Disable Defragmentation on SSD on Windows


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A Solid State Drive or SSD is a relatively new kind of drive, which consists of an array of flash memory modules similar to a flash drive. This means that when data is written to the SSD, it cannot be over-written in place and must be written elsewhere until the block can be garbage collected – i.e. they can be written to at a byte level but need to erased at a block level.

In Windows 7, Microsoft had turned off defragmentation for Solid State Disks. In Windows 8 however, since the Disk Defragmenter tool has undergone a change into a general disk optimization tool, you will see it enabled by default for SSDs too. In this scenario, where an SSD is present, the improved disk optimization tool sends ‘TRIM’ hints for the entire volume. A traditional defrag is not performed on SSDs in Windows 8.

For example, Windows Vista and Windows 7 both have a built-in defragmenter which is scheduled to run automatically.

To turn off the built-in Windows defragmenter, go to the Start menu and type "defrag" into the search box, and open Disk Defragmenter.

Inside Disk Drafragmenter, click on "Configure Schedule" and uncheck "Run on a Schedule".

Disable Defragmentation on SSD

Disable Defragmentation on SSD

You therefore really do not need to disable defrag for Solid State Drives in Windows 8. Nevertheless, if you would like to disable Windows defragmentation for Solid State Drive, you can do so as follows:

Disable Defragmentation on SSD

Disable Defragmentation on SSD

NOTE: you will still need to disable defragmentation even on Windows 8 if you happen to have a RAID SSD setup; Windows 8 thinks that Raid SSDs are HDDs and continues to attempt to defragment them including with the default schedule; this will dramatically decrease the life of the SSDs.