Defrag/Trim

KevTech · Dec 24, 2021

Can anyone else verify if defrag is messed up again?
Or did MS change the way trim works?
Scheduled task is running defrag and trim on my two SSD drives every seven days (weekly).
On Win 10 this seemed to only happen monthly but ever since I upgraded to 11 it happens like clockwork every seven days.
Filter application event log for event 258 and see what your system is doing.

Thanks.

Ghot · Dec 25, 2021

KevTech said:
Can anyone else verify if defrag is messed up again?
Or did MS change the way trim works?
Scheduled task is running defrag and trim on my two SSD drives every seven days (weekly).
On Win 10 this seemed to only happen monthly but ever since I upgraded to 11 it happens like clockwork every seven days.
Filter application event log for event 258 and see what your system is doing.

Thanks.

View attachment 16908

Just open Task Scheduler library and go to: Microsoft > Windows > Defrag ...and set it however you want.

hsehestedt · Dec 25, 2021

If you right-click on your C: drive, choose Properties > Tools > Optimize you'll also see a nice little summary.

The screenshot below from my system shows that the default appears to perform an optimization weekly. Note that this is after a clean install of Windows just a week or so ago. For SSDs this is very different than a defrag on a spinning disk so doing this frequently is no problem at all. In fact, you could do this multiple time a day with no ill effects, although I'd be hard pressed to see a need to do so unless are writing a lot of data to an SSD with very little free space.

KevTech · Dec 25, 2021

I know how to do that but in Win 10 even set on weekly trim was only happening once a month.
What I was asking is if others are seeing this on Win 11 since it did not happen on Win 10.

From 10 forum: SSD Trim Windows 10 - Windows 10 Help Forums

Ghot · Dec 25, 2021

KevTech said:
I know how to do that but in Win 10 even set on weekly trim was only happening once a month.
What I was asking is if others are seeing this on Win 11 since it did not happen on Win 10.

From 10 forum: SSD Trim Windows 10 - Windows 10 Help Forums

Microsoft fixed that issue (on Win 10), early 2021.

As @hsehestedt mentioned, you can just right click a drive and set it how you like.
Or... I personally, just disable "Optimize" and do it manually.

Seriously though... this day, there's more important things to worry about... like how they made this video...

KevTech · Dec 25, 2021

Fixed what issue?
You mean when defrag would forget last run time and run over and over again?
What I am referring to is different.
On Win10 I would see my drives sometimes say 25 or more days since last optimized now the most I see on Win 11 is 6 so something changed.
Filter application log for event ID 258 and see how often yours is running is what I was asking.

Ghot · Dec 25, 2021

KevTech said:
Fixed what issue?
You mean when defrag would forget last run time and run over and over again?
What I am referring to is different.
On Win10 I would see my drives sometimes say 25 or more days since last optimized now the most I see on Win 11 is 6 so something changed.
Filter application log for event ID 258 and see how often yours is running is what I was asking.

Well, right now, I'm on Windows 10.
But I've never seen Event ID 258 on Win 10 or Win 11. But I have that Task disabled on both.

But IF it is running every 7 days on your computer... it's either Task Scheduler, or the actual Optimize app, running it.

Maybe I'm not being clear.
That pic you posted is just an "Information" alert. It's Win 11 telling you it's running defrag, every 7 days.

Have you tried changing the frequency to say... 30 days?

If you're just asking... WHY it's this way on Windows 11... only Microsoft knows for sure.
It'd be like asking why the START button and Taskbar icons are in the middle.

I'm not trying to be a smart-aleck or anything, I don't really understand what you're asking.

Have I seen anything about Optimize being broken on Win 11? NO.
Why is yours running every 7 days? It's scheduled to run every 7 days.
Did MS change something about Optimize and should I be worried about it? I don't know. I haven't seen anything bout it.

KevTech · Dec 25, 2021

12/24
The storage optimizer successfully completed defragmentation on Storage (D)
The storage optimizer successfully completed retrim on Storage (D)
The storage optimizer successfully completed defragmentation on 11 (C)
The storage optimizer successfully completed retrim on 11 (C)
12/17
The storage optimizer successfully completed defragmentation on Storage (D)
The storage optimizer successfully completed retrim on Storage (D)
The storage optimizer successfully completed defragmentation on 11 (C)
The storage optimizer successfully completed retrim on 11 (C)

PerpetualCycle · Dec 25, 2021

There was something wrong with your Windows 10 if it was set for weekly and only ran monthly. The default for Windows 11 is weekly, so it is working as it should, so I don't understand where you see an issue.

As mentioned try to set it for monthly if you want monthly.

There is nothing wrong with running it more frequently. It isn't going to wear your SSD any faster.

KevTech · Dec 25, 2021

So I found out for SSD even if set for weekly it should only be done monthly like in Win 10.
My sister works for Microsoft and I asked her to look into this.
She inquired and was referred to: defrag
As you can see it says defrag task runs weekly by default but for SSD defrag/retrim are done monthly no matter what setting (daily, weekly or monthly) the task is set for.
Thanks all that replied and I am now going to leave this thread.

PerpetualCycle · Dec 25, 2021

I think you have to look at that carefully. Too bad you left.

"As an Administrator, you can change the how often the task runs by using the Optimize Drives app."
"Changing the frequency of the scheduled task does not affect the once per month cadence for the SSDs."

I interpret this to mean that once per month traditional defrag + retrim occurs no matter what.
and if you set a weekly schedule, retrim occurs weekly (traditional defrag does not occur)

So just disable scheduling in the Optimize drive apps. Have you tried that?

Ghot · Dec 25, 2021

KevTech said:
So I found out for SSD even if set for weekly it should only be done monthly like in Win 10.
My sister works for Microsoft and I asked her to look into this.
She inquired and was referred to: defrag
As you can see it says defrag task runs weekly by default but for SSD defrag/retrim are done monthly no matter what setting (daily, weekly or monthly) the task is set for.
Thanks all that replied and I am now going to leave this thread.

View attachment 16942

Now that's just not fair.
Tell you're sister to make an account on here, so WE can ask her things.

hsehestedt · Dec 25, 2021

Old info, but set it to whatever you want. There is no wrong answer here unless you are allowing your drives to become very badly fragmented, or in the case of an SSD, run out of "clean" blocks.

For an SSD, a quick review of what a trim operation actually does:

When data is deleted from a drive, you are not actually removing that data, you are simply deleting the pointers to the areas on the disk where that data is held. For a traditional HD, that's just fine. When you later write to those freed up areas of the disk, there is no performance penalty. You simply write to those areas of the disk the same as always (except in the case of SMR disks, but that's a whole other ball of wax). However, on an SSD, blocks must be erased before they can be written to again. A trim operation will erase areas of the SSD that were previously in use but have now been freed up, doing so in the background so that when the time comes to use those blocks again an erasure does not need to be performed first. A "RETRIM" operation to your SSD is the OS (Windows 11) informing the SSD of all the areas of the disk that should be considered empty. These hints to the SSD will trigger a TRIM operation for areas that the SSD was not already aware that should have been TRIMed.

I want to stress the importance of having a properly trimmed SSD, because the performance problems can be amplified far more than you might initially think. Note that even if you are going to write only 1 byte of data to a block that has not been trimmed, the ENTIRE block must be erased first and the entire block needs to be rewritten. If there are a lot of untrimmed blocks, this can make an ENORMOUS difference in performance.

If you have a lot of free space on your SSDs and you don't write large amounts of data, then less frequent optimization may be just fine. The drive will try to write to trimmed blocks first, however, there are limits to this as other considerations such as wear leveling algorithms come into play as well.

Also, bear in mind that there is absolutely no negative to performing a trim / retrim more frequently. Only blocks that need to be trimmed will be trimmed, doing so more frequently simply means that you will tend to accumulate fewer untrimmed blocks between runs keeping your drive at peak efficiency. Those blocks are going to have to be trimmed at some point in the future anyway. Note too that a retrim only informs a drive of areas that it should consider to be unused. Usually, when everything is running normally, a trim operation is performed as soon as blocks are freed, but if something interferes with this (unexpected shutdown for example), that's when a retrim helps. Because that does not happen often, a retrim usually results in little disk activity anyway, so again, more frequently retrimming has no negative impacts.

Slinky · Dec 28, 2021

@hsehestedt
Thank you for your very informative post above :wink:

It's not often that I dig into disk defragmentation as usually this is handled automatically, however, since installing Windows 11 a couple of weeks ago I thought it best to check . Good job too it seems as I noticed my Samsung 850 EVO SSD was marked as having been 'retrimmed' just 1 day ago. This immediately rang alarm bells for me, I was certain this feature was turned off for my C-Drive under my previous install of Windows 10. Curious as to the correct settings I Googled the subject which thankfully brought me to this post. I'm certainly glad I've read it because I was about to disable 'Trim' support once again on my C-Drive. I think where my knowledge let me down was because I confused 'Disk Defragmentation' with 'Trim' optimization. I do know that SSD's have no moving parts and therefore don't require defragmenting but no doubt I confused the two as being much the same thing. No doubt an innocent mistake on my part but one that I'm glad I checked

Thanks again :)

hsehestedt · Dec 28, 2021

Slinky said:
@hsehestedt
Thank you for your very informative post above It's not often that I dig into disk defragmentation as usually this is handled automatically, however, since installing Windows 11 a couple of weeks ago I thought it best to check . Good job too it seems as I noticed my Samsung 850 EVO SSD was marked as having been 'retrimmed' just 1 day ago. This immediately rang alarm bells for me, I was certain this feature was turned off for my C-Drive under my previous install of Windows 10. Curious as to the correct settings I Googled the subject which thankfully brought me to this post. I'm certainly glad I've read it because I was about to disable 'Trim' support once again on my C-Drive. I think where my knowledge let me down was because I confused 'Disk Defragmentation' with 'Trim' optimization. I do know that SSD's have no moving parts and therefore don't require defragmenting but no doubt I confused the two as being much the same thing. No doubt an innocent mistake on my part but one that I'm glad I checked Thanks again :)

Thanks for taking the time to share your comments. That's very much appreciated. Yeah, I have to say that this forum is really a highly useful resource for me as well. It seems like not a day goes by where I don't glean some sort of helpful nugget of information.

Slinky · Dec 28, 2021

hsehestedt said:
Thanks for taking the time to share your comments. That's very much appreciated. Yeah, I have to say that this forum is really a highly useful resource for me as well. It seems like not a day goes by where I don't glean some sort of helpful nugget of information.

You're welcome, credit where it's due

I've long been a fan of forums such as these and have amassed a wealth of useful information over the years. It makes me wonder how we all coped in the old days when you had to read a book to learn something. Nowadays a quick click of the mouse can have you sorted in no time :wink:

Thank you for sharing..