How do I address Windows' file system fragmentation on SSDs?

TairikuOkami · Jul 21, 2023

Brink said:
You can use the usual optimize feature below built-in to Windows. It'll automatically TRIM SSDs.

I prefer manufacturer's or 3rd party tool. Windows defragmented SSDs twice, it is only a matter of time before it will do it again, just like LSA bug. They have some bad leftovers in the code regarding it, it was not designed with SSD in mind, they are merely patching it up.

cheaterslick · Jul 21, 2023

I've never defragged an SSD and only have TRIM set automatically. And that's it as far as fragmentation goes. Easy peasy.

I wouldn't admonish the original OP too much. I don't think that's really fair and maybe he only recently upgraded to SSDs from HDDs and didn't know about it. I've asked about things like that in the past that 'everybody' (except me) knows about, mostly because I wasn't aware of it.

rockyanexp · Jul 21, 2023

The rush of defraging hdd to make os fast....
Just let the os take care of ssd. Period.

MilesAhead · Jul 21, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
I prefer manufacturer's or 3rd party tool. Windows defragmented SSDs twice, it is only a matter of time before it will do it again, just like LSA bug. They have some bad leftovers in the code regarding it, it was not designed with SSD in mind, they are merely patching it up.

For me personally I am on a laptop and only have external SSD connected when I do backups. Sometimes Macrium would show Gbs+ transfer rates and other times only in the 300 to 500 Mbs range. This is for incremental backups so it seems to be worth it to run trim when indicated as it only takes about 30 seconds. If the AData utility shows health degradation then I would search for a new strategy or get new SSDs.

hsehestedt · Jul 21, 2023

Another cause for performance dropping on an SSD is if either of these conditions occur:

1) You have an SSD that has no cache.
2) Your SSD does have a cache, but you are writing a significant amount of data which exhausts the capacity of the cache.

hsehestedt · Jul 21, 2023

MilesAhead said:
This is for incremental backups so it seems to be worth it to run trim when indicated as it only takes about 30 seconds.

Bear in mind that what you see in Windows is NOT an indication of how long TRIM takes. Windows sends reTRIM information (also known as hints) to the SSD. It does this rapidly because it is simply sending the hints to the drive. The actual TRIM operations happen thereafter but you will see no visible indication of this.

Flashorn · Jul 21, 2023

Dark Knight said:
ARPANET

If anyone is interested in a little bit of history or have the time, here are some facts:

ARPANET - Wikipedia

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MisterEd said:
The Internet

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TOR Network

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I learned this when I was in college. Mostly accurate.

pparks1 · Jul 21, 2023

hsehestedt said:
Another cause for performance dropping on an SSD is if either of these conditions occur:

1) You have an SSD that has no cache.
2) Your SSD does have a cache, but you are writing a significant amount of data which exhausts the capacity of the cache.

Also the type of drive that you have. For example, the newer QLC drives (quad level cells), offer higher capacities, but are not as performant as MLC (multi-layer cells). The QLC' also have less endurance.

Flashorn · Jul 21, 2023

hsehestedt said:
Another cause for performance dropping on an SSD is if either of these conditions occur:

1) You have an SSD that has no cache.
2) Your SSD does have a cache, but you are writing a significant amount of data which exhausts the capacity of the cache.

I have one Samsung T7 connected as a Storage device because this notebook only came with one nvme drive.
Since I can remember, I have always went into Policies tab for the connected external drives in Device Manager
and activated the Better Performance policy for that particular drive. Did not check mark the Windows Buffer.
You do get a few more MB/s transfer speed but, nothing to write home about. This was good for HDDs and
USB drives. SSDs well, not so sure but, I still do it. Never did it for the primary drive.

MilesAhead · Jul 21, 2023

hsehestedt said:
Bear in mind that what you see in Windows is NOT an indication of how long TRIM takes. Windows sends reTRIM information (also known as hints) to the SSD. It does this rapidly because it is simply sending the hints to the drive. The actual TRIM operations happen thereafter but you will see no visible indication of this.

The 1TB SSD seems to do it automatically after the backup stops. It takes about 30 seconds. Likewise when I plug it in if I backup right away without waiting for the access light to stop I tend to get the slow write speed. When the optimize is done using the AData app I do not remember getting a "slow" write speed of less than a Gbs. Usually it is at least 1.5 Gbs, sometimes in the 2.5 Gbs range during sections of the backup. I tried one optimize on the system SSD. It did not seem to hurt anything. I did not venture into the move categories of files around system optimization. Likely there is not much to gain for the risk.

Maybe one of these days I will put some portable apps on the external SSDs to try them out. Maybe a browser or something. But I am in no hurry.

hdmi · Jul 22, 2023

MilesAhead said:
The 1TB SSD seems to do it automatically after the backup stops. It takes about 30 seconds. Likewise when I plug it in if I backup right away without waiting for the access light to stop I tend to get the slow write speed. When the optimize is done using the AData app I do not remember getting a "slow" write speed of less than a Gbs. Usually it is at least 1.5 Gbs, sometimes in the 2.5 Gbs range during sections of the backup. I tried one optimize on the system SSD. It did not seem to hurt anything. I did not venture into the move categories of files around system optimization. Likely there is not much to gain for the risk.

Maybe one of these days I will put some portable apps on the external SSDs to try them out. Maybe a browser or something. But I am in no hurry.

Probably it's just moving your data from the SLC cache over to the QLC NAND

hdmi · Jul 22, 2023

hsehestedt said:
Bear in mind that what you see in Windows is NOT an indication of how long TRIM takes. Windows sends reTRIM information (also known as hints) to the SSD. It does this rapidly because it is simply sending the hints to the drive. The actual TRIM operations happen thereafter but you will see no visible indication of this.

Windows doesn't send retrim information to the SSD. Retrim literally just means to trim again─the commands that get sent to the SSD are the same trim commands because a retrim command simply doesn't exist in the hardware spec.

hsehestedt · Jul 22, 2023

hdmi said:
Windows doesn't send retrim information to the SSD. Retrim literally just means to trim again─the commands that get sent to the SSD are the same trim commands because a retrim command simply doesn't exist in the hardware spec.

Correct. ReTRIM is not a separate command, it's just the same TRIM commands indicating that these blocks that should have already been TRIMmed and serving as a hint or reminder to the drive to TRIM anything in that list that has not already been TRIMmed. You will just sometimes see it referred to as reTRIM because it's not a TRIM that is taking place at the moment a block is deallocated.

MilesAhead · Jul 22, 2023

Another bit of info. I have Macrium set to "write directly to the device" rather than "use the file system."

Does anyone know if SSD reading uses some heuristic such as read some number of sectors/clusters even if the file read is only one byte? Maybe defragmentation would tend to use the read ahead info better than if it was fragmented? IOW the sectors read would have a higher probability of being from the same file? Just wondering.