Defragging an SSD

I saw on another thread that defragging an SSD can waste writes and shorten the life span (here by Thrax). Does that mean we should disable the built in Windows auto degrag to stop the hard drive from degrading?

Can we still expect an SSD to outlast a traditional mechanical drive?

Any information on the above would be most welcome.

Defragging is a way to speed up Disk access and transfer speeds. SSD's are practically instant no matter where the information is stored.

My question is whether Defragging is still just as important with SSD's?

Solid state disks use NAND memory. NAND memory has a limited number of write cycles, or a limited number of times data may be reliably written to the disk. Once the write cycles of a NAND cell have been used up, data can no longer reliably be written or read.

Defragmentation deliberately moves data from one section of the drive and writes it to another section of the drive to make contiguous blocks of data. Every bit of data that gets moved to create this pointless contiguous block is a wasted write cycle for every NAND cell that's touched by the defrag.

What's more, SSDs intentionally fragment data with a process known as "wear leveling." Wear leveling breaks writes up and puts them on separate cells so no one cell ever receives more strain than another.

Because of the nature of SSDs (electrical vs. mechanical), fragmentation means diddly because every NAND cell can be accessed at the same speed.

Don't defrag. Turn all excess writes off: Background defragging, indexing service, DOS 8.3 names, last accessed timestamps, etc.

For more information on SSDs, I wrote a piece last year that outlines all their peculiarities and benefits: Read it here.

Thanks thrax - I knew about wear leveling but wasnt aware that it went so far as to break up the files to do so. You answered my question about defrag

That explains it, thank you! (btw, excellent article you wrote Thrax).

I've disabled most of the services you suggest, but what would disabling DOS 8.3 names do, and how would I go about doing this?

HERE is how.