does not matter because Windows automatically and periodically defrags hard drives anyway.

Fair point. Also fair is noting I have no personal personal experience using Perfectdisk but I will say this. If Perfectdisk works by constantly defragging disks, then its claim of "Extending Storage Lifespan" if bogus marketing hype! Excessive defragging causes unnecessary wear and tear on the mechanical components in a hard drive.

(y)

Most modern SSDs are programmed to recognize common filesystems. So they can recognize when a file has been deleted, and can erase the sectors containing that file without needing to be told by TRIM. It can't hurt to have TRIM on, but unless you're using some oddball filesystem or have the SSDs in RAID, the SSD will probably be fine with TRIM off.
 
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Digerati

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:( If you read it again, I said, "You often see people advise...". So I was reporting what other people say, NOT ME! And I even went on to say, "That's just dumb!"

So I will say it again, using some arbitrary percentage is just dumb. 10% on a 4TB drive is a whopping 400GB! It makes no sense to set that amount free. And 10% on a 100GB drive is just 10GB - not enough for Windows to operate freely in for temp files, open files, the page file, or defragging.
 
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SumTingWong

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:( If you read it again, I said, "You often see people advise...". So I was reporting what other people say, NOT ME! And I even went on to say, "That's just dumb!"

So I will say it again, using some arbitrary percentage is just dumb. 10% on a 4TB drive is a whopping 400GB! It makes no sense to set that amount free. And 10% on a 100GB drive is just 10GB - not enough for Windows to operate freely in for temp files, open files, the page file, or defragging.

SSD is way different than HDD.
 
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Vasudev

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Nov 8, 2014
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Sorry, but that makes no sense. First, it does not matter if internal or external. It is all about the percent of fragmentation and that is totally dependent on how much the disk is used, the amount of free disk space, and the amount of contiguous free space - not how long since last defragged.

Second, unless the user dinked with and disabled the feature, it does not matter because Windows automatically and periodically defrags hard drives anyway.
For me I use WORM method on external HDDs so defragging 600GB of Image backups periodically is madness to me.
Nowadays I don't defrag HDDs since modern OS takes care of that contiguous alloc. scheme.
I won't force users to follow my methods since lot of people prioritize different things.
 
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stefanos

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Guys, if the OP already bought Perfectdisk, then let him keep using it if he wants to.

Though, I would advice to be careful with the boot-time defrag, there was some issue with it in the past. Don’t know for certain if it was fixed but looking at the changelog, it seems it was.
Perfectdisk boot time defrag not working at windows 10 . I tried it 3 days ago
 
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TairikuOkami

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Perfectdisk boot time defrag not working at windows 10 .
Just defragment Windows HDD outside of Windows, it is way better than boot defrag, since most files are already loaded anyway.
Not to mention, that it is way faster, this defrag took 3 mins. It took more time to boot USB and restart. The result, before & after:

capture_06272018_231341 (1).jpg capture_06272018_232206 (1).jpg

Code:
Boot Windows USB - Repair - Troubleshoot - CMD - type/enter
c:
cd windows
cd system32
defrag c: /u
I defragment after Windows Updates, that is about once or twice a month, after performing a throughout cleanup.
 
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stefanos

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Just defragment Windows HDD outside of Windows, it is way better than boot defrag, since most files are already loaded anyway.
Not to mention, that it is way faster, this defrag took 3 mins. It took more time to boot USB and restart. The result, before & after:

View attachment 191209 View attachment 191208

Code:
Boot Windows USB - Repair - Troubleshoot - CMD - type/enter
c:
cd windows
cd system32
defrag c: /u
I defragment after Windows Updates, that is about once or twice a month, after performing a throughout cleanup.
i use many years puran defrag. Very good program
 
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Digerati

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For me I use WORM method on external HDDs so defragging 600GB of Image backups periodically is madness to me.
That would be madness with a "true" image backup. What should be done in that case is the "source" drive should be cleaned of clutter, then if necessary, defragged, and only then should the image copy be made. In that way, the image copy (and the "destination" drive it is on) would not be fragmented in the first place.
it is way better than boot defrag, since most files are already loaded anyway.
Good point - at least with the boot drive.

Boot defragging the boot drive is actually more efficient than defragging when the OS is fully loaded. But defragging at every boot is unnecessary, a waste of time, and increases wear and tear on the drive.
Perfectdisk boot time defrag not working at windows 10 . I tried it 3 days ago
Maybe (hopefully!) the program is smart enough to see the drive is not fragmented so does not run because it is not necessary. That would be a good thing.
 
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xSploit

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Jul 7, 2012
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Don't trust anyone with that haircut!

Now seriously, TRIM is actually a good thing to do once per month (for example, Windows suggests scheduling it weekly or monthly) as it will make your SSD last longer regardless if it is full or not just because it will reduce read/erase/modify sequence in blocks where data is already deleted.
Many drives self-TRIM themselves anyhow, but it does help if the OS supports it, and tells the drive to TRIM.
 
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SumTingWong

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Many drives self-TRIM themselves anyhow, but it does help if the OS supports it, and tells the drive to TRIM.

TRIM is not as important as it used to be because most modern SSDs are programmed to recognize common files system that they can recognize when a file has been deleted, and erase the sectors containing that file without needing to be told by TRIM. It can't hurt to have TRIM on. Unless you are using some oddball filesystem or have RAID SSD setup, the SSD will probably be fine with TRIM off.
 
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