If you find an SSD optimization program that claims to defragment your SSD for maximum performance, stay away. Solid-state drives have a limited amount of writes in them, and anything that results in many needless additional writes will decrease the life span of your drive.
It doesn’t matter where the file is on the drive or how many pieces it’s in, it will take the same amount of time to read the file.ĭefragmentation is actually bad for a solid-state drive, as it will add additional wear.
A solid-state drive doesn’t have a head or any other moving parts. If these files are broken up into multiple pieces in multiple places on the platter, the head will have to move around to read the file - that’s why fragmentation slows mechanical drive down and why defragmentation helps - the head doesn’t need to move as much. On a traditional mechanical drive, there’s a single head that moves over a spinning platter to read bits of files. Good, up-to-date disk defragmentation software should refuse to defragment SSDs. Modern operating systems like Windows 7 and Windows 8 won’t attempt to defragment SSDs. Solid-state drives shouldn’t be defragmented.
Stay Away From Programs That Claim to “Defragment” Your Solid State Drive
