Defraggling

Defraggler
1

(Yes, I'm a novice)

Previously, I used Defraggler to Analyse (quickly) and Defragment (very, very slowly- often several hours).

But at least the % fragmentation then came down to a % in single figures.

However, I tried it again today- after quite a hiatus- only to find that:

a. there's now a thing called 'Optimize' (instead of 'Defragment'); and

b. the result of both Analyse and Optimize is 35% fragmentation. It states that my Disk health is 'good', too.

Is it, should I be worried, and what am I doing wrong?

2

Optimize is for SSD (Solid State Drive) defragmenting doesn't do anything on SSD. Do you have a Hard Drive or a SSD?

3

or has something happening like - DF was detecting it as one type of drive, now it's detecting it as the other type.

that is, wrongly as SSD but now as HDD or wrongly as HDD and now as a SSD?

4

Optimize is for SSD (Solid State Drive) defragmenting doesn't do anything on SSD. Do you have a Hard Drive or a SSD?

I've no idea. I'm a solicitor, so I know the dangers of using jargon at laymen!

How do I tell whether it's HD or SSD?

5

or has something happening like - DF was detecting it as one type of drive, now it's detecting it as the other type.

that is, wrongly as SSD but now as HDD or wrongly as HDD and now as a SSD?

See my last post- my reply is "Ditto"!

6

no worries.

OK - a HDD is a hard disk drive, the historic, traditional, mechanical, spinning platter drives of ye old. they are heavy little metal bricks.

SSD is solid state drive, like USB sticks, use memory cells rather than metal platters, are super fast, very light and physically smaller than HDDs.

unless you open up your PC, you may very well not know the type you have.

so try this, go to Control Panel, (change View By: to small icons in top right corner), click on System, Device Manager, expand the d*** Drives row, and reply back with the entries listed underneath.

7

It says:

"V Series SATA SSD 120GB ATA Device"

So does that mean that what I have is a Solid State Drive (hence 'optimize' rather than 'defragment')?

And, back to item b in post #1, is that % figure OK, then?

8

excellent - you have an SSD.

and yes that % figure is OK.

with SSD's that % figure is COMPLETELY ignorable.

the word 'fragmentation' is a legacy of the magnetic storage medium (hard disk drives, floppy drive etc) when data storage and retrieval was fastest if the data was kept contiguous (all together).

if it wasn't, it was said to be fragmented, so defragging software was invented.

with SSD's, by their physical nature and storage mechanisms, data does not have to be contiguous to achieve high reading and writing speeds.

data is kept in 'pages' on 'memory cells', the speed to access different pages in different cells, for us mere human time scales, can be said to be so fast as to be almost instantaneous.

so while technically that data may be 'fragmented' is does not affect performance hence the ignorable fact of those % figures.

then there is the whole other aspect, where defragging an SDD causes so much extra, wasteful activity, that it runs the real risk of reducing the SSD's life span which have a limited number of read/write cycles of each of these 'pages'.

9

That's very helpful and, astonishingly, I think that I understand it. Many thanks!

10

glad to help, and a belated Welcome.