Solid State drives come with wear leveling.
Defragging takes away from their life span by using write cycles.
Defragging takes away from the life span of normal magnetic hard drives as well, but no-one complains because the return benefit is that since the computer can access files faster, it "reduces" wear by being able to seek contiguous files instead of fragmented all over the place.
SSD drives DO get fragmented, & they DO see a performance boost by defragging.
Additionally, the cost of defragging (extra write cycles) is worth an occasional defrag simply because of the speed boost, & the REDUCED write activity to the drive due to fewer fragmented files.
On a normal clean SSD install, write activity is great. But when it gets heavily defragged over time, then it isn't reading that slows, but the SSD has to use numerous write cycles to accomplish the job, increasing the time it takes to do the job by a considerable amount more than is necessary. These extra write cycles due to fragmentation as it attempts to fill in chunks where it can find unused spaces causes more stress on the wear leveling mechanisms in the drive.
Admittedly, they may not need it as much, but would it really hurt to have a defraggler that could operate by 1 of these manners perhaps?
- Restrict scheduled defrags to every month, as opposed to day or week
- Restrict defrags to a certain percentage, say, drive must be over 10% fragmented to run
I am sure something can be worked out, but let me know what you all think!
+ or - this idea, & add your thoughts so I can see what you are thinking.
P.S. Microsoft wants to move away from XP, but with Solid State Drives prone to wear leveling, it makes no sense to move to Vista or 7 when they would quadruple the write cycles & reduce life expectancy of the drives by anywhere from 4 to 15 times more than XP would when you factor in other things such as the HUGE system restore points it creates in Vista or 7.
Your thoughts?
- Do you like this idea?
- Do you agree that XP is better for SSD drives?
- Do you like the idea of using an OS that kills your SSD drive 4 to 15 times or so faster than XP?
Thanks!
Edit: I'd love to see a Defraggler that can show a visual percent when minimized to the tray, kind of like it does in 7, but for XP. A progress bar, or minimize to the system tray altogether with the percent shown in numbers, IE 55% or something to the effect.