# Windows 10 how often do you defrag or should defrag



## Bubble99 (Jan 2, 2020)

How often do you defrag or should defrag using windows 10 using an 1 TB hard drive.

Some people say you should run defrag every month or two times every month. The more fragmentation hard drive is the slower the read and write speed will be.

So how often should you run defrag?


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## FordGT90Concept (Jan 2, 2020)

It should be defragging hard drives and TRIMing SSDs automatically.


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## EarthDog (Jan 2, 2020)

I dont. Windows manages it.


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## Solaris17 (Jan 2, 2020)

Let windows manage it for me.


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## biffzinker (Jan 2, 2020)

The default schedule is every couple of weeks.


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## btarunr (Jan 2, 2020)

If you're using an SSD, Windows 10 Defrag doesn't actually de-fragment the drive. It only sends a TRIM command to the drive. MS calls this "optimize." Most manufacturer-supplied apps such as Samsung Magician include a real defrag function that optimally spreads data around the physical media (multiple NAND flash chips).


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## biffzinker (Jan 2, 2020)

btarunr said:


> Most manufacturer-supplied apps such as Samsung Magician include a real defrag function that optimally spreads data around the physical media (multiple NAND flash chips).


The SSD/NVMe on-board controller is already doing the same through wear leveling to prolong the endurance of the NAND flash.


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## candle_86 (Jan 2, 2020)

Never let windows do it, the last you needed to worry about defrag was windows 98, even me had it in task scheduler.


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## Bubble99 (Jan 2, 2020)

FordGT90Concept said:


> It should be defragging hard drives and TRIMing SSDs automatically.



Can you elaborate on this..



candle_86 said:


> Never let windows do it, the last you needed to worry about defrag was windows 98, even me had it in task scheduler.



I have not checked task scheduler to see if it is added or not. The other posted above is saying windows 10 does this on its own. So it must be in task scheduler  than?


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## candle_86 (Jan 2, 2020)

Bubble99 said:


> I havenot checked task scheduler to see if it is added or not. The other posted above is saying windows 10 does this on its own. So it must be in task scheduler  than?



Yes


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## biffzinker (Jan 2, 2020)

Click on the Start Menu type defrag in search.

As the above shows you can click on "Change Settings" to configure the schedule for when the disk defragmentation occurs.

*Edit:*
Seems relevant to the thread.


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## Drone (Jan 2, 2020)

I'll just switch to Linux lol









						How to Defragment Linux Systems - Make Tech Easier
					

Most Linux users won't need to defragment their disk thanks to its excellent journaling filesystems, but when you need to defragment, here's how to do it.




					www.maketecheasier.com


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## eidairaman1 (Jan 2, 2020)

On a Hard Disk Drive once a week to at longest every other, depending on how much you are downloading/installing/deleting stuff. SSD automatically stay optimized in Win 7 and Up.


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## Assimilator (Jan 2, 2020)

Bubble99 said:


> How often do you defrag or should defrag using windows 10 using an 1 TB hard drive.
> 
> Some people say you should run defrag every month or two times every month. The more fragmentation hard drive is the slower the read and write speed will be.
> 
> So how often should you run defrag?



Never. You don't worry about it. You let Windows deal with it automatically because we aren't in the 1990s anymore.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 2, 2020)

candle_86 said:


> Never let windows do it, the last you needed to worry about defrag was windows 98


Wow. Sorry but that sure is a bunch of nonsense. 

Assimilator is 100% correct. You never need to manually defrag your hard drives because Windows does it for us. The default is once a week and it does this way in the background as a very low priority task so it does not interfere with what the user is doing.

What you do need to do is ensure you keep a nice amount of free disk space on your drives - especially your boot drive. But that's just a normal user function anyway.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jan 2, 2020)

Bubble99 said:


> Can you elaborate on this..


This is the first time I ever looked at Optimize drive window on this machine and it's been running for over six months:



Note that bit at the bottom and the status of the drives.


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## Darmok N Jalad (Jan 3, 2020)

Isn’t defragging all about minimizing seek time? SSDs have no need for this since seek time is near instantaneous.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jan 3, 2020)

SSDs TRIM





						Trim (computing) - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## moproblems99 (Jan 3, 2020)

biffzinker said:


> The SSD/NVMe on-board controller is already doing the same through wear leveling to prolong the endurance of the NAND flash.



Wear leveling and optimizing by spreading data to different nand chips isn't exactly the same thing.  Distributing the data on different chips allows those to be read at the same time off each nand chip speeding up transfer speeds.


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## candle_86 (Jan 3, 2020)

Bill_Bright said:


> Wow. Sorry but that sure is a bunch of nonsense.
> 
> Assimilator is 100% correct. You never need to manually defrag your hard drives because Windows does it for us. The default is once a week and it does this way in the background as a very low priority task so it does not interfere with what the user is doing.
> 
> What you do need to do is ensure you keep a nice amount of free disk space on your drives - especially your boot drive. But that's just a normal user function anyway.



Re read my post


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## harm9963 (Jan 3, 2020)

OS only SSD left alone, downloads and library on large HDD are check once a week, or when a new  game installed.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 3, 2020)

Darmok N Jalad said:


> Isn’t defragging all about minimizing seek time? SSDs have no need for this since seek time is near instantaneous.


SSD's have no need for defragging because of the way they store data and seek the file segments - not because they are so quick. 

A hard drive is like a drawer in a file cabinet with the pages (file segments) of the report (file) you need scattered (fragmented) in no particular order from front to back. To retrieve all the pages in the right order, you have to stand in front of the file cabinet and rifle through the drawer sequentially, going back and forth, front to back many times (perhaps 100s!) across the entire drawer (platters) to each storage location, picking up the pages in the correct order. This takes a lot of time - especially if page 1 is in the front and page 2 is in the back then page 3 is somewhere near the middle, and so on. And remember, this is a mechanical arm (read: slow) moving back and forth, with friction generating heat and creating wear and tear too.

For a SSD, think of a mail sorting box. You simply stand in front of the box and directly grab each page of the report in the right order. It takes the same amount of time and effort to grab every page, regardless where it is located. It does not matter if the pages are next to each other and in the correct order (not fragmented) or if the pages are scattered all over the place. It takes the exact same amount of time to gather up the whole file in the correct order. And this is not a mechanical arm moving a magnetic Read/Write head back and forth. It is done totally through intelligent electronics (read: very fast).


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## Drone (Jan 3, 2020)

Darmok N Jalad said:


> Isn’t defragging all about minimizing seek time? SSDs have no need for this since seek time is near instantaneous.


Recently I've read one developer's blog and he said this:



> Defrag is handled by Windows, monthly by default, when appropriate and 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 and disable defragmentation completely if you want, but if 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.



Long story short ssds get fragmented and do need some "_kind of_" defragmentation handled by Windows.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 3, 2020)

I've seen that claim before and I think it is another case of using the same term to explain something different. Microsoft is infamous that. Think of Windows Explorer, File Explorer, Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express, Outlook.com, Windows Defender the anti*spyware* programs and Windows Defender the anti*malwar*e program. 

All disks, HD or SSD, have storage locations of fixed sizes. These are called sectors. If a file is too big to fit in one sector, multiple sectors are used. Mapping information is used to tell the drive's controller where to look for the next sector. On a hard drive, it tells the R/W where to move to. On a SSD, it just accesses it directly. But again, on a SSD, it does not matter if that next sector is right next to the first, or not. In fact, after TRIM is run, it may be moved any way. 

So instead of calling it a "kind of defragmentation", IMO, they really should say it is something along the lines of "metadata compacting" or something like that because if a file on a SSD takes up 6 sectors, before this process is run, it will still take up 6 sectors after.


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## Bubble99 (Jan 4, 2020)

So how do I know if windows is doing defrag scan or not?

And how do I know if it is turn on or off?



Drone said:


> Recently I've read one developer's blog and he said this:
> 
> 
> 
> Long story short ssds get fragmented and do need some "_kind of_" defragmentation handled by Windows.



Some  people say to defrag SSD some say not to defrag SSD that it could damage SSD


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## moproblems99 (Jan 4, 2020)

Bubble99 said:


> So how do I know if windows is doing defrag scan or not?
> 
> And how do I know if it is turn on or off?
> 
> ...



You can clearly see in the screen shots that others have posted when the last run time was.  If you let windows manage it, you are likely going to be fine.  If you tell it to defrag, trim, and whatever else every day, you are likely going to have problems.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 4, 2020)

Bubble99 said:


> So how do I know if windows is doing defrag scan or not?
> 
> And how do I know if it is turn on or off?
> 
> Some  people say to defrag SSD some say not to defrag SSD that it could damage SSD



As mentioned, you know if it is working by looking at when it was last done.

As for it being on or off, did you manually disable it? This not something you can accidentally disable by accidentally clicking some button. If you disabled it, unless you have serious black-out periods during which you remain highly functional (I'm talking serious split-personality disorders), disabling it is something you would remember.

So all you need to do as a user to make sure your boot drive remains "optimized" is to make sure you leave plenty of free disk space for Windows to operate freely in.

So how much free disk space is enough? Don't listen to anyone who says you need a certain percentage. Operating systems care about actual numbers, not percentages. The OS, Word, and your favorite game takes up the same amount space regardless if you have a 100GB drive, or a 4TB drive.  You will often see something like 30% of the disk. That makes no sense at all. On a 1TB drive (which is almost small these days), that would be 300GB! Windows does not need 300GB of free disk space. On a 4TB that would be wasting over 1TB of valuable disk space!  

So how much? That depends. There is no good rule. Any number really is arbitrary. But I have found leaving at least 30GB free seems to be plenty for temp files, the dynamic Page File, and defragging of hard drive. And that seems to be plenty on SSDs for wear leveling and TRIM operations. More is better, however - especially with a SSD. Just remember that modern SSD makers build in "over-provisioning" space just for SSD maintenance/optimization tasks. So if starting to get down near 30GB, I recommend you start looking at ways to free up space, or start shopping around for a bigger drive.

As for people telling you to defrag a SSD, you can not manually defrag a SSD. At the hardware level, when the BIOS detects a drive, the drive itself tells the system if it is an hard drive or a SSD (or CD/DVD, etc.). If a SSD, the system reports that information to the operating system, which then enables and disables certain features and tasks, depending on the type of drive. You can certainly tell Optimize Disk to manually optimize the SSD. But it will not actually defrag the files, as it would on a HD.

As this point, a 1/2 dozen people have told you your drives are being properly optimized by Windows by default. I think enough has been said.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jan 4, 2020)

btarunr said:


> If you're using an SSD, Windows 10 Defrag doesn't actually de-fragment the drive. It only sends a TRIM command to the drive. MS calls this "optimize." Most manufacturer-supplied apps such as Samsung Magician include a real defrag function that optimally spreads data around the physical media (multiple NAND flash chips).


It does defrag in a mixed environment doesn't it ie an nvme sata ssd and two hdds?.
I've assumed it does  ?.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 4, 2020)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> It does defrag in a mixed environment doesn't it ie an nvme sata ssd and two hdds?.


Yes, as I just posted (probably while you were drafting your post) the type drive is seen by the BIOS and the OS uses that information to determine which tasks to perform on each drive type. So if you have a SSD as your boot drive and HDs as your secondary drives, Optimize Disk will run TRIM on the SSD and defrag on the HDs. The user does not have to do a thing.


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## Nero1024 (Jan 4, 2020)

Once a month if you want it automatically on the schedule. Or do it manually when necessary (more than 10% defragmented)


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jan 4, 2020)

Bill_Bright said:


> Yes, as I just posted (probably while you were drafting your post) the type drive is seen by the BIOS and the OS uses that information to determine which tasks to perform on each drive type. So if you have a SSD as your boot drive and HDs as your secondary drives, Optimize Disk will run TRIM on the SSD and defrag on the HDs. The user does not have to do a thing.


Thanks for confirmation


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 4, 2020)

Nero1024 said:


> Once a month if you want it automatically on the schedule. Or do it manually when necessary (more than 10% defragmented)


Wow! Dude! It really is best to do some homework and/or read through threads to learn what has already been said before joining and posting something that is clearly inaccurate.


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## TairikuOkami (Jan 5, 2020)

If you have HDD, defrag it at boot for max efficiency.

`Defrag HDD - Boot Windows USB - Repair - Troubleshoot - CMD - type/enter
c:
cd windows
cd system32
defrag c: /u`


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## EarthDog (Jan 5, 2020)

TairikuOkami said:


> If you have HDD, defrag it at boot for max efficiency.
> 
> `Defrag HDD - Boot Windows USB - Repair - Troubleshoot - CMD - type/enter
> c:
> ...


That's absolutely ridiculous to suggest...

....or are you saying just to do it at boot time, not every time you boot?


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 5, 2020)

TairikuOkami said:


> If you have HDD, defrag it at boot for max efficiency.


Why? This just is not necessary, can increase boot times, and certainly adds unnecessary wear on the drive.

I agree with ED.

Fragmentation occurs when new or modified files are saved to the disk. And it would only occur to those new or modified files (not to existing files that are not modified) - in particular when running low on free space.

If you are constantly (like every day) downloading and installing new programs, uninstalling old programs, modifying lots of personal documents files and more, then maybe this would be beneficial. But most users are not constantly installing new programs or modifying their existing documents. As for the OS itself, yes, Windows Updates typically installs several new files and deletes old files, but that's not every day.

That said, many of us rarely boot our systems. I may go a couple weeks or longer - only booting when a Windows Update requires it. Between those times, I just let it go to sleep. So the Windows default, once a week, would be more efficient than at boot time.


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## Bubble99 (Jan 5, 2020)

The reason why I ask is it turn on or off or how do I know if it is doing defrag or not is back in the windows 95 and windows 98 days doing defrag would really slow the computer down well it does a scan you cannot use the computer well it does defrag because of lack of multitasking. The hard drive light would flash like crazy.  It would be resource hog well it does scan like running Norton AV scan. You would really know if it was doing scan or not .

I do not notice any of this going on or a computer slow down that apps are running in background doing some thing.  And hard drive light is not flasking like cracy and slow computer well it does defrag scan.


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## Nero1024 (Jan 6, 2020)

Bill_Bright said:


> Wow! Dude! It really is best to do some homework and/or read through threads to learn what has already been said before joining and posting something that is clearly inaccurate.



Follow your own advice. I have valuable experience that proved that I am right. I don't need your confirmation


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## c2DDragon (Jan 6, 2020)

Defrag is so windows 95.
Let windows 10 do his stuff.
If you own some SSDs they will be "optimised". If you got heavy HDDs windows will not touch them cause there is no need.
Defrag your big HDDs at night if you feel it would give you some hypothetical performances. You may win 10% performance on them, maybe 20% but you will use them more than usual. That's what I believe, maybe I'm wrong, all I can tell is moving files on HDDs use them.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 6, 2020)

Nero1024 said:


> Follow your own advice. I have valuable experience that proved that I am right. I don't need your confirmation


 I do follow my own advice and do my homework before posting. Like most people, I don't like to be wrong. And sorry but you do need confirmation because it is not once a month as you claimed. Again, just a tiny bit of homework with Google easily confirms this. You can see for yourself on your own systems by using the screenshots biffzinker included in his post #11. If yours says anything but "Weekly" you or someone using your computers changed the defaults.

Windows  Central


> By default Windows automatically runs maintenance on drives *every week*



Laptop Mag


> Windows 10, like Windows 8 and Windows 7 before it, automatically defragments files for you on a schedule (by default, *once a week*).



Winaero


> Out of the box, Windows 10 performs disk defragmentation *once a week* for hard drives and SSD TRIM operation for SSDs.



WindowsTenForums


> By default, Optimize Drives, previously called Disk Defragmenter, runs automatically on a *weekly schedule*



I can add a dozen more but this is already wasting everyone's time.


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## Nero1024 (Jan 7, 2020)

Bill_Bright said:


> I do follow my own advice and do my homework before posting. Like most people, I don't like to be wrong. And sorry but you do need confirmation because it is not once a month as you claimed. Again, just a tiny bit of homework with Google easily confirms this. You can see for yourself on your own systems by using the screenshots biffzinker included in his post #11. If yours says anything but "Weekly" you or someone using your computers changed the defaults.
> 
> Windows  Central
> 
> ...



I got it. You don't use your own brain or do your own research/experiments. Your brains is outside of your head


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 8, 2020)

Nero1024 said:


> I got it. You don't use your own brain or do your own research/experiments. Your brains is outside of your head


LOL I do indeed use my own brain and do my own research and experiments. I am just not so arrogant to expect other to believe me just because I say so, or to assume what I think to be true, is. So I verify my facts by researching for corroborating evidence - and include them so other can see for themselves, like the 4 links I included above compared to your 0. 

And I am not so naive to assume my own experimentation in my own tiny universe of my shop and decades of experiment is anything more than anecdotal. 

Again, read through this thread. I am not the only one who said Windows, by default, defrags once a week. 

Now unless you can find corroborating evidence to support your claim, I suggest we move on.


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## Solaris17 (Jan 8, 2020)

Jesus, this forum kills me sometimes as of late.

We can't even have a conversation about DEFRAGMENTING without posting dissertations are telling each other we are wrong.

OP

Instead of elaborating on my experience or trying to convince you of my superior intellect on the subject, I will help illustrate your additional questions and remaining uncertainty by simply providing you with screen shots.

These are from my personal system.

First: Defragmentation is just a pretty UI for the defrag.exe. We will get to this in a minute.






As you can see it has an "Optimize" button and by default is set to weekly.

Second: Like I had mentioned this is just a UI frontend for the defrag.exe.

Why is it called "Optimize" ?

How does it handle my HDDs and SSDs?

Lets take a look.

Anything that is scheduled will generally be in the task scheduler.





Yay found it.

As we can see by installation default defrag.exe is ran with the following flags.

-c -h -o (Not zero)

Our handy friend the microsoft docs tells us whats happening.









						defrag
					

Reference article for the defrag command, which locates and consolidates fragmented files on local volumes to improve system performance.



					docs.microsoft.com
				






Spoiler: You can also get this list from cmd shhh









The important bits are the flags that answer most questions. I will elaborate on some of the commands in addition to the MS definition.

-C
Perform the operation on all volumes.  (So regardless of type SSD or HDD perform operation on all detected disks)

-H
Run the operation at normal priority (default is low).  (Let the default CPU scheduler handle the process, do not run it with precedence over anything (Process) by default)

-O
Perform the proper optimization for each media type. (Defrag the hard drives and trim the SSDs consolidate on VMs perform the correct type of maintenance for each detected disk type)

There you have it. Defrag demystified.

Please no more 3 page explanations about ones credentials or back and fourths. I will consider each after this post totally irrelevant and will delete them.


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