Before the arrival of SSDs, HDD hard drives were the main storage method used by all computers, a unit that we had to regularly defrag to place all the data stored inside in an orderly manner and for Windows to take less time. time to access it. .
A mechanical hard drive consists of a physical disk on which data is read and written via a head. With the arrival of SSDs, everything changed since information was no longer stored in digital format, without any type of mechanical element.
By its operation, Windows does not need to organize the data stored in it to be able to access it quickly, since they are all accessible in the same way, which does not happen with mechanical HDD units, of so there is really no need to defrag them. In fact, Windows does not allow us to perform this operation, the only thing we can do is optimize its operation.
Can an SSD be defragmented?
When we install Windows on any computer, it automatically recognizes the type of drive we have installed. Depending on its type, when we separate it from the old Drive Defragmentation (now called Drive Optimizer), it will allow us Analyze Yes To optimise the device or only To optimise its operation.
In the case of HDD units, as we can see in the image above, by selecting the hard drive represented by unit D, this allows us Analyze Yes To optimise its operation. However, if we select the SSD disk, the only thing we can do is To optimise its operation.
Windows does not offer us the possibility of defragmenting SSD disks for the simple reason that they are not made of mobile disks. The data stored on SSDs is all the same distance away, to put it simply. What we should do periodically is perform optimization periodically.
When we optimize an SSD, Windows takes care of freeing the garbage that accumulates on the unit by removing traces of files to know, at any time, how much space it has to store information. Windows allows us to carry out this process manually and automatically, this second option being the most recommended if we want our SSD to always work at maximum performance.
Automatically optimize the operation of an SSD
If we want our SSD to always work in the best possible way, we must plan its optimization periodically. When planning its optimization, we must take into account how we use our equipment. To carry out this process we must access the Drive Optimizer application through the Windows search box.
In the Scheduled Optimization section, click the Modify the parameters. In the window below we check the box Scheduled execution and in Frequency, we select how often we want this process to be carried out. We can also choose if we want the optimization to be performed on all Units from the PC or only in those that we select.
If we usually work with a large number of files, the waste that accumulates is very large, so we must reduce the periodicity of optimization to a minimum, which is daily. The other two options we can also configure for Windows to optimize the operation of our SSD unit on a weekly and monthly basis, the latter being the ideal option for users who use the computer sporadically to watch movies, documents, check email, view social networks and more.
