Solved Is it BAD to defrag a SSD?

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King Alpha

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Hey guys, is it really bad to defrag a SSD? If so, why??? I'm just curious.
 
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trainbus120

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Well, the answer to that question is pretty easy once you understand the difference between an SSD and a HDD. An SSD is basically non-volatile flash memory, which you are probably used to using in your digital camera, etc. An SSD is fast because it randomly accesses memory instead of sequentially like an HDD. SSD’s are great, but there is one huge caveat that most hard drive manufacturer’s never mention about SSDs and that’s their lifespan.

Because of the way they are built, an SSD wears down every time they are written accessed. If you have read reviews of SSDs before, you have probably read about how an SSD will get slower if you benchmark it after completely filling the drive and then erasing it. With a HDD, you would never have that problem. Most people mistakenly think SSDs are safer than HDDs because they have no moving parts. This is not true. Flash memory has a very finite lifespan and the more it is used, the more quickly it will fail.

So back to the question of defragmenting. When you defrag a hard drive, especially a SSD, it will end up causing tons of small write accesses, which will reduce the lifespan of the hard drive. And since data is not being read sequentially, it doesn’t matter if the file is stored in a hundred different places, the performance will remain the same.

So, no, you should not defrag an SSD. And performing one will actually reduce the life of your drive. All of the SSD manufacturer’s know of this problem and they have come up with an optimization technique with the use of the TRIM command.

Currently, with HDDs and SSDs, if you delete some data on the hard drive, the operating system does not actually remove the content from the disk, it just deletes the pointer to the address and therefore “deletes” the data. That’s probably why you’re heard of secure delete or government security file deletion, which actually overwrites the deleted data with gibberish so no one can use advanced tools to read data later on.

This issue of data not actually being deleted is what causes the lifespan of SSDs to be reduced. If the drive knew which areas of memory didn’t contain any important data, it could simply re-use it for new data. The TRIM command is supported by the latest SSDs and will optimize the hard drive so that it reduces the number of writes/deletions and therefore extends the life of your SSD significantly.
 
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Cats-4_Owners-2

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The TRIM command is supported by the latest SSDs and will optimize the hard drive so that it reduces the number of writes/deletions and therefore extends the life of your SSD significantly.
Thanks for this in-depth explaination, @trainbus120.:)
I wanted to ask, before doing a search, what is the TRIM command, pluse (since SSD is considered flash) does wiping only available space from my external flash drive (sticks) whence files had been deleted afterwards with CCleaner reduce their life span or are these just worries that are barking up the wrong tree?:p
 
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trainbus120

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Firstly check if the TRIM command is already active in Windows:

1. Open a Command Prompt window (run as administrator)
Click on Start button → Click All Programs → Accessories → Command Prompt

2. Type the following at command prompt and press enter:
fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

here are two possible outcomes:

  • DisableDeleteNotify = 0 : TRIM is already enabled and working in Windows
  • DisableDeleteNotify = 1 : TRIM is not enabled → Proceed to step 3 to enable it
3. To enable SSD TRIM support in Windows, type the following at command prompt and press enter:

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0
 
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