What about defragging the registry on a SSD ?

Since defragging an SSD doesn't make any sense, I assume the same can be said about defragging the registry...

 

That is correct.

 

Inductive reasoning?

 

Can I qualify myself now as a "smart dude" ?

 

If you consider inductive reasoning exclusive to just smart dudes, sure.

edit:

Consider this. Vista sucks. Thus all OSes similar to Vista sux. Inductive reasoning.

 

if it's fragmented, this means the os might have to do more accesses to find the actual registry part. this would mean slower access, even on an ssd. relative slower access (it just takes, say 5x as long to access.. no matter if it's microseconds, or milliseconds).

so the gain would still be there, altough the performance of the registry on the ssd is much faster.

THEN AGAIN. you're on vista or win7?
because, don't even think about registry defragmentation, then. it's unneeded anyways. the registry is so virtualized trough several files, it's structure just virtually shown to comply to all old programs that need it. it's just not the same anymore. it doesn't "slow down when filled".

 

All men are mortal
Socrates is mortal
All Men are Socrates

....

 

Close enough I guess?

Edit:

Isn't that an example of deductive reasoning??

 

So, if does have an effect...hmmm

Vista here

 

it would technically have an effect. it would reduce the amount of access hops.

BUT those hops are so fast on an ssd you won't notice,
AND
the registry on vista/win7 is designed with those hops (and much more) in mind, so even a terribly fragmented registry on vista/win7 does NOT change it's performance (as it's mostly all in ram, and then async stored on disk => you never feel the speed of the disk for the registry, ever)


so in short: it doesn't even have much of an effect on a HDD. so even less (a.k.a. maybe not even measurable) on an ssd.


if you feel any difference, then it's a placebo effect of "i've done something, it now has to feel faster".

 

In deductive reasoning, the truth of the premises guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

 

Nice, I was right.

 

Actually I think ALL the responses here are on the wrong track. And I know how old the thread is, but I just had to answer, because I found this by searching for popular keywords on defragmenting and SSD's in google and it must pop up for other people too.


The performance of the registry has NOTHING to do with whether it's stored on a hard drive at load time or SSD or some drive in the future that's 100 times faster because it's all stored in memory when windows is up and running. Someone did mention that, and was close, but it's fragmentation is not about regular file fragmentation. I'm pretty sure it's more about how it's organized in memory. And if it's fragmented very badly, windows will take longer to traverse it. Not because it's on a hard drive or SSD, but longer to traverse it in system memory. And system memory is very fast. But still it will take longer.

So defragmenting it will make it more efficient to access. On the other hand, I don't know how much it really helps to defragment it. I suppose on a computer that is years old, and has had tons of stuff installed and then uninstalled, it might help. But I have no way to tell how much. It could also be worthless. But again, whether it's on an SSD or HD is not the issue.

 

No, it is NOT all store in memory when windows is up and running. That would be a HUGE waste of memory since very little of the registry is needed at any given time.

Gary

 

Where to do these ideas come from?

You can watch the read and writes to the registry in any number of ways--just open

C:\Windows\System32\config

and watch the last modified date change to verify writes; even infrequently used parts of the registry can be accessed after startup.

Use a tool like process monitor to see reads.

But again, it's all moot since fragmented registry files are hardly a system performance drag....