This tutorial will show you how to enable, disable, or change settings to automatically optimize drives on a schedule in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Windows includes a Optimize Drives feature that will automatically retrim a SSD and defrag a HDD as needed on a schedule to maintain performance.
By default, Windows automatically optimizes your drives once a week at the time set in automatic maintenance.
You can change that schedule to be more or less frequent, and choose which drives to automatically optimize.
You can also turn off the automatically optimize drives schedule if you prefer to manually check and optimize your drives.
Reference:
Defragment / optimize your data drives in Windows | Microsoft Support
Learn how to use Manage and Optimize Drives to keep your disk and data drives defragmented and at top performance in Windows.
support.microsoft.com
You must be signed in as an administrator to enable, disable, or change settings for the Optimize Drives schedule.
Here's How:
1 Open Optimize Drives (dfrgui.exe).
2 Do step 3 (on or change) or step 4 (off) below for what you want.
3 Turn On or Change Settings to Automatically Optimize Drives on a Schedule
A) Click/tap on Change settings or Turn on. (see screenshots below)
B) Check Run on a schedule. (see screenshot below)
C) Select Daily, Weekly (default), or Monthly in the Frequency drop menu for how often you want the schedule to run. (see screenshot below)
D) Check (default) or uncheck Increase task priority, if three consecutive scheduled runs are missed for what you want. (see screenshot below)
E) Perform the steps below if you want to choose which drives to automatically optimize on a schedule. (see screenshots below)
- Click/tap on Choose.
- Check (default) or uncheck drives to optimize.
- Check (default) or uncheck Automatically optimize new drives for what you want.
- Click/tap on OK.
F) Click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)
G) Click/tap on Close. (see screenshot below)
4 Turn Off Automatically Optimize Drives on a Schedule
A) Click/tap on Change settings. (see screenshot below)
B) Uncheck Run on a schedule, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)
C) Click/tap on Close. (see screenshot below)
That's it,
Shawn Brink
Last edited:
