Defrag/Trim

hsehestedt said:

It may be the same blog , apologies if I missed it. As for the timing of the defrags, these have nothing to do with when the backup is running. The defrag happens on its own schedule, it's not triggered at the time of a backup or any other event on the system. Basically, when optimization is set to run, it looks to see if volume snapshots exist. If they do, then a defrag is included as part of the optimization.

It's important to note that a defrag on an SSD is not the same as a defrag on a HDD. The blog alludes to this with this statement:

"It's also worth pointing out that what we (old-timers) think about as "defrag.exe" as a UI is really "optimize your storage" now. It was defrag in the past and now it's a larger disk health automated system."

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No worries, I thought it looked familiar.

I know the defrags events aren't timed to coincide with my backups jobs but I mentioned those event entries to highlight that defrag was running despite me having 'System Restore' turned off. I think we've concluded that system restore might not have anything to do with defrag running, this seems to be disinformation.

Old timers? I'm 57 and I still call it disk defragmenter despite it now being called something different. I do understand that optimising disks and trimming and defragmenting albeit not in the true sense of the word are necessary but it's the frequency that's at the heart of this topic.

hsehestedt said:

Not sure I understand the question. What is "that"? If you are referring to the shadow copies, those get created at the time of the backup (technically, just before the backup begins).

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It's ok, that comment was in response to @Try3 reply

Do bear these relationships in mind:-
1 VSS [volsnap] & backing up are intimately connected.
2 VSS [volsnap] & System restore are intimately connected [apparently - I know nothing about System restore personally].
3 dfrgui.exe {the optimize-defrag UI}, defrag.exe {i.e the thing that does the work on behalf of that UI} & defragsvc are intimately connected.

The only claim that I have been able to find that there is also a relationship between 2 & 3 is that reported by Scott H after his internal MS discussions.
- It seems perfectly logical to me that defragging would require a volume snapshot [just as backing up does] so I have never doubted it but it remains the only claim.
- I've been monitoring explanations of dfrgui.exe, defrag.exe & defragsvc since the 2007-2009 series of MS "Engineering Windows 7" articles and have found no other reference to VSS being needed.
- I've never found an explanation of what defragsvc does either. I only know it's involved because I've monitored it at the same time as monitoring dfrgui.exe & defrag.exe.

I ran a defrag on an SSD and VSS was not turned on.
- The defrag definitely ran [analysis reported 18% fragmentation beforehand & 0% afterwards].

I only mention all this to set the scene for a suggestion for Slinky.
- In an Admin command prompt window, run defrag C: {using your SSD's drive letter, of course}, check that the analysis reports in the command prompt window show that the fragmentation level reduced & that defragmentation completed.
- Then monitor Event viewer as you have been doing to see if the unexpected background defrags continue.
- If they stop then I think it is a strong indication that the wording of Event records so far has been misleading and "completed defrag" should really have said "lost interest in defrag for a while until the system is idle again".
- If they do not stop then there is indeed a defrag initiation mechanism about which we are all in ignorance.

My brain has melted and is about to start leaking out,
Denis

Denis, the defrag operation in no way needs or requires VSS. Rather it is because of how VSS works that a defrag becomes necessary. In other words, VSS does things that cause some maintenance on the filesystem to be needed, even though there is no direct link between VSS and defrag.

Hope that makes sense.

I understand what you're saying. Defrag.exe is at the end of the chain of command whilst VSS is somewhere in the middle of it all, taking part in decision-making.

Personally, I don't follow the logic of it being used in that way but I do understand what you've said.

Denis

Actually, there is no chain of events involving VSS and defrag. VSS can exist without defrag and defrag can exist without VSS.

It's like a car and a carwash. The car can exist without the carwash. The carwash could burn to the ground and the car would continue to operate fine. Likewise, the car could get into a wreck and the carwash would not care. However, the carwash can provide a service to clean the car which in turn can keep the car from rusting out and make it last longer.

So VSS doesn't really directly need defrag. It's just that VSS "dirties" the file system which in turn can eventually cause problems, not just for VSS but for the operation of anything reading and writing to the disk. Defrag addresses those issues. So, it would be more accurate to say that the filesystem needs defrag to run maintenance on occasion and VSS is a major contributor to that need.

What VSS does is amazing, but it also can be pretty complex to wrap your head around until you've studied it a while. I know that I personally only get this at a very high level . Below is a link explaining how VSS works. Take a quick glance. Don't worry about really understanding it for now. Simply note the number of moving parts involved and imagine how all this can create LOTS of metadata that has to be tracked in the filesystem, especially on a system where lots of data changes.

Slinky said:

@geneo @Try3 @hsehestedt

Guys.., either I'm missing something here or you're all ignoring that fact that Windows is also defragmenting my SSD. I'm not talking about 'Trimming', I have no problem with it 'Trimming' my SSD, I think we've all established long ago that this is normal behaviour but 'Defragging' as well?

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I was responding to your post #76 which had 2 feedback hub posts about RETRIM/OPTIMISE running everyday. Please don't take this the wrong way, but If they aren't relevant then don't post them.

@geneo

Point taken, it was 2.45 am so long past my bedtime. I think I was getting wrapped up in all the confusion in this post where people keep talking about 'Trim' which wasn't really the issue.

Okay, my final summary on the topic and then I will lay off the keyboard

The RETRIM operations and the defrags appear to be working as intended when a drive optimization on an SSD is run. There was a question regarding the frequency of the defrag operation. Initially I had wondered if there might be a bug causing defrag to run every time the RETRIM is performed (weekly). However, I performed a simple test - I simply manually ran an optimization multiple times and each time only the RETRIM was performed. That tells me that when an optimization is run it is definitely checking to see when the last defrag was run and not running it before its time. That makes it unlikely to be a bug. It really looks like a purposeful design consideration. At least that's what it looks like to me.

Slinky,

In filing away my notes about our exchanges, I found some articles that I'd completely forgotten about. Your problem symptom was reported for
- Windows 10 Version 2004 and was apparently corrected later on.
Defragger bug defrags SSD Drives too often [Ver 2004] - BleepingComputer
- Windows 8
Defragging SSDs a default - TechNet
- Windows 8-10
Why Windows 10 defragment your SSD and how you can avoid this - OTB
This article includes the suggestion that Event records are not merely misleadingly worded but actually false.

Summary - Windows has had bugs causing it to forget when it last did a defrag.

Denis

Try3 said:

Slinky,

In filing away my notes about our exchanges, I found some articles that I'd completely forgotten about. Your problem symptom was reported for
- Windows 10 Version 2004 and was apparently corrected later on.

Why Windows 10 defragment your SSD and how you can avoid this - OTB
This article includes the suggestion that Event records are not merely misleadingly worded but actually false.

Denis

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Praise be.., thanks Denis. If only we'd all seen that earlier. I feel I can rest a little easier now thanks

Try3 said:

Do bear these relationships in mind:-
1 VSS [volsnap] & backing up are intimately connected.
2 VSS [volsnap] & System restore up are intimately connected [apparently - I know nothing about System restore personally].
3 dfrgui.exe {the optimize-defrag UI}, defrag.exe {i.e the thing that does the work on behalf of that UI} & defragsvc are intimately connected.

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Sorry things moved on too quick to reply..!

Yes I do understand the relationship between the above now that it's been so expertly explained, thank you :)

@hsehestedt whilst I don't fully understand the whole conversation I do appreciate the car wash analogy, I understood that very well :)

Slinky said:

@geneo

Point taken, it was 2.45 am so long past my bedtime. I think I was getting wrapped up in all the confusion in this post where people keep talking about 'Trim' which wasn't really the issue.

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It has been going on for a while. I should probably not have jumped in again.

@geneo Thanks I've only been here a few days so still learning forum etiquette :) I'll try not to go off topic again.

@KevTech

Sorry I've rather hogged your original post lately but if it helps any, I've just had a private chat with @Try3 and mentioned the following which might help, hopefully.

Hi Denis, I'm just in the midst of reading the article you linked to and this has raised one question which might be useful. As mentioned earlier I upgraded to W11 on the 12/12/21, during that time my SSD probably got quite fragmented by the installation but probably of most interest is the fact that I also used the disk clean-up tool on C-Drive (SSD) after about 14 days. I did this because the Windows.Old folder was not deleted as expected after the 10 days initial roll-back period. Admittedly I could have left it but it was taking up around 9 gigs which seemed wasteful. Presumably that's why disk defragmenter and trim was running on my SSD drive daily until the process had completed successfully. If you recall I also mentioned that this daily behaviour has ceased since the 31/12/21. Incidentally I just check event viewer again using your handy xml. custom view (thanks or that) and the log is still showing the 31st as the last date defrag ran :)

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Hopefully this could be the cause of your symptoms also, many of us have upgraded to Windows 11 recently so maybe it's just a glitch in the upgrade process perhaps?

Update - I backed up Win 11 then loaded my Win 10 image to test and so far Win 10 is operating as intended.
Scheduled Defrag task is running weekly but defrag and retrim are not running weekly. Last retrim was done 8 days ago. On win 11 this would only go 5 days as per my event viewer pics in the thread then be back to 0 so something has been changed by MS in Win 11 or ???

I am going to run 10 for a while and see if this goes to around 30 days before defrag/retrim happen again.
But so far yes the task still runs weekly as set but defrag/retrim are not occuring every time the task runs.

@KevTech
I'm glad to see you're having some success reverting back to Windows 10. Unfortunately it seems my earlier celebrations were short lived, Windows Event Viewer is showing 2 new entries for 06/01/22 Defrag & Trim both completed successfully on C-Drive (SSD). Oddly my other two HDD's were not mentioned this time around in the event viewer.

Like you I can only keep an eye on this now and see if the frequency changes over the next few weeks. Failing that there is a possible work-around mentioned previously by @Try3. See this article written by Vadim Sterkin for instructions:

Why Windows 10 defragment your SSD and how you can avoid this - OTB

I haven't tried this myself yet but it looks easy enough.

@KevTech

Okay so I had a few moments to spare and decided to follow the work-around mentioned above. If you haven't read it yourself yet it's a two step procedure...

Step 1 — Exclude SSD from automatic maintenance​

Step 2 — Create a new scheduled task for SSD retrim​

Step 2 in particular will have you do the following: (don't do this without reading the full article)!!

1. Open Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc) and navigate to Library — Microsoft — Windows — Defrag.
2. Right-click the ScheduledDefrag task and export it with the name TRIM-SSD on your Desktop.
3. Open the XML-file in a text editor (e.g. Notepad) and change the description and arguments. In particular, the «Arguments» node must list only SSD drive letters and -l -h switches (TRIM and high priority respectively).

Although I found editing the .xml script a little confusing to begin with, i.e. I had one extra line of code not mentioned in this article I soon realised it could safely be deleted. There is also an example of the script which makes it easier to understand.

Having completed the above steps and imported the new 'TRIM-SSD' task back into the task schedular I then setup a weekly schedule for the task to run. I then right clicked the task and chose run, just to make sure it worked. Sure enough Windows Event viewer showed a new entry at precisely the same time indicating that a 'Retrim' had just been done on Drive-C (SSD)

Likewise the Task Schedular also indicated that the task had completed and would next run in 7 days, RESULT!!

Here's a few screenshots to help demonstrate:

Slinky said:

I had one extra line of code not mentioned in this article

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Don't worry. I know what that URI line does and it's not a problem.

Denis

Try3 said:

Don't worry. I know what that URI line does and it's not a problem.

Denis

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Thanks for confirming that Denis You and this article have been a huge help