Microsoft's Windows Experience Index (WEI) disk assessment requires that a drive has 1GB of contiguous free space in order to run access time tests. This is the one situation where a SSD needs to be defragged. Unfortunately, while the free space defrag option creates large blocks for free space, but none are 1GB in size.
So could there be an option to cause the free space defrag to be more aggressive in consolidating large contiguous blocks? Right now, my only option is a full-drive defrag, which is unnecessarily costly for a SSD...
Is it really worth causing unnecessary strain on your SSD just to increase your WEI score by a few points?
As long as you have a few gb free in total then you may as well go ahead and run the tests, if that's what you want. I don't think that contiguous really matters in the case of an SSD. In any event a display of 1 gb of contiguous space will be an illusion, as it doesn't represent the physical location of SSD space.
Is it really worth causing unnecessary strain on your SSD just to increase your WEI score by a few points?
If by extra strain, you mean that incurred by a full defrag, then no. If it's just a few file operations to create that 1GB block, then yes, I think it's worth it.
As long as you have a few gb free in total then you may as well go ahead and run the tests, if that's what you want. I don't think that contiguous really matters in the case of an SSD. In any event a display of 1 gb of contiguous space will be an illusion, as it doesn't represent the physical location of SSD space.
It's actually a hard
requirement. If 1GB of continuous space is not available, parts of the disk assessment simply will not run and will instead produce an error. I agree, it makes no sense, and it's probably an oversight in how the WEI assessment works, but whatever the case, the requirement is there.
Disk Management can shrink a partition.
Would that allow you to create a new 1 GB partition at the end, and would that be acceptable for WEI testing ?