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It is a laptop. The Piriform states that I have 452 GB total which I am using 57 GB. Therefore , the HD is not overloaded at all.
Maybe you misunderstood. I never meant the hard drive was out of space. What I meant was that maybe your hard drive is not working mechanically as well as it should be. That is just one possibility if you are suffering performance issues. There are some free utilities out that you can run to check it. They may or may not help. I do not know enough about your laptop to tell you exactly what may be wrong (if anything). There are many other factors.
aside from being a waste of time, is there any danger from defragging an ssd ?
Firstly, it's pointless. Secondly, SSD's have limited amount of write capability, every time you write data to one you are taking a little more off it's life. They are designed to utilize blocks of memory equally so you don't end up with part of the drive dead. I would imagine by default it's going to be highly fragmented.
Also note you should not use any wiping tools on them made for HDD's, they have built in tools for this and it takes mere seconds.
I don't think I have defragged a hard drive in over 10 years. Whenever I open up the defragger program in Windows it says my drives are 0% fragmented. I would think you need to do a significant amount of adding and deleting files for it to become fragmented.
You shouldn't defrag a SSD because mainly, the defragging tools do not understand the technology used within this type of drive and can do more harm then good. That said, even if a defrag application supports SSD defrag operation (typically pro versions), I have yet to see an evidence of any serious improvement from doing so.
The old school IDE/SATA drives with platters did benefit from periodic defragmentation.
But the proper procedure (imho) was to:
- Disable screensaver/active desktop
- Delete all temp/junk file plus prefetch directory (if applicable)
- Disable pagefile (virtual memory)
- Disable all startup processes, especially real-time, system resource heavy ones like AV scanners (msconfig > Boot > Safe Mode works really nice)
- Lastly, before running defrag, schedule and run Scandisk (CheckDisk)
- Run Defrag (don't forget to re-enable pagefile and any other disabled startup processes before rebooting)
Now, which drive you should NEVER run defrag on: any type of drive with encryption software on it!
That ime, is a big No-No.
Defraggler is a cool tool. I actually have its Pro version (Pro bundle of CCleaner, Recuva, etc.).
It does show and defrag SSD drives by default so I believe it supports it but I wouldn't run it.
The one I have been using for years and would easily recommend: AusLogics Disk Defrag (free)
Another really good one is SlimCleaner (free, multi-tool).
If you decide to check out SlimCleaner, download it from their site, not from Download.com which I really dislike (see screenshot).
There are 3 main variables that typically effect drive fragmentation:
- Type of drive
- The way you use the computer (installing/uninstalling, moving/deleting/copying, etc.)
- The hard drive's cluster configuration (size; larger the clusters the more likely to fragment, especially when data is moved around)
Last edited by TurcoLoco; 04-01-2016 at 01:23 PM..
I don't think I have defragged a hard drive in over 10 years. Whenever I open up the defragger program in Windows it says my drives are 0% fragmented. I would think you need to do a significant amount of adding and deleting files for it to become fragmented.
Have you checked the schedule? This is scheduled by default on any windows machine. I think they started that with Vista.
I don't think I have defragged a hard drive in over 10 years. Whenever I open up the defragger program in Windows it says my drives are 0% fragmented. I would think you need to do a significant amount of adding and deleting files for it to become fragmented.
Windows defrags on a schedule, you haven't done it but your OS has.
For those of you still clinging to the mantra of not defragging SSD's, you might want to do a bit of reading, it is not the giant no-no it's made out to be.
Thanks to all that have replied to my question. I took advice and did download Auslogics defragger and it was much much quicker than Piraform. I am not a computer person and use it mostly for surfing and keeping up with people. Also, because of my work, I was dragged into the MS PC world from owning only Macs. Just trying to run cleaners and anti malware stuff and trying to keep my laptop computer from being corrupted. Thanks again for all the comments. :-)
Thanks to all that have replied to my question. I took advice and did download Auslogics defragger and it was much much quicker than Piraform. I am not a computer person and use it mostly for surfing and keeping up with people. Also, because of my work, I was dragged into the MS PC world from owning only Macs. Just trying to run cleaners and anti malware stuff and trying to keep my laptop computer from being corrupted. Thanks again for all the comments. :-)
My personal opinion, keep the third party junk to a minimum. Windows is perfectly capable of defragging itself, using a 3rd party tool serves no useful purpose. If you for some reason feel the unrelenting need to use a 3rd party defrag tool, make very certain that you disable the scheduled run for the Windows defragger.
My personal opinion, keep the third party junk to a minimum. Windows is perfectly capable of defragging itself, using a 3rd party tool serves no useful purpose. If you for some reason feel the unrelenting need to use a 3rd party defrag tool, make very certain that you disable the scheduled run for the Windows defragger.
Agree 100%. I do run Defraggler, but my use case is unique and doesn't apply to the average end user.
Most end users have no business running tools like CC cleaner either.
My personal opinion, keep the third party junk to a minimum. Windows is perfectly capable of defragging itself, using a 3rd party tool serves no useful purpose. If you for some reason feel the unrelenting need to use a 3rd party defrag tool, make very certain that you disable the scheduled run for the Windows defragger.
I sort of agree and the reason for that is certain 3rd party apps do a much better job than what is (if at all) included in Windows. Windows disk defrag tool is adequate for the most part but far from great so I could see the inclination of some people to want to use something else.
That said, one thing I neglected to mention in my lost and typo-ridden post was, a 3rd-party defrag tool doesn't need to be installed, especially on the same partition as Windows.
I typically use the tool from a flash drive, that way it does a more unbiased job. If the defrag application doesn't have a portable version, install it then copy the program folder to a USB flash or external drive and then uninstall the application from Windows.
Again, a defrag tool doesn't have to be installed. Less application installed means less bloated Windows registry and a much leaner, faster, error-free system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skunk Workz
Most end users have no business running tools like CC cleaner either.
I agree to disagree.
...or, I should say, I do not see the logic behind this. A temp/junk file cleaner, especially one as reputable as CCleaner (using default settings) should hardly warrant any concerns.
Using registry cleaner function is a different story though.
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