Simple question: defrag or not defrag?

[xguerra]

Just a quickie, is the performance of TS2013 improved in any way after a disk defrag?

[smarty2]

Yes, as long as you are not thinking of defragging an ssd? I am using the excellent and free "My Defrag", which if you select a monthly run cycle it moves all the files to the front of the disk which helps performance, I recently moved my steam folder onto a spinner from a failed ssd with no appreciable loss in performance, but which was made better after a good defrag.

[xguerra]

No my computer doesn't use SSD's so in that case I should be fine.

[andynwt]

If you are running Windows 7, it has an automatic defrag built in, so it's not something you need to worry about unless you are desperate. It's not perfect but it's fine for most people.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/d ... ows-7.html

[Trev123]

Here are a couple more. Defraggler and Smart Defrag2.

[smarty2]

Here are a couple more. Defraggler and Smart Defrag2.

I don't think either of those are as meticulous as My Defrag though?

[rikwesson]

Hi, just wondered what's wrong with defragging an SSD? (as my TS folder is on one, and I have used the win 7 defrag programme on it)

All the best, Richard

[cilldroichid]

From what i've read defragging a SSD does more harm to the SSD than good. I don't know why but i'm sure somebody with more tech knowledge will explain the ins and outs of it.

Donal.

[MGD11]

Defragging an SSD is NOT HARMFUL, regardless of what you read. However, I feel (as a techie) I should clarify the issue:

Defragging is the process of moving round data stored on a storage medium (normally a hard drive) where it has become fragmented (spread) across the entire drive when it can be clustered together for easier reading and to make the data allocation table a lot cleaner for your OS to use - normally Defragging is needed when you've deleted a lot of content or uninstalled programs.

To do this, your OS performs a whole list of read/write functions to copy the data between sectors on the hard drive.

SSDs are based off the technology for RAM - meaning that they're a lot faster for in/out operations, but only good for a certain number of operations (which is why normal disk HDs last longer than Solid State HDs) but beyond that are unsupported/can become unstable for operation/likely to become damaged and unusable. Defragging eats into this number and so technically shortens the life of the SSD, which is why it's recommended that gaming is NOT performed on an SSD - unless you have a lot of money to buy replacement drives.

If you ARE looking into an SSD, I would recommend a dual lash-up - A small SSD for Windows (say 40GB) and a normal HD for all your other apps/games.

[rikwesson]

Thanks for your replies, but I wish I had known all this before I bought an SSD drive just for TS. Does this mean that one day my TS SSD will suddenly just stop?

All the best, Richard.

[Marleyman]

Thanks for your replies, but I wish I had known all this before I bought an SSD drive just for TS. Does this mean that one day my TS SSD will suddenly just stop?

All the best, Richard.

Yes, within five years if to write 10gb per day (every day) to the drive.
You can google samsung 840 ssd life span, or whatever your SSD drive make is.

or read this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/sams ... f-tlc-nand

[gptech]

Does this mean that one day my TS SSD will suddenly just stop?

No, it just means it might or that the probability of it doing so is higher.

Even though we have showed more than once that the endurance of today's MLC NAND based SSDs is more than enough for even enterprise workloads, the misconception of SSDs having a short lifespan still lives. Back in the day when we had 3Xnm MLC NAND with 5,000 P/E cycles, people were worried about wearing our their SSDs, although there was absolutely nothing to worry about. The move to ~20nm MLC NAND has reduced the available P/E cycles to 3,000, but that's still plenty.

and

Furthermore, it should be kept in mind that all SMART values that predict lifespan are conservative; it's highly unlikely that your drive will drop dead once the WLC or MWI hits zero. There is a great example at XtremeSystems where a 256GB Samsung SSD 830 is currently at nearly 6,000TiB of writes. Its WLC hit zero at 828TiB of writes, which means its endurance is over seven times higher than what the SMART values predicted.

and finally

Conclusions

1,000 P/E cycles may not sound much but when it's put into perspective, it's still plenty. Client workloads rarely exceed 10GiB of writes per day on average and write amplification should stay within reasonable magnitudes as well:

SSD Lifetime Estimation
NAND MLC—3K P/E Cycles TLC—1K P/E Cycles
NAND Capacity 128GiB 256GiB 128GiB 256GiB
Writes per Day 10GiB 10GiB 10GiB 10GiB
Write Amplification 3x 3x 3x 3x
Total Estimated Lifespan 35.0 years 70.1 years 11.7 years 23.4 years

[smarty2]

Well I defragged my kingston ssd several times by listening to advice given me, 2 years down the line it failed, coincidence? Don't know, but really, is there a need to defrag an ssd?

[Trev123]

Here are a couple more. Defraggler and Smart Defrag2.

I don't think either of those are as meticulous as My Defrag though?

I cannot comment as I haven't tried it. I formatted my 1tb HD which is half full with no partition Defraggler was going to take 24hrs or more to do it and a friend of mine said try Smart Defrag2 which I did and it took just over 2 hrs to do and that was a full defrag.

[Carinthia]

Well I defragged my kingston ssd several times by listening to advice given me, 2 years down the line it failed, coincidence? Don't know, but really, is there a need to defrag an ssd?

There is no purpose in defragmenting a SSD for two reasons:

1. Without a spinning disc there is minimal, if any, difference in access speeds to fragmented or sequential data
2. The massive amount of re-writing involved in the defragmentation process will have a significant effect on the life of a disc, given that they only have a finite number of writes before they fail.

Source: http://helpdeskgeek.com/featured-posts/ ... ag-an-ssd/

John