# Ok to Defragg? (hybrid drives)



## washd123 (May 2, 2012)

I have 2 seagate momentus XT 750gb hybrid drives that use 8gb of SLC NAND Flash to speed up the mechanical drive. They work like a charm, however I'm wondering if I should or could defrag. I've gotten a lot of mixed answers, supposedly the official word from seagate is that it fries them, I don't see how considering the flash is inaccessible to the OS and the user. IT should just clear everything but the flash cache.

So what's your advice? should I? is it ok to?


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## Jstn7477 (May 2, 2012)

I've defragmented my Momentus XT 500GB several times. The only downside is that the drive will have to relearn what to put in the cache, but seeing how my drive's cache evicts data throughout the day on my laptop if I happen to use it a lot, it doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance.


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## Mussels (May 2, 2012)

the drive will probably cache as you defrag, wearing out the flash faster.


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## TheOne (May 2, 2012)

washd123 said:


> I have 2 seagate momentus XT 750gb hybrid drives that use 8gb of SLC NAND Flash to speed up the mechanical drive. They work like a charm, however I'm wondering if I should or could defrag. I've gotten a lot of mixed answers, supposedly the official word from seagate is that it fries them, I don't see how considering the flash is inaccessible to the OS and the user. IT should just clear everything but the flash cache.
> 
> So what's your advice? should I? is it ok to?



As you pointed out Seagate recommends treating the Momentus XT SSHD as an SSD.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articl...c=Product_Family:Momentus_SATA&fs=Search&pn=1



> Momentus XT Enhancements
> 
> The new, innovative Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid drive is uncovering intricacies that traditional hard drives both are unaware of and whose dynamics they cannot enhance or improve.
> 
> ...


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## washd123 (May 3, 2012)

so the best option is to not defragg?

I understand I shouldn't defrag often, that's clear, what's not clear if I should do it at all.


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## Jstn7477 (May 3, 2012)

It says "works best without frequent defrag" so I'd imagine it's fine. I've had mine for over a year and defragged it several times when it's gotten bad.


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## Mussels (May 3, 2012)

i'd defrag occasionally, but as little as possible.


for example, my defragger has a 'fragmented files only' option which doesnt rearrange the files on the drive at all, which would have the least wear and tear on the SSD portion.


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## FordGT90Concept (May 3, 2012)

The software in the drive itself likely prevents fragmentation and defrags the HDD as needed.  As such, I would never defrag a hybrid drive.


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## Mussels (May 3, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> The software in the drive itself likely prevents fragmentation and defrags the HDD as needed.  As such, I would never defrag a hybrid drive.



a simple scan with a decent defragger would reveal if this is true or not.


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## washd123 (May 3, 2012)

I do manual defrags, so I think I'll just limit them like once every couple months, thanks guys


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## Jstn7477 (May 3, 2012)

Auslogics Disk Defrag shows as much fragmentation as there is on a normal HDD. The NAND chip (which is SLC and gets written to all the time) is used for reads only and presumably is just a copy of 8GB of random crap on the disk. Once a month defragmentation sounds reasonable.


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## FordGT90Concept (May 3, 2012)

I defrag maybe once a year (wishful thinking) and have had over 90% fragmentation for months with no detrimental effects noted.  These drives are going on 7 years old too.  Defragging is highly overrated.


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## CaptainFailcon (May 3, 2012)

fragmentation has ZERO impact on SSD drives INCLUDING hybrid drives
hybrid drives place the most accessed files on the ssd thus mostly eliminating the access time caused by fragmentation in special cases if you are accessing something like a LARGE file thats EXTREMELY fragmented then you might beable to sense a bit of access delay but   the software on the drive controller accounts for that as well so its all pretty much moot


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## Mussels (May 3, 2012)

CaptainFailcon said:


> fragmentation has ZERO impact on SSD drives INCLUDING hybrid drives
> hybrid drives place the most accessed files on the ssd thus mostly eliminating the access time caused by fragmentation in special cases if you are accessing something like a LARGE file thats EXTREMELY fragmented then you might beable to sense a bit of access delay but   the software on the drive controller accounts for that as well so its all pretty much moot



the cache only covers a small percentage of the drive. if he hits an uncached file, he's got the exact same poor performance of any normal mechanical drive.


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