Windows 10 how often do you defrag or should defrag

[Bubble99]

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?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

It should be defragging hard drives and TRIMing SSDs automatically.

 

[EarthDog]

I dont. Windows manages it.

 

[Solaris17]

Let windows manage it for me.

 

[biffzinker]

The default schedule is every couple of weeks.

 

[btarunr]

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).

 

[biffzinker]

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.

 

[candle_86]

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

 

[Bubble99]

It should be defragging hard drives and TRIMing SSDs automatically.

Can you elaborate on this..

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?

 

[candle_86]

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

 

[biffzinker]

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.

 

[Drone]

I'll just switch to Linux lol

How to Defragment Linux Systems

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

 

[eidairaman1]

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.

 

[Assimilator]

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.

 

[Bill_Bright]

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.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

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.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

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

 

[FordGT90Concept]

SSDs TRIM

Trim (computing) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[moproblems99]

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.

 

[candle_86]

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

 

[harm9963]

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

 

[Bill_Bright]

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).

 

[Drone]

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.

 

[Bill_Bright]

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 antispyware programs and Windows Defender the antimalware 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.

 

[Bubble99]

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?

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