Can someone tell me what is the difference between using the built in Windows 10 SSD Optimisation versus Defraggler SSD Optimisation?
I used Defragger often with my pre Windows 10 PC's using standard HDDs. I now use a 1TB SSD, a 500GB SSD and a 2TB HDD (for archives only). For now I have resisted using Defraggler on my Windows 10 computer as the general consensus is to not defrag and limit optimisation for longer SSD life (yes I do backups, three times per week).
After a chat with a friend who said they got some overall performance gain using the Defraggler SSD optimiser over the Windows 10 system, I decided to take a look at it for myself. I installed Defragger today just to see what differences exist (I have not yet used it), there certainly appears to be different optimisation results between them. Windows 10 reports that optimisation is up to date on both SSDs but Defraggler appears to want to optimise further. My system auto optimises via the built in optimiser weekly which is what I have read to leave it at. Is this still the best option?.
Is the usage of SSDs slowly killing off the usefulness of Defragger? Especially as more and more people opt for SSDs instead of standard HDD?
Well actually, you should TRIM your SSD, as it can help expand it's lifespan and everything. It also does give it a minor performance boost. I have been using a SSD for over 2 years now, and I run a trimmer at least once for my SSD.
Consider reading up on what TRIM actually does before running it so you understand what it can do for you.
But NEVER defrag a SSD as it does nothing for a SSD and can only cause harmful large amounts of write data on your SSD.
Well, this is interesting, from the developers on the Windows Storage Team, and naturally about Windows Defragger:
Storage Optimizer will defrag an SSD once a month if volume snapshots are enabled. This is by design and necessary due to slow volsnap copy on write performance on fragmented SSD volumes. It’s also somewhat of a misconception that fragmentation is not a problem on SSDs. If an SSD gets too fragmented you can hit maximum file fragmentation (when the metadata can’t represent any more file fragments) which will result in errors when you try to write/extend a file. Furthermore, more file fragments means more metadata to process while reading/writing a file, which can lead to slower performance.
As far as Retrim is concerned, this command should run on the schedule specified in the dfrgui UI. Retrim is necessary because of the way TRIM is processed in the file systems. Due to the varying performance of hardware responding to TRIM, TRIM is processed asynchronously by the file system. When a file is deleted or space is otherwise freed, the file system queues the trim request to be processed. To limit the peak resource usage this queue may only grow to a maximum number of trim requests. If the queue is of max size, incoming TRIM requests may be dropped. This is okay because we will periodically come through and do a Retrim with Storage Optimizer. The Retrim is done at a granularity that should avoid hitting the maximum TRIM request queue size where TRIMs are dropped.
(Volsnap is Volume Shadow Copy, a part of system restore, and Retrim is the defragger Optimise.)
Defrag will only run on your SSD if volsnap is turned on, and volsnap is turned on by System Restore as one needs the other. You could turn off System Restore if you want, but that turns off a pretty important safety net for Windows.
Yes, your SSD's file system sometimes needs a kind of defragmentation and that's handled by Windows, monthly by default, when appropriate. The intent is to maximize performance and a long life. If you disable defragmentation completely, you are taking a risk that your filesystem metadata could reach maximum fragmentation and get you potentially in trouble.
@Augeas: You might want to read some of those comments. That article looks like what someone thinks about Defragging and SSDs and not actual facts about it.
I haven't read them all, some of them seem to be posted by people with an axe to grind. If the above statements are made by Windows developers, as they state, then I tend to believe they have some veracity.
And where do we find the 'actual facts' about defragging? Probably not in comments by people of unknown levels of skill and experience. I know for a fact that fragmented files require additional I/O to retrieve metadata and data clusters/pages. I've seen it inside the MFT, and some of it is extensive. I believe that this additional I/O takes time, I guess that must be a fact too.