Optimizing Solid State Drives (SSD)
Optimizing Solid State Drives – Defrag an SSD or Not?
SSDs (Solid State Drives) were a long-awaited upgrade in PC storage solutions. Traditional hard drives have existed for almost 70 years, and have been used in PCs for more than 40.
Naturally, this technology is getting stepped over by a new, modern solution that fits the needs of today’s PC users much better.
SSDs have gained a ton of popularity recently due to their many advantages over traditional HDDs. Let’s take a look at some of them.
What’s the Difference?
The first and most obvious difference is in the physical structure. Unlike HDDs, SSDs have no moving parts. This alone brings a ton of benefits. First of all, they’re far less prone to mechanical failures. For an HDD, the read-write arm and head need to work very hard to perform their functions.
This leads to them wearing out with time, an inevitable consequence of material fatigue. The longer it takes these parts to do their job, the longer it takes for various programs to run. This includes the OS itself.
On the other hand, SSDs use microchips to store information. There’s a high chance that you’ve used a USB flash drive at some point. Well, SSDs work in pretty much the same way, except for the faster flash memory and far more capable controller section. Reading and storing information is much faster, so SSDs can work up to 20 times faster than HDDs.
However, it’s not all good news. Even though they’re less prone to wearing out than HDDs, SDDs can still experience a severe performance drop at some point. The reason for this is a limited number of write cycles. After they’ve stored a certain amount of information, they start losing their ability to retain the data.
Another potential drawback is the way that old files are deleted when you write new ones. With an HDD, you can write new data on top of old without removing it first. SDDs need to erase old information first before you can store new data onto those sectors.
The number of these freed sections decreases with time, so your SSD might have significant performance issues after you’ve had it for a while. Still, SSDs are much more powerful than HDDs.
A huge difference between these technologies is the maintenance requirement. While it’s recommended to defragment HDDs on a regular basis, this might not be a good idea with SSDs.
Should You Defragment an SSD?
Unfortunately, the answer to this question isn’t as simple as it is with the HDDs. HDDs need to be defragmented on a regular basis for your PC to perform at its best.
However, this isn’t the case with SDDs, at least not in the traditional way. Many people argue that SSDs don’t become fragmented. This of course isn’t the case, even though it takes longer to fragment an SSD compared to an HHD.
Still, the built-in Windows defragmentation app may be ineffective to the point of potentially harming your SDD. The reason for this is that defragmentation performs a ton of mini-writes, and we’ve already established that the number of writes is finite with SDDs.
This means that defragmentation can shorten the lifespan of your drive if you use traditional defragmentation methods.
However, since the release of Windows 10, Microsoft has addressed this issue by modifying the way that drives are defragmented. The updated software isn’t as much of a defragmenter as it’s an all-around optimization method.
Whether you should use it or not is still a hot topic, since many techies disagree on this. While some argue for defragmenting SSDs, many argue against.
Thankfully, there’s a solution that can help you stop wondering whether you should optimize your SSD?
What Is the Best Way to Optimize an SSD?
To adapt to new technologies, many companies have rolled out new optimization solutions. System Mechanic by iolo is a great example of this, since it features a number of tools that are up to date with the latest PC components.
Aside from many features that can restore corrupted HDDs, such as AcceleWrite and Drive Accelerator, System Mechanic (System Mechanic Professional as well) contains tools that can ensure proper SSD optimization.
PC Cleanup PowerTool is the best example of this. In no more than one click, it can help you remove all the clutter that has built up over time and leave more space on your SSD, which can prolong its life.
It features algorithms that can detect junk files pretty much wherever they are, so that they can be safely removed without causing any harm to the SDD. It cleans junk from browsers, online chat platforms, and virtually all other places where unnecessary files may build up.
The process isn’t the same as defragmentation, but the end result is the same. Your SSD will have more room to store information, and Windows will be able to communicate with it much faster. And since SSDs are inherently lightning fast, this tool can bring them up to optimum performance.
The Final Word
So, to sum up – No, you shouldn’t defragment your SSD but optimize it instead. To do this, you need a solution that is suitable for the architecture of SSDs and the way they store information.
If you’ve already defragmented your SSD, there shouldn’t be any reason to worry unless you’ve done it countless times in frequent intervals. In any event, SSDs are famous for their durability, so it’s not that easy to shorten their lifespan to an appreciate amount.
Still, it might be a good idea to stop doing it due to the issues discussed above. Instead, consider a solution such as iolo’s System Mechanic. It’s user-friendly, very capable, and can ensure that your SSD performs at its best without any impact on its life.
Aside from this, System Mechanic contains a wide variety of other tools that deal with performance issues. If this is something that you’ve been struggling it, this software package can be a great comprehensive solution.
