What do you think of this optimization? Perfect Disk

I read someone on the ASUS ROG Forums recommending to install PerfectDisk, then give the SSD a normal smartplacement full defrag for the first time (yes I know SSDs shouldn't be defragmented but some say that if data is in contiguous blocks it is still faster no matter how fast an SSD controller can access memory) then after it's done give it an SSD Optimize pass to consolidate free space (whatever that means I have no clue) and leave it like that always

do you think it's a good idea?

 

Probably not.

 

That's almost exactly what I do. And though I don't frequent those parts of the forum, I probably gave the idea to that poster too.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...placement-defragging-with-perfectdisk.699187/


There is also someone on the overclock.net forums that also recommends the same.

And for the same reasons; an O/S has to read/request each fragment separately and no SSD is yet below 0ms to offset that handicap of O/S' still.

 

that's what I'll do then, thanks man

 

Tell how It's going when you try this

 

It's done but I'm still waiting on my 4TB external USB HDD to finish defragmenting then I will run a snapiness test and tell you

 

tilleroftheearth, I hadn't read your post until just now, glad to see us corroborating each others work

I have been optimizing with various tools since SSD's first were available.

I posted on ROG Forums using this method with PerfectDisk a number of times starting around the time of the Windows 8/8.1 transition.

I was debugging problems with various disk optimizers failing on Windows 8.1. PerfectDisk was the first company to fix the bugs and release updates. I ended up buying a copy based on their quick resolution.

Now that SSD's survive PETAbytes of WRITEs, I think it is safe to recommend optimization without reservation.

 

Yes it was hmscott's post on the ROG forums that made me create this thread. Thanks hmscott, you're a great help as always

 

Yo Ferris, what 4GB External HDD do you have? I'm thinking of getting one (for my anime collection)... Let me know.. Are there any cheap 4GB NAS drives too?

 

hmscott, great minds think alike!

Just took a guess that it was from a post I had written, the fact that you did this on your own is even better.

Any specific posts I should see of yours?

 

Here's my experience with recent external HDDs....

Seagate 4TB : Died within 8 days (thank god I had a backup otherwise I would've been dead)
Western Digital: once I updated the firmware (biggest mistake) the drive kept connecting/disconnecting and there is no way to downgrade and support won't issue a fix

Currently........been using a Buffalo 4TB DriveStation External HDD, this is my first time I deal with this company, but what do you know, hasn't failed me once and was actually the cheapest of them all:

for NAS, these are their options:

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage

 

So how did it go with doing an initial defrag on your SSD? I ask because I have a new laptop with two 1 GB drives and my system SSD drive is really fragmented?

 

That's 1 TB presumably, and not 1 GB?

 

Yeah sorry TB I meant lol

 

Screw it, I defraged them, 34% fragmentation on my system drive and 56% on my games drive was driving me crazy!
I still have 100% on them both so, no clear damage done I hope. I won't make a habit of it of course but I figure one time for the system drive and once for my programs drive and once for my game drive after all my games are installed was needed.

 

What about defraggler's optimize mode?

In terms of mechanical HDDs, there are two brands I absolutely trust with no reservation: Hitachi, and toshiba. I am aware WD owns Hitachi, but I have had terrible luck with WD and seagate. I had a Seagate hybrid drive fail, a WD external drive that suffered from corruption and random disconnects, and an external seagate drive that simply failed, and a wd green internal drive that also failed. I have IDE hitachi drives from my thinkpads that still function with no problem, and dozens of toshiba drives in my PS3 and other laptops, not to mention my USB 3.0 external HDD, all of which are wonderful drives.

That being said, SSD has spoiled me and I couldn't fathom going back to mechanical disks for day to day computing. Thats why I keep a 1.5TB toshiba external drive.

 

tilleroftheearth, searching for perfectdisk, smartplacement, ssdoptimize, and smart/placement, ssd optimize works well.

Here is where I mention the 8.1 bug, and filing it with Raxco, during the night of the Windows 8.1 upgrade release:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...come-available&p=324138&viewfull=1#post324138

Blow by blow of the Windows 8.1 Upgrade
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...come-available&p=324016&viewfull=1#post324016
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...come-available&p=324024&viewfull=1#post324024

Confirm purchasing PerfectDisk Pro:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?42174-disk-defrag-question&p=357999&viewfull=1#post357999

First suggestion to use in the Forums:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...with-my-New-G750JW-DB71&highlight=perfectdisk

SMARTPlacement + SSDOptimize:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...new-RoG-Laptop&p=437300&viewfull=1#post437300

Another:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...ng-reboot-time&p=405714&viewfull=1#post405714
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...ng-reboot-time&p=405716&viewfull=1#post405716

There are more

 

I wouldn't worry about it. I've been defragging (w/PD13 currently) many, many systems since early 2012 and haven't had any issues with damaging the nand yet.

While I have been known to defrag a drive initially up to half a dozen times (simply refused to defrag!!!), what I do is after MS Tuesdays each month after I've updated the system, I run PD to keep things snappy. 12x a year is nothing - or even 18x in the first year.

 

Ok thanks for the info.

I had never heard of PD before, I tried the demo and it seems light years better then what I was using so I purchased it. Thanks for suggesting it (and hmscott)

For PD settings, in stealth patrol, for my SSD's it has it set to off, should I leave it to off or turn it on? Also I have an external drive that I let windows do its backup thing on, is it ok to defrag that drive or no?

Also on that note, is it cool to let windows be the backup program or is there a more recommended program for backups?

 

leave that as off you only need to run this like once a month it's overkill to defrag daily or weekly on an SSD, but once in a month is perfectly fine.

For backup, nothing beats Macrium Reflect 6 Home Ediiton, it's paid, but is the best.

There is Macrium Reflect Free v5 also if you don't wanna pay.

The only difference between the free and paid is with the free verison, you can backup while you're in Windows and create an image of your current state, but to restore, you need to reboot off a CD which Macrium will help you create. with the pro version, you can let it create a boot entry then set the boot options in Windows to boot into windows by default and hide that entry, only when you need to restore an image, simply clicking on restore in macrium reflect will reboot your laptop and go into the recovery mode and restore your system in 1 to 5 minutes depending on if you have an SSD or HDD offcourse, HDDs will take longer than 5 minutes obvoiusly

The other nice thing about the pro / paid version is, you can restore an image to dissimilar hardware. and Macrium Reflect is the best for cloning a disk, say you upgrade to a newer SSD, you can simply clone your current Windows state to another drive and then install that drive in your system and boot off it as if nothing happened

 

Cool thanks for the detailed response man I love this forum
I'll download Macrium Reflect 6 Home Edition now and check out now.

Thanks again bro

EDIT: Wow, its $69.95 O_O anyone got a coupon?

 

it's worth every penny for the amount of time it saves me.....

let's say I wanted to try a new driver, or new antivirus......instead of uninstalling and dealing with left overs......I take an image......if I don't like it, I'm back to where I was in minutes.....without the need of a CD to boot from

with that said, the free edition v5 is excellent, offers everything in terms of backup, the only difference I told you, when restoring you need to boot off a rescue CD, not a big deal

 

Ok thanks, I'll probably get it, may just have to wait a bit

As my DVD is external and normally I don't keep it hooked up so out of pure laziness buying it will be easier lol

 

Shadow-Tek, it depends on how much activity a disk gets, if there isn't anything to optimize the automatic runs won't do anything. If there is a lot of activity, and lots to defrag, it will get defrag'd automatically or later when you run it manually, same one way or the other - at least with automatic on you will enjoy a constant performance over time.

I also enable OptiWrite, which optimizes all writes, which makes sure to reduce fragmentation - reducing the need for later defragmentation.

If you bought it, you might as well put it to work

 

Hi
Do you have it set to auto defrag your SSD's at a certain level of fragmentation? Or does it just do that on its own? I ask because the Online Optimization tab for all the drives is set to optimize at anything over 0% Should I raise that for the SSD's?

 

great

 

Shadow-Tek, I left it at default 0%, and I don't have a lot of activity from PerfectDisk. PD lets the free space fragment, it only cares about the in use space. If you continue looking at the configuration, you will see there is a 96 hour default time between optimization runs, so that is 4 days between automatic runs at the max with defaults, you could set it to 168 hours / 1 week to reduce optimization runs further.

 

Is there any quantitative evidence that defragging an SSD actually does anything to improve any type of performance and beyond after just defragging? SSD's store data in basically a giant matrix in a solid state array. Whether the blocks are consecutive or not it doesn't matter, unlike on a hard disk with a spinning platter that reads sequentially. All that likely is happening when you defrag is activating garbage collection because it sees it getting a lot of write activity. Couple that with wear leveling, it really is a lost cause and unnecessary wear. Sure these drives can handle hundreds of TB's of writes, but you also lose performance the more the drive is written to. It's simply placebo...

But I agree Macrium Reflect is the absolute best.

 

Well even with SSDs we still have faster sequential reads than random ones, don't we Great guide guys, thanks! Also thanks for the Macrium Reflect suggestion!

 

HTWingNut, yes, occasionally I have uninstalled PD and run without it, and forget to re-install PD, after a few weeks I wonder why things have slowed down, getting lag in operations, then check and remember that PD isn't installed - reinstall - run the optimizations, then performance is restored.

Quantitatively, owners of the G750JH on ROG forums ask why my 2x128GB RAID 0 is getting better CrystalDiskMark results than theirs, they post results 300MB/sec less in reads and 200MB less per second in writes, and after running PD their results are the same or better than mine. And, they say performance is snappier.

Subjectively and measurably, better.

And, Macrium Reflect is awesome, I use it for cloning boot drives, and imaging them for recovery.