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    defragging an SSD

    Discussion in 'Alienware M15x' started by usmc362, Apr 10, 2011.

  1. usmc362

    usmc362 Notebook Consultant

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    I'm sure this has been discussed a lot, but since I'm a newbie I'd like to hear your viewpoints. Is it ok to defrag an SSD or is it absolutely uneccessary? I read that Diskeeper has a defragger especially for SSD's.
     
  2. widezu69

    widezu69 Goodbye Alienware

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    Apparently you don't need to defrag an SSD. If it has trim, which I'm pretty sure yours does, then it shouldn't need much maintenance.
     
  3. The Revelator

    The Revelator Notebook Prophet

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    The purpose of defragging a HDD was to reduce head movement while searching for data by consolidating file fragments and locating them in close physical proximity. Since the SSD has no moving heads, it makes no difference where file fragments are located relative to each other. The multiple reads and writes utilized in the defrag process also consume life cycles from the solid state memory for no purpose, at least theoretically shortening the life of the SSD.
     
  4. taylrjones

    taylrjones Notebook Consultant

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    Even if your SSD doesn't support TRIM, you still won't want to defrag the drive. You'll want to use a special garbage collect tool that should be provided by your SSD manufacturer. Like Rev said, defrag is useless for SSD's and shortens their life.
     
  5. usmc362

    usmc362 Notebook Consultant

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    So I went to Crucial's website and burned the iso file to a cd (latest firmware) then went into the bios and changed AHCI to ATA per their instructions but the cd wouldn't boot;it started to go into windows but crashed of course not being in AHCI mode.