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Does undo and delete create a fragmented disc drive?


KSband

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I used to defrag hard drives monthly and have never had any files affected in any way. Currently have all my project files exclusively on a spinner HD which I  still defrag yearly with no issues. I don't use the OS defrag but a more detailed third party application instead. At the kernal level the functionality is the same, but the housekeeping is much better.

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1 hour ago, KSband said:

Wondering if this is a problem. I haven't defragmented in a long time because last time I did it relocated my project files and nothing would work in Cakewalk, a real pain to fix.

If you have an SSD, then do not defrag (reduces its lifespan).

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Storage is relatively cheap now. SSD drive can act up after so many writes and deletes. 
Samsung has an app the Magician that can test your drives including their speed and health. 
I had a 3 year old drive acting up as between audio and video editing it was slowing down from all that use. It was less than half full. 
For $48 each I bought 2- 500 GB drives and used the Magician to clone both my C drive and the dying data drive. Super cheap and easy upgrade. I couldn’t believe how perky the computer became. The cloning process took under an hour for both. 
 

I am going to make this a routine  every 2 years now for my “Working” data drive. 
The old drive I will leave the data on it will becomes a 3rd storage backup. The old 3rd drive goes in a shoebox.

Much later after I determined the 2 new drives were good to go I took he old drives and formatted them using the slow method. When I tested them again they were now running at about 80 % of specs. So I used them as extra data drive for backups in another computer. 
I haven’t defragged a drive since W7. I wasn’t even aware you could do that in W10. 

Edited by John Vere
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W8 - W10 introduced "system optimization" tasks which defrag, clean up old update files (sometimes), attempt repair on cross-sector file corruptions, etc etc not sure if W11 has similar tasks running - but since i'm all SSD now, i put that on my to-do list...

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actually just checking and i just disabled the defrag job... then again defragging SSD/NVME drives helps support the industry by making people call for help and buying new drives and systems... ? so, yeah, smart...

image.png.8dfd12f18f1abfe45ff9673b0ec615a9.png

Edited by Glenn Stanton
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@Glenn Stanton    In you screenshot it doesn't show the whole pathway. So I couldn't find your location shown.  This is W11 but I then opened  my W10 computer and seems the same. 

So I typed Defrag into Search and it opens Optimize Drives and then the dialogue below and you can see it's been busy! 

Screenshot(365).png.a4773eed027ba54a5034233c97fd740b.png

I opened change settings and unchecked the box-Run on Schedule.

Thanks for pointing this out.  

I'll use the Magician to manage the drives as needed. Now my C drive and D drive are both 1TB M2 drives. Not sure if they are majorly different than the original style  of SSD other than being smaller and faster. 

 

Screenshot(366).png.bf1c84f6e347cc0307041db6b74df22c.png

Edited by John Vere
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3 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Seeing "retrim" in your sreenshot made me do some Googling. Had never actually taken the time to research much about SSDs. Haven't read the whole thing, but found this article to be accessible and nicely illustrated:

https://www.techspot.com/article/2600-ssd-trimming-explained/

thanks! it is good to understand that SSD/NVME do not have rotational constraints, so the HD defrag is quite different than simply erasing older sections of the disk once they content is written somewhere.

 https://www.cs.emory.edu/~cheung/Courses/377/Syllabus/1-files/intro-disk.html

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no, i would leave the defrag tasks "off" as i'm not so sure Windows is smart enough to simply enable "trimming" vs trying to create contiguous file arrangements. 

edit: supposedly the Windows "optimize" processing does a TRIM on SSD -- but for some reason the "defrag" task is still there. 

see https://www.pcworld.com/article/406367/when-to-check-defrag-and-optimize-storage-devices.html

and since the MS learn site seems to think defrag is run as "defrag" i would leave it off.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/defrag

Edited by Glenn Stanton
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I didn’t find the defrag toggle just that optimize dialogue I posted above.
According to the article @David Baay posted they recommended you leave it on. 
I tend to not mess to much with Windows defaults unless I’m dead sure it’s going to make a difference. And I plan on replacing my Main Data drive every 2 years anyhow. Drives are not expensive anymore.  

If you look at my screen shot you see that my drive management is all activities are using the Main Data drive which is the 1 TB M2 drive.

Then libraries and Exported files go to either the Audio Drive or the Video drive which also contain backups of important stuff.
They are 500 GB and will also be upgraded with in the next 2 years.

Extra Backup is both cloud and external but I could stick another SSD in there easily just haven’t gotten around to it. 

Edited by John Vere
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