SSD drive support...

[mr don]

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.

[Augeas]

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.

Where do you get this information from, Mr Don? Microsoft says:

 

'Flash blocks and cells need to be erased before new bytes can be written to them. As a result, newly purchased devices (with all flash blocks pre-erased) can perform notably better at purchase time than after considerable use. While we?ve observed this performance degradation ourselves, we do not consider this to be a show stopper. In fact .... we don?t expect users to notice the drop during normal use.'

 

And the same article goes on to say that:

 

'Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation on SSD system drives. Because SSDs perform extremely well on random read operations, defragmenting files isn?t helpful enough to warrant the added disk writing defragmentation produces.

 

Be default, Windows 7 will disable Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance. These technologies were all designed to improve performance on traditional HDDs, where random read performance could easily be a major bottleneck.'

 

What does Intel say?

 

'SSD devices, unlike traditional HDDs, see no performance benefit from traditional HDD defragmentation tools. Using these tools simply adds unnecessary wear to the SSD. It is recommended that you disable any automatic or scheduled defragmentation utilities for your Intel SSD.'

 

And does Win7 wear out SSDs? Toshiba says:

 

'Toshiba compared the daily write volume for PC-class SSDs... For a 128GB SLC NAND drive, the daily write volume (is) approximately 500GB per day over a 5-year life, while the 256GB and 512GB drives could support write volumes of 1 and 2 Terabytes per day, respectively.'

 

In other words you could write say 100 gb every single day to a 128 gb SSD and its life expectancy would be 25 years.

 

Personally, if M/S and SSD manufacturers say don't defrag, then I wouldn't defrag. I'n rather intrigued that Defraggler 1.10.143 'Added detection of Solid State Drives.' I wonder what that means.

 

(Info from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx and Intel and Toshiba websites.)

[mr don]

Read this article to see what I mean:

 

http://perfectdiskblog.typepad.com/perfectdisk_blog/2009/02/solid-state-drive-ssd-support-in-perfectdisk-standard.html

 

In addition to that, a normal harddisk "wears" out in usually 1 to 10 years depending on how it is used. Sometimes it may be longer or shorter, but there you have it. Since you posted that a flash drive has a life of 25 years, I fail to see how a defraggler would be that bad, considering that every use is "shortening the 3 to 5 year average" lifespan of normal magnetic harddisks.

 

Sure, all write cycles shorten life spans. It is well known that there are flash media that can last up to 1 million read cycles, but cannot handle as many write cycles, but if you never defrag, you INCREASE WRITE CYCLES SUBSTANTIALLY because there has to be many smaller writes to the drive because of fragmentation (Which will then shorten the life span because of increased writes.)

 

I am aware that it shortens life, but an occasional defrag should not hurt. And if you read the website above, I believe that you can see what I mean more fully. I did read about things like you stated above, but also, please read the link I posted to see what I mean.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks!

[MikeW]

Perfectdisk are trying to sell their product, so are bound to say its worth doing.

 

Of all the articles I have seen all agree there is nothing to gain by defragging a SSD drive

[Augeas]

Don, my point about the life of SSD's was to remove any worry about using Win 7, which is the first M/S op system to support SSD's, or at least to acknowledge their existence.

 

You said '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.'

 

That should be heavily fragged I guess. I believe that the additional write cycles are not caused by fragmentation but by the SSD's need to erase existing data before performing a write. When the SSD is new this is infrequent, but when the SSD has had some use this is far more likely. The smallest structure an SSD can erase is a complete block (usually 512 kb) even if it's only writing a single 4k page. This causes the entire 512 kb block to be read into cache, the block on SSD erased, the contents of cache modifed, and the entire block rewritten to SSD.

 

Win 7 implements TRIM, a command that (I'm not quite sure how it does what it does) effectively erases data blocks on SSD as they are deleted. New writes to the block no longer need to go through the extended read/delete/write process described above. TRIM sounds to me to be equivalent to an SSD defragger. One consequence of using TRIM which will be of interest to CC'ers is that once TRIMmed data on SSD can't be recovered, not ever, no arguing. (As we all know, as an aside, that secure delete is not conceptually possible on SSD's.)

[Aethec]

SSDs don't need to be defragmented, period.

Anyway, the SSD's firmware places files in the less used places, so a file with 1 fragment as seen by a defragmenter might in fact have a thousand of "fragments" on the drive.

 

As Augeas said, the only needed (and implemented natively by Win7) thing is TRIM.

A SSD block needs to be fully erased before data is written on it, unlike HDDs. Thus, erasing blocks marked as free by the OS when the SSD is idle will improve write performance.

[mr don]

I figured the option to do so would at least be nice, however.

 

Many people do not use their pc for much more than surfing the web, email, etc.

 

I do a lot with mine. I test sometimes thousands of programs in a period of weeks.

 

The fragmentation would be such that it would be almost unusable, especially with the way Windows 7 handles files. Definitely much different than Windows XP. In situations like this, an occasional defrag would yield a true performance boost if properly configured for SSD type drives. Additionally, I have seen some websites falsely state that "Windows 7 is moving to 4k drives, & XP cannot format in 4k... It is stuck at 512 kb sectors, so people will be forced to upgrade..."

 

That is a bunch of FUD! I know under my XP SP2, if you right click My Computer, then choose Manage, then choose Disk Management tab...

Select a drive that you can format. If the drive is large enough, XP does show the standard 512 kb format option, but it ALSO shows the 4K option. Leaving me to believe it was only a bunch of FUD that MS started, drivel if you will, to try to scare people into using Windows 7.

 

I saw the same thing on a TV ad they had that advertised how "Look at this new feature in 7, you can stack windows side by side for ease of use!".

Immediately after, a friend asked me about that, & I pointed out that you can just right click the taskbar in XP, choose tile Windows vertically for the same option.

 

I guess they do what they think they need to to sell things!

 

Anywho, my point is though, that if a magnetic drive lasts around 3 to 5 years on average, and we all know that defrag programs shorten the lifespan (ANYTHING that uses the drive does, because they have a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure), then how much could it really hurt if a SSD drive is supposed to last 10 years to schedule a defrag, say, every month?

 

Sure it won't be every day or week like on magnetic drives, but 12 times a year shouldn't take too much off a drive, should it? I was reading one article a while back where a user posted that even though SSD drives are suggested not to be defragged because of what you stated earlier, that he tried it & his friend did notice a substantial performance increase.

 

Of course, turning off drive indexing/system restore/last file access time services on SSD can reduce wear leveling & increase lifespan as well. Just have a backup!

 

*NOTE! I do not currently have an SSD drive to test. However, I am pleased with my Sata drive at the moment. If anyone can spare a SSD drive they are not using to test for us & see if after months of heavy use, if a defrag does or doesn't help, thanks!

 

I would love to know if anyone has actually tested this to know for sure? Sometimes what someone says is a lot different from what things actually are.

 

Meaning, if you really believe your fully patched system is "secure as fort knox" after MS declares it that way, you must be living under a rock...

 

Thanks, & really hope someone will test!

 

Helpful info will be after heavy use, show the:

- Bootup time

- Average program load time

- Shutdown time

- If you use Utherverse or some other heavy 3d online or offline game, the time it takes to load

 

And then show after a defrag the performance results.

 

I would be very interested!

[hazelnut]

MrDon have a read of the comments in this thread

 

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/262314-14-clean-drive-speed-test-defrag

 

For me it says everything that you need to know about why you should not defrag a SSD drive.

 

Some excellent info on the care of those drives is given there by some very knowledgeable people.

[Aethec]

A SSD does not have any head used to read and write, and thus all parts of the drive have an equal access time.

There is no speed difference between reading a file in blocks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10, and reading a file in blocks 1,42,343,21,3324,434,931,3987,3928 and 2.

[mr don]

A SSD does not have any head used to read and write, and thus all parts of the drive have an equal access time.

There is no speed difference between reading a file in blocks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10, and reading a file in blocks 1,42,343,21,3324,434,931,3987,3928 and 2.

 

Thanks for the wonderful replies.

 

I already knew that there is no "speed difference" in reading files no matter where they are scattered on the drive. As long as they are contiguous.

I had heard that heavy fragmentation causes severe slowdowns & other problems. This is the part I was concerned with, is NOT how fast it can write to totally blank, free space, but how it slows up when all or most of the drive is fragmented, so that it has to pause to calculate a good place to situate, slice up a file, find the best location to drop it, etc. Please read the following to understand what I am talking about so you can see what I meant.

 

http://www.diskeeper.com/blog/post/2007/06/22/The-Impact-of-Fragmentation-on-Flash-Drives-%28iPods-Jump-Drives-etc%29.aspx

http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-SSD-Reconditioning.html

 

"Frequent write activity on a solid state drive (SSD) can severely degrade its write speed, and the effect is cumulative with ongoing use. However, the degraded write speed can be fully restored."

 

Also, of interest to me ---> After the firwmare update, the X25M achieves a blistering-fast 263.1 MB/sec read speed on the DiskTester fill-volume test, abd 102.8MB/sec for writes. Those are great numbers, about 2.6X the read speed of the fastest laptop hard drive, and faster than any laptop 7200rpm hard drive. Read speed is much more important as it concerns boot time, application launch time, etc.

 

I don't really know how much an SSD would help my system, because it already loads into windows in less than 30 seconds. Maybe 20 something, I believe. Perhaps it might shave a few seconds off. Will have to try it one day.

 

What I am most interested in though, is not the "fresh & clean" performance of the drive, but the degradation of heavy fragmentation that I hear a lot of websites talk about. Anyone know if this is still a problem, or is it "fixed"?

[hazelnut]

You seem to be wondering around the subject now. We are all agree that you do not defrag a SSD drive ever. SSD degradation happens and can dealt with by using various methods including Disk Tester.

 

This topic is for Defraggler support on SSD drives should you wish to talk more on the general use of SSD drives please start a new topic in Hardware.