SSD Defragger/Optimizer

Ok, after a bit of research today I've narrowed down two programs that work well with SSD's. I've been a bit worried about defragging SSD's after so much chatter on the net about wear, its all a myth is what I say.

The first one is PerfectDisk 10. You can download the trial here: http://www.perfectdisk.com/

The 'Consolidate Free Space mode' is designed with SSD's in mind. I've just used it to defrag my SSD from 1.7% fragmentation to 0%.

For those worried about wear on SSD drives check the quote below which can be found on the PerfectDisk website

"There are also concerns about wear. That is, flash has the potential to wear out after tens (or hundreds) of thousands of write cycles.

This characterization, however, is too simplistic. A flash device that is rated at 100,000 write cycles, for example, can write 100,000 times to every single (memory) cell within the device. In other words, the device doesn't write to the same cell over and over again but spreads out the writes over many different cells. This is achieved through wear leveling which is carried out by the SSD's controller.

This would make it virtually impossible to wear out a flash chip. A pattern could be perpetually repeated in which a 64GB SSD is completely filled with data, erased, filled again, then erased again every hour of every day for years, and the user still wouldn't reach the theoretical write limit."

After defragmenting with PerfectDisk I use Diskeeper 2009 Pro ( https://www.diskeeper.com/profile/Account.aspx?a=l) to optimize the SSD. Again the HyperFast utility with Diskeeper is designed for SSD's.

 

According to Microsoft, SSD's don't need to be defragmented.

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/20...d-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx

In Windows 7 the auto defrag doesn't run when there's an SSD. Just saying.

 

Thanks for the tips..

 

There's no significant benefit to defragging SSDs. The benefit with hard drives is to eliminate the delay of moving the drive head from one location to another. SSDs have no heads, and seek times are almost zero. So, no need to defrag.

 

Interesting.

When I used Diskeeper HyperFast to analyze the drive it found 1271 low performing free spaces with "little or no defragmentation" and after the optimization it reduced those 1271 low performing free spaces to 859.

After running PerfectDisk 10 'Consolidate Free Space mode' to 0% defragmentation I then ran Diskeeper Hyperfast again. This time it reduced the low performing spaces to just 84.

These programs don't defrag in the normal sense of the word, they optimize the free space.

 

These are not defragging tools as such. They are programs designed to optimise SSD's and to help maintain high write speeds.

 

Here's an article on Diskeeper: http://theovalich.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/diskeeper-releases-ssd-optimization-utility/

"Thanks to tireless newshound Jan Loncik, I learned that there is a solution to that in a form of software called HyperFast. Diskeeper Corporation released an advanced SSD optimization utility that uses proprietary algorithms to optimize reading and writing on the SSD. Just like InvisiTasking technology inside Diskeeper utility for hard drives, HyperFast uses similar optimization techniques to cache the often used space in available system memory and optimize positioning of the data on NAND chips."

 

WEAR?? What wear?

Don't confuse the term with physical wear as when referring to a hard drive. SSD's are nothing more than large RAM banks. I'm just surprised it took this long for the technology to hit the mainstream as it's been around for quite a while.

As far as defrag programs, using anything other than Diskeeper is just a waste of disk space. Diskeeper has been the industry professional's defrag program of choice for many years, and with the latest release I don't see that changing anytime soon. I've used it myself for years and have recommended it to friends and clients as well.

All other programs are merely DK wannabe's. Diskeepers recent innovation of performing defrag ops as a background process is pure genius. You don't even know it's running as it uses next to nothing in terms of system resources.

 

I wasn't confusing the wear with flash chips with the wear associated with hard drives. I was just using a term that has been used all over the internet to describe the limited number of erase cycles flash memory has before becoming unreliable