Win7 and SSD: Three Surprising Things About Hard Drive Defragging

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wily me

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Three Surprising Things About Hard Drive Defragging
Back in the bad old days of computing, hard-drive defragmentation was a big deal. You needed a quality third-party “defragger,” and you needed to run it regularly—at least once a month—to ensure optimal system performance.

Times have changed. Although computer files still get split into fragments and scattered across your hard drive’s platters, the computers and drives themselves are so much faster now that fragmentation isn’t the same performance-wrecking problem it once was.

What’s more, if you’re a Windows 7 user, you really shouldn’t have to worry about fragmentation at all. Check out these three important facts about hard drive defragging:

In Windows 7, the built-in Disk Defragmenter utility runs automatically at scheduled times, usually once per week. This happens by default, so chances are good your hard drive is already defragged. And by most accounts, the utility compares favorably with third-party alternatives, so don’t spend money on another defragger unless you have very specific reasons for doing so.
You don’t necessarily have to leave your computer on overnight. If Disk Defragmenter isn’t able to run at, say, 1 a.m. Wednesday, it will kick in the next time your computer is idle.
You should never defragment a solid-state drive (SSD). Doing so can shorten its lifespan. In fact, whether you purchased a laptop with an SSD installed or upgraded your laptop with one, be sure to disable scheduled defragmentation in Windows 7. Click Start, type disk, and then click Disk Defragmenter. Click Configure schedule to disable the feature. "for that specific drive"
By the way, if you have an external hard drive, one that’s not always connected to your PC, it may not get the chance to benefit from Windows’ scheduled defragging. Therefore, you should run Disk Defragmenter on it manually every month or so.

For more on the subject, read Lincoln Spector’s "Defragging: How, Why and Whether."
Click to expand...

For those using SSD devices.

Type "defrag" in start menu search box and select "defrag your hard drive" under control panel finds.
When the "Disk Defragmenter" application opened select "Configure Shedule" then "Select Disks" and deselect the SSD.
 
FYI
Upon installation of Windows 7 it should pick up that you are using a SSD and disable the automatic defragging service.
I can confirm this having installed my SSD in my laptop this past tuesday
 
kolaval said:
FYI
Upon installation of Windows 7 it should pick up that you are using a SSD and disable the automatic defragging service.
I can confirm this having installed my SSD in my laptop this past tuesday
Click to expand...

Thanks for the valuable info, still is worth checking just to be sure? What if you add an SSD later after the installation on an old system? I hope to add one soon.
 
wily me said:
Thanks for the valuable info, still is worth checking just to be sure? What if you add an SSD later after the installation on an old system? I hope to add one soon.
Click to expand...

Sensationalist article is sensationalist. Windows 7 definitely disables defrag on SSD's, and you would be an idiot to turn it off completely if you have mechanical drives as well. They do still need it. Check out the utility, as far as I know it won't even allow Defrag to run on an SSD (can't verify now since my SSD is in my hom PC), but the scheduling is definitely disabled.
 
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To the contrary... Installed a fresh copy of windows 7 on my ssd last night, alongside my other 13 drives and all drives including the ssd were automatically set for defrag.

It's a good idea to check and make sure instead of just assuming that windows automatically disables defragging for your ssd
 
wily me said:
Thanks for the valuable info, still is worth checking just to be sure? What if you add an SSD later after the installation on an old system? I hope to add one soon.
Click to expand...

I guess most peoplle will do a new installation. If your current boot drive is larger than the SSD, you may face some challenges to clone or restore the current HDD to the SSD. Win7 is pretty quick to install, so I didn't bother researching for a work-around.

Furthermore, there are also other tweaks recommended for SSDs like disabling indexing, prefetch and superfetch.
 
As said before, Windows 7 WILL ALWAYS disable defrag on an SSD volume.

What is classified as an SSD volume tho?
- Any device that supports Trim (any SSD).

If your defrag option is still enabled, that means your SSD doesn't have Trim enabled, potential reasons:
1) The SATA chipset doesn't support it (chipset BIOS may be updateable to support it)
2) The SATA mode is set to IDE when it should be set to AHCI. Never use IDE mode unless you know what you are doing.
3) You are running hardware RAID, just about all hardware RAID (including Intel Matrix RAID) doesn't pass through the Trim command

What is Trim?
Usually when you delete a file the OS just removes the entry from the file allocation table. However an SSD constantly moves data around (to optimize for speed and life). Therefore the SSD also needs to know which files can be removed, unlike older hard-drives where it does not matter.

The OS therefore uses the TRIM command to tell the SSD which files have been removed so that they can be marked inactive.

You can survive without TRIM but it wil lower performance
 
Gnome said:
As said before, Windows 7 WILL ALWAYS disable defrag on an SSD volume.

What is classified as an SSD volume tho?
- Any device that supports Trim (any SSD).

If your defrag option is still enabled, that means your SSD doesn't have Trim enabled, potential reasons:
1) The SATA chipset doesn't support it (chipset BIOS may be updateable to support it)
2) The SATA mode is set to IDE when it should be set to AHCI. Never use IDE mode unless you know what you are doing.
3) You are running hardware RAID, just about all hardware RAID (including Intel Matrix RAID) doesn't pass through the Trim command

What is Trim?
Usually when you delete a file the OS just removes the entry from the file allocation table. However an SSD constantly moves data around (to optimize for speed and life). Therefore the SSD also needs to know which files can be removed, unlike older hard-drives where it does not matter.

The OS therefore uses the TRIM command to tell the SSD which files have been removed so that they can be marked inactive.

You can survive without TRIM but it wil lower performance
Click to expand...

Wrong... TRIM is enabled, AHCI mode running prior to windows installation and no RAID whatsoever.

You have to remember, some things just don't happen for some or other reason, and it's ALWAYS better to check rather than just to assume windows will do something for you
 
robdutchmonkey said:
Wrong... TRIM is enabled, AHCI mode running prior to windows installation and no RAID whatsoever.
Click to expand...

Are you sure that defrag is enabled on the drive?

Disk Defragmenter -> Configure Schedule -> Select Disks -> <Your SSD shouldn't be listed>

Only HDDs and (select all disks) should be listed
 
They were all selected for the defrag schedule, had to manually uncheck the ssd from the list of drives to be defragged weekly, no jokes

Not sure if it's because I don't have my ssd on the sata 1 port, but rather on one of the sata 6G ports separate from the rest but surely that wouldn't make a single difference since it's obviously set to the first drive in bios and obviously as the c drive.

Thus the reason I say rather don't take it for granted that stupid windows does it automatically lol
 
robdutchmonkey said:
Not sure if it's because I don't have my ssd on the sata 1 port, but rather on one of the sata 6G ports separate from the rest but surely that wouldn't make a single difference since it's obviously set to the first drive in bios and obviously as the c drive.
Click to expand...

Is that SATA-6G port on a Marvell 9182 chip? They have lower performance than the normal Intel SATA-II 3GB ports. One of the worst SATA chips on the market (Google for more info).

They also don't support TRIM unless you run the latest BIOS (which the manufacturer had to have updated in their BIOS release, not every company has) and drivers....

I had a motherboard with one of those chips (GA-P55A-UD3) and luckiy Gigabyte updated the Marvel chip to the latest BIOS and I was able to get the drivers after a bit of searching. Still got better performance from Intel SATA-II 3GB ports tho (and so have others).

How did you check that TRIM is enabled? Does CrystalDiskInfo show TRIM?
 
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fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

Only indicates that Windows allows Trim. Doesn't mean it is enabled on the device.

Windows will always disable defrag if TRIM is supported by the device. Try the Intel ports, pretty sure it will dissapear from the defrag menu...
 
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