No need to defrag SSD ?

I read somewhere here on NBR that there is no need to defrag an SSD ...

 

I'm moving this from OS to hardware--there are some real experts there.

But I believe not only is it not necessary, but defragging unnecessarily adds read/erase/write cycles to the drive, thus decreasing its lifespan.

 

This article has a great explanation that is easy to understand that explains why you should not defrag an SSD.

 

daveperman should arrive and disagree with all of you any minute now...

...any minute now...

 

That's fine.

When Dave talks, I listen.

 

Since when does dave agree to defragging an SSD? As far as I know he's against it also as he knows better. Or maybe I haven't been reading his posts properly?

 

I have been defragging my ssd and using ccleaner "wipe free space" feature. The wipe free space thing writes 1's or 0's, I forget but theoretically should reduce performance if the conventional ssd wisdom is true but so far it has not. i don't mind experimenting because there is going to be a TRIM firmware upgrade for Samsung controller ssd's soon and flashing the firmware will erase everything anyway.

 

Although I am new to this forum, I am not new to SSD.

The Performance that is reduced is actually cell lifetime. Regardless of type, both MLC and SLC have limited duty write cycles before a cell is no longer usable. As defragging performs a high volume of writes, you are shorting its overall duty cycle.

Most SSD manufactures use wear leveling and additional spare cells that are not visible to the OS to increase the duty cycle. Check the manufacturer site for more info on your SSD.

 

I'msure someone has done the math on lifetime write cycles and it isn't nearly as doomerish as some would make it sound particularly when the figure far exceeds the useful lifespan of current tech. Even if I continuously write to my ssd it will last longer than the 2 years max that I will be using it. I expect to get a higher capacity model sooner if the prices come down to $1/gb

 

It's true. Especially considering how Windows sees the SSD isn't physically how it's laid out. The SSD "tricks" Windows into thinking it's writing to a bunch of sectors on a conventional harddrive when it isn't. So a conventional defragger (which uses the Windows native API) to access the disk is optimizing the files based on a system that is just a front.

SSDs have their own issues besides limited read and write performance. This is where the TRIM function, comes into play. Or if you are using the expensive Intel SSDs, then you don't really need to use the TRIM functions.

 

there are times in my live where i'm sleeping...

 

a disk defrag is fully useless. but file defragmentation sometimes isn't. i have files that get written logfile style, have 5MB size, but 5000+ spread out fragments. this slows down when loading the file, even on an ssd

and the other thing is, espencially if you don't have TRIM (which close to nobody have right now), defragging all files (quick defrag in defraggler) results in a similar performance refresh like a low level format, as tons of data gets rewritten.



the loss in lifetime due to the flash write limit restricts me to about 10000 defrags till it's dead.. which is, more than i ever would need.. so it's NOT a problem at all, and no performance loss per se.

so far, i defrag about once all half year on the mtron ssds. so far never on the intel.