Defragged my Laptop with SSD... Did i make big mistake?

Laptop is windows 7 64 bit home premium. Laptop is asus u45jc-a1 with i3 processor 4gb ram and a 250gb or 300gb hard drive. I bought a samsung pro 250gb ssd b/c i read ssd make computer go very fast. Before i got ssd, in my laptop and desktop i always had the habit of defragging my computer at least a few times a week. I just liked doing it b/c i know it was good for the computer.


I then did it many times for my laptop with the ssd. I then read online that you are not suppose to ever defrag an ssd. I had probably defragged it at least 10 times at the very minimum but the very minimum until i found out this was bad. I always read defrag and checking computer for viruses is good. I use microsoft essentials. Well i am never going to defrag the computer with an ssd anymore. My question is how do i know if i caused a lot of damage to my ssd? I defragged it quite a number of times already until i read you are not suppose to defrag it.


The thing is i have connected my laptop to an external monitor, its an hp monitor and keeps going to sleep. I read a lot of ppl have this problem with hp monitors even though they put never go to sleep etc in the power settings but they still have this problem. But is there a chance that me doing the defrag could have caused this problem?


How do i know if my ssd is corrupted or anything like that?

 

Monitor going to sleep and SSD defragmentation are not related to each other
You did not corrupt the SSD. You just put a little more wear on it. Defragmentation is not reccomended on SSDs just because you write data to it that it's not needed. And since NAND memory has a limited number of write/erase cycles, it's best to minimize that, especially on consumer SSDs.
SSds are so fast that access times are at nanosecond levels, much much lower that traditional HDDs. Don't worry. After a day of work on your notebook, leave it idle for about 10-15 mins just enough for TRIM to kick in
This way you should be ok.

 

AFA the monitor issue, does it happen at a specific time interval?
What connection are you using? VGA, HDMI ?
When it sleeps is the lid on the computer closed? If yes try leaving it open
How do you use the external monitor, Extended desktop, External only, duplicate displays ?
To verify the integrity of the SSD look at the SMART data, do you have Samsung Magician installed? As stated all you did by defrag is put wear on the drive, Win 7 should have disabled this I believe when you installed the SSD ??
Tiller , I think that is the definition of trolling (post 5) or a humor attempt

 

Defragging is a good thing in my experience - with the proper tools (and not done to excess).

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...64-smartplacement-defragging-perfectdisk.html


If you have over-provisioned your SSD - have left enough free space on it - use quality defrag software like PerfectDisk 12.5 Pro (or higher), then defragging once a month or so gives me obvious benefits (ymmv).


I wouldn't be worried too much about the defragging... but for the monitor issue, how is it hooked up (dvi, hdmi, vga etc.)?

 

Here you guys enlighten yourself's The SSD Optimization Guide Redesigned | The SSD Review

 

CTOPS - the worse advice ever. EVER!!!

 

This coming from a guy who recommends defragging SSDs because it has always worked for HDDs eheheh. Thats it. Don't follow the longest standing and most downloaded SSD Guide on the internet and one that that actually demonstrates significant visible performance improvement and space savings.

Great advice TOE.

 

Yeah, my advice is from experience and experimentation - not 'the longest standing and most blah blah blah' on the net (and therefore it must be true.

I followed that guide and it sucks (not all the points).

I follow what I recommend and it works wonders for me and my clients. Go figure/?

 

That must be wisdom listening quietly eheh. So you followed the guide and not all of the points suck. Can you maybe point our a few that do and we will see how they fare with the SSD and storage community in general. Would love for you to elaborate on your reasoning so we may gain a little wisdom rather than just giving bad advise not to follow a guide that, well, you yourself said you followed and some points are valid.

Once we are done that, we can get into a discussion how defragging a SSD is a TOTALLY useless prospect and does nothing but add to the total writes of the SSD needlessly.. The reasoning, as you know I am sure, is because data is stored on a hard drive in a permanent location. It is static and fragmentation occurs because of this. With an SSD, however, there is a little thing called wear levelling in every SSD that prevents the data from remaining in a static location. It is fluid and does not fragment as one might see in a hard drive. The good news here is that we also don't see file corruption and drive degradation as we do in a hard drive.

Face it. You stuck your foot in your mouth which should be rather embarassing for an elder of NBR. You let your personal feelings get in the way of providing some thoughtful and valuable insite, thus striking out at a new member of NBR (and maybe one with just as much knowledge as yourself)...CTOPS of course.

 

The registry tweaks I passed on personally but I have not found a better SSD tweak thread

 

How did I stick my foot in my mouth? Have you read the thread I linked to? Have you actually tried PD 12.5 as suggested?

I know how storage works (my livelihood depends on it) - that is why you don't defrag once (and you're done); it needs to be performed constantly.

I found though, that with the SSD's and the workflows I use daily, once a month is the best tradeoff between needlessly thrashing the nand cells and giving me the edge that is obvious in my workflows.

You don't have to believe, but I am not the only one that feels this way about those 'tweaks' that were linked to.


The best advice (still) is:

Clean install Windows 8 x64 Pro (or later).
Increase the RAM to 16GB (or more).
Use at least a 240/250/256GB SSD (older than M500 models) or 480/512GB or larger (newer/current SSD models than M500).
Install the SSD as the only drive in the system.
Leave at least 30% of the nominal capacity as 'unallocated'.
Do a clean install and partition properly (100GB for C: Drive and the rest for Data).
Install Intel RST 10.8 (or later).
Complete all Windows Updates.
Disable pagefile.
Disable error reporting.
Disable System Restore.
Disable Hibernation.


Follow these steps if you want the most stable, the highest performing (sustained, over time) and most robust SSD based installation possible with todays SSD's.



Enjoy.


(Was that more helpful)?

 

Defragging the SSD is not needed and puts more stress on the NAND. The way data is retrieved on a SSD is diffeent from an HDD: on the SSD data retrieval happens on clusters (many memory cells at the same time). That is because of the parallelism of the interconnection between the controller and the NAND chip itself. If I want to access say cell 32 and cell 4087 or cell 23122, you can do so concurrently in a nanosecond (almost instantly). In an HDD, data is stored in magnetic sectors and most of the time is not linear and consolidated. When a writing request happens, its windows that tells the HDD where to write. And since sectors very often are not filled completely (a 4k sector filled with 2k or 3.5k of bytes for example) the bytes of a file are scattered accross the HDD's magnetic platters. The magnetic head then needs to move around and read each piece of the file. Compared to the SSD way of reading data, that is very slow and only defragmentation helps (data put together in a linear stucture). The SSD controller manages how writes and reads are executed. That is why its not reccomended to defrag a SSD.
I tried to simplify it as most as I can without getting down on technical details (which where I work are our daily snack )


Also, guys try not to be polemic. Everyone has it's own opinion and advice (the best and absolute one doesn't exist) and respect that of the others. Its the OP that reads and learns and makes its own conclusions. If all had the same opinion and mindset we would be copycats of each other

 

OK Tiller...don't get me wrong here because I spent about 4 hours reading your references before returning with my thoughts. Your view seems to remind me somewhat of a doctor dolling out medicine and concerns me. Society in general wonders why so many peoplke are hooked on drugs but never explores the fact that doctors actually make money from the drugs they prescribe. They haven't a fair and bias view because, well, whether it is the right medicine or not, they are gaining. Since you were the first to state your livelihood depends on it, things seem to take on that edge.

As for Anand's article...very outdated and I am sure even he might update his views over time. he, himself, will concede that he has made errors in the way he has done things and those errors are how people learn and improve.

As for Perfect Disk, there are LOTS of reviews where everyone thanks the company for their free copy of the software, but mysteriously none by leading SSD review resources IMHO. Looking through various forum threads, it is a different view point where the term 'smoke and mirrors sideshow' seems to be very common (and this is a quote from a thread). Giving credit to the software, ALL do support its use and state that it is a wonderful utility when defragging a HDD or HDD with a SSD by its side. One of the threads even suggested that the makers of PerfectDisk haven't really an idea of how their software functions, specific to SSD activity. Many also state that their 'scrambler' utility (that technically simulates fragmentation) is pretty interesting and great to depict the performance improvement before and after use of PerfectDisk. Well of course it is! They created it for JUST THAT.

Next, there doesnt seem to be ANY valid testing and performance results that can validate that PD does anything whatsoever for a SSD and its performance. Of course there isn't and the reasoning is that, unlike a hard drive where fragmentation can slow a HDDs disk access time incredibly, that of a SSD remains the same because, as we said, fragmentation is nowhere the same relationship with a SSD as it is a HDD.

Now, I am not going to Link Les' great article because we know the fury that that will cause here but, lets just glance over your points and see what haa been covered 'in detail, explained and the benefits described' by that article, rather than a quick one liner that most would never understand as you described:

Do a clean install and partition properly (100GB for C: Drive and the rest for Data).
Install Intel RST 10.8 (or later).
Complete all Windows Updates.
Disable pagefile.
Disable error reporting.
Disable System Restore.
Disable Hibernation.

Yes...all of these are covered in detail and have been for several years. In fact if you go back and look at the history of both restore and page file, at one point, he stood alone in the world and was literally condemned and chastised for his views of both, much of that in threads here where he stood by his beliefs, and so the world seems to now.

Now looking at your additions:

Clean install Windows 8 x64 Pro (or later)

First and foremost, Win 8 has done so poorly because it is a terrible OS where MS didnt even consider the needs of new users. MS themselves have conceded to this by, not only, returning with 8.1 but also, when you buy a new system at Staples, their reps offer you a FREE 20 minute session to teach you the OS. Have you ever heard of this before? The advise to drop your current OS and run to Win 8 is ill thought out my friend.

L:et's be honest, Win 8 is no more than MS rush to get to the touchscreen tablet style interface that everyone expected would take over the world. It hasn't and, unfortunately IOS on the IPAD has...to the tune of 65% of marketshare.

Increase the RAM to 16GB (or more).

Well, what do all of those ultra and notebook users do? What if they havent the money?

Use at least a 240/250/256GB SSD (older than M500 models) or 480/512GB or larger (newer/current SSD models than M500).

Wait a minute...what about all those people that don't put their lifes memories on the computer? Can they get away with a 64GB or even a 128GB drive? Of course they can and following an effective and well thought out SSD Optimization Guide allows them to install their complete OS in 8.5GB, if you might believe that.

Install the SSD as the only drive in the system.

Really? I think you must have mistated this, trying to put forward that sometimes the SSD is not recognized as the boot SSD and starting it as the only installed SSD helps, before reattaching others. One drive only...really?

Leave at least 30% of the nominal capacity as 'unallocated'.

Very outdated and today's drives will show optimal performance almost full, although many still recommend this. Did you know, in fact, that many are actually moving away from 7% overprovisioning in SSD marketing?

Ok done.... TOE, I did not just write this article without the background. Not only did I read your recommendations for several hours, but also, I went over tons of threads where you help people along here at NBR...AND YOU DO! You give great advise and help people along and that is what members here should do. You need to shake of the old cobwebs though my friend and be able to see valuable resources with clarity to be able to put forth that value though. You also need to ease up on new members and even provide explanation in your response when going against the grain.

 

Tiller's problem is that he believes everyone in the world uses their computers in the same way that he does, which essentially renders 90+% of the advice he gives moot. Making sure drivers and the operating system are up to date, reducing or disabling the pagefile, disabling hibernation - that's all good. Everything else is a throwback to when SSDs were in their infancy and largely the purview of hardcore geeks. The technology has advanced and prices have come down so much that SSDs have, for all intents and purposes, gained mainstream acceptance. Going to such lengths in an effort to preserve the life of a device that's designed to have an 8+ year lifespan if you do absolutely nothing to it, is a fool's errand.

 

Everyone,

Thanks for continuing the conversation. I don't have time to reiterate what I've been saying for the past four years here, but some quick notes:

The only drive in the system is for installing the O/S - after that - install as many drives as you want/can.

Leaving unallocated space is not outdated - even with current drives.

The SSD sizes I recommend are for maximum performance (sustained) over time. I can't afford a trip to the moon - but I can appreciate a complete 'how to' on how to prepare myself for one.

The RAM capacity makes a difference in how the SSD runs (and because of the disabling of the pagefile, for example). Can't afford it? What can I say to that?!?!?

Same for the O/S - Windows 8 makes older O/S's look/feel like the SSD is dragging it's heels - learn the new O/S and let your SSD based platform really fly.

As for PD - reading is not doing.

What sets PD apart from other defraggers is that it defrags FREE SPACE, not just files. This is one reason why the system feels so fast. Also, I have defragged file systems (on SSD's) that had over 12K fragments on a single file. While SSD's are 'almost instant' - it still takes a while for it to link a single file from 12K fragments...

I may still be wrong (yeah; I'm human) about this defragmenting SSD stuff. But what I do know is the results I get (they're not in my head).


The over-provisioning I was doing and recommending (since 2011) was also laughed at. Yet, it is now the recommended way to setup a new SSD.


What you may want to keep in mind with my suggestions is this (I will edit/add it to my post above too):

Follow these steps if you want the most stable, the highest performing (sustained, over time) and most robust SSD based installation possible with todays SSD's.


I am giving decades of storage subsystem performance experience freely here. Use it as you wish.


Take care.

 

"What sets PD apart from other defraggers is that it defrags FREE SPACE, not just files."

And this is where things fall off, an understanding of the difference between SSDs and hard drives.

Free space can be defragged in hard drives because the information remains there until it is written over with new information for the most part. It is not like that with a SSD. Information is deleted and then wear levelling/Garbage Collection/Trim 'sanitizes' that space so it is clean and like new again. This is absolutely necessary to maintain SSD performance so, when new information will be stored, we dont have to go through the process of erase and then store which reduced performance.

There is no need to defrag empty space on a SSD because there is nothing there. It is like someone completing a job just to have another do it again...except in a SSD it reduces the P/E cycles.

 

You are totally off on that. Free space on an SSD is special because a block needs to be erased (not just a file).

Making the drive have the biggest free space available is what ensures that the most blocks are free (and clear).

Seems to me you're not understanding how SSD's work at a deep enough level?

 

No not at all...everyone who has even the most basic knowledge understands that that SSDs erase at the block and not file level; I really didn't thinkl I would have to spell this out to you. So this occurs... A file is deleted from a block. The TRIM King says, "Well now, we need to clean this block so we have to move the rest of the good data" So the good data is moved and the block is then cleaned. Regardless of whether you want to attribute it to wear levelling, Idle Time Garbage Collection or TRIM, this occurs automatically and there is no way Perfect Disk could beat this process to the punch. Even if it did, it is still duplicating an already very successful and necessary function of SSD longevity.

I have forever to educate you on SSDs if you like. Just to help you along though, the smallest deletable block is 'typically' 512K. Within that block their are 128 pages, each being 4Kb (128x4=512) each and a single page is the smallest factor that anything written can be stored. Now we can go right into the basics of magnetic media and storage vice digital and even how on harddrives, fragmentation occurs when large files are often stored in noncontiguous clusters, this being the root of fragmentation and a process that doesn't occur with SSDs, simply because of the mechanics of file storage however, let's leave it to the worlds opinion.

The entire world says not to fragment SSDs because it is a totally useless duplication process ... and then there is you. eheheh Who do we listen to first especially when you still see the world as being flat?

 

Defragmenting a SSD adds wear and tear, i.e. shortens the life of the drive. I think every one in this thread agrees on that. As for performance increase, there might be some on some drives in some systems. I don't think that increase would be worth it. I also think if you have a good drive, with proper garbage collection, and trims when it should, that defraging or moving data around is not going to do much. Add in wear leveling and defraging maybe undoing what wear leveling is trying to do. I.e. wear leveling wants things to be some what randomly arranged on the drive and defraging is trying to organize the drive. Seems that would shorten the life span further.

Here is a recent article where someone actually tested the performance boost for defraging a ssd. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047513/fragging-wonderful-the-truth-about-defragging-your-ssd.html

 

I have not has a single error code and fast start up is disabled and my boot time is 9-10 seconds running the new win 8.1 Pro, I sorry you had problems.

 

You're not educating anyone, least of all yourself with your know all attitude.

The article you link to shows how little the author understands storage subsystems or how to write a truly informative/useful piece... (was SmartPlacement used, was SSD optimize used... ???).

Leaving Optiwrite enabled on an SSD is pretty stupid in my experience... (every free space/block is used and the drive simply crawls when real work is demanded from it).

No problem; I'm dumb - you're smart. But I'm not dumb enough to be 'educated' by you.

 

If you read the article they do mention " SSD optimization, free-space optimization (defragging free clusters), and optimization by the Windows prefetch layout to make booting faster", and others. As for " SMARTPlacement is PerfectDisk’s patented default method that defragments all your files, consolidates free space, and optimizes the drive according to file usage." So that doesn't seem to special. But he did test PerfectDisk with SmartPlacement and said " This begs the question of whether two hours of sustained writes is worth a 5 percent gain in performance (one that you are unlikely to ever notice)." So it was rewritting the disk for two hours and got a 5% performance increase.

Lastly I think it is very unprofessional to call me names or to make the assumptions you have made. I thought we were trying to help the OP.

 

@Apparition

Your correct those are the most effective I would conservatively add "disable fast startup" reason SSD's boot at very high speeds by default and running win 8 the boot record file system is similar to Vista in it's early start and many people have been getting the ""Kernal_data_inpage_error" which was mainly caused by not not disabling pagefile and fast start-ups, and not disabling drive indexing, my boot time are 8-10 seconds and since I update to v8.1 that has fixed the v8 flaws in the master boot files.

 

Hope the irony of this statement is not lost on anyone.

 

TOE, lets be clear... I would not have even entered the thread if you didn't jump out and insult a new member to the site needlessly. Then after doing so, change your colors by saying, in fact, that his advise was not the worse advise ever and that you read and agree with parts of the quoted article. Now even after I clarified your misconceptions on storage and provided a bit of support hat you have been a valuable resource here at NBR, you still come back with ... well with what is your attempt at a 'so take that' response.

You are a professional who states that you work in IT for a living yet you are trying to sell PerfectDisk and defragging an SSD. My friend that is tantamount to becoming a driving instructor without a driving licence. We do not defrag SSDs PERIOD and there are several reasons (as I tried to explain) that go right back to the differences of storage between the HDD and SSD, why fragging doesn't occur in the same nature, how the SSD counters this, and how the SSD sustains its performance over time.

You may push around others but don't try it here; I will trump that with storage knowledge and, in fact, I'll keep an eye and should you pull the same crap again elsewhere on the site, I will jump in that thread as well and 'educate' you a bit more. Enough said. A little courtesy and some explanation to the new member would have taken you a long way.

 

Have a look at this blog, if you have done once or twice, no need to worry about it but don't do it any more and just leave the OS to handle everything for you, SSDs are strong enough to last many years.
Why Windows 8 defragments your SSD and how you can avoid this |

 

To answer your questions - It is highly unlikely you did any damage. Worst case scenario is you slighly shortened its lifespan. Conservative estimate of a 5-6 year life for an SSD means that maybe, MAYBE, you shaved off a few theoretical weeks or x number of reads/writes. All in all, you should be fine.

Problem with the HP monitor is most likely just that, an issue with the monitor. Highly unlikely the two issues are related

If you really want to see if you did any damage/corruption, use a program like Crystaldisk or another ssd/hdd program. I am sure someone will suggest the best for an SSD.

 

OP,

As it is lost on everyone else: defragmenting your SSD is/can be beneficial (and no, you didn't 'hurt' it).


Everyone else: you're missing the forest for the trees (because you all 'know' so much about me/this topic). Sigh...

 

I do not know who TOE is but Tilleroftheearth is one of the most respected members here. In some cases high rep power does not equate with extreme knowledge but in this case it certainly does. I also admire people who honestly try to help rather than toss hyperlinks at them. Threads like these make me have to expand my ignore list because of the flaming in post 25.
And what is "support hat" ?

 

But the first line of post 21 and pretty much the entirety of post 28 were probably A-OK with you, right?

 

So you don't want people to provide sources of information? And you think spending the time to find and post those links are not honestly trying to help?

 

To the poster who sent a report about this thread and considered one of the posts to be inflammatory:

NUTS!



(Translation: No it ain't.)

 

Actually with some bios version you can put the machine in some post-startup mode that does some SSD maintenance via bios mode, I's new and I can't find the thread on it but it's basically it's a new form to Defragg an SSD or from what I read on it it's an electric mode of defraggin for the SSD, that kinda makes since from the way a SSD functions. :hi2:

 

Trim and garbage collection are all you need, and it may likely just be doing a manual TRIM. Many SSD's have manual TRIM software, but it's not really necessary if you have a latest Windows (7 or 8), Mac, or Linux OS.