[SOLVED] 3 Questions about SSD/Hard Drive

[xxxbabyxxx]

Hello,
I have the following Drives:

C: SSD + NVMe
D: SSD + SATA
E & F: External Hard Drive, USB 3.0
G: External SSD, USB 3.0

Question #1:
I was told before that I should " NEVER defrag SSD" however looking at Defraggler it shows that 2 of my SSDs have high fragmentation, just out of curiousity is this normal? and should I do anything about it?

Question #2:
My SSD NVMe was on 92% "Health" few days ago, right now it's at 90% and that is scaring me.. I've had drives for years that always remained 100%. I've had this NVMe for only 11 months now.

Is this normal? should I be worried? can I fix it somehow? what should I do?

Question #3:
For some reason, my G: (external SSD USB 3.0) drive is set as "Removable (exFAT)" whilst the rest are NTFS, is this okay? should I change it?

• Note that I have all these plugged the whole time as I use them for different purposes.
• I never tried to defrag any SSD as I was told to not do that.
• I do/did defrag the external hard drives from time to time, as I use them for large video storage (shadowplay 10 minutes 60 fps videos)
• My Entire computer and parts and everything is brand new and only 11 months old. (External Hard drives E&F are few years old but they are working perfectly)

Thank you in advance!♥

 

[rgd1101]

1)don't use defrag on ssd
2)the only way is to stop using it
3)look like that how you format the external. it is working now?

 

[USAFRet]

1. Leave 'Defraggler' alone. Any recent Windows OS handles management of an SSD all by itself.
2. Need MUCH more info on this change from 92% to 90%.
3. Need more info on the drive and how it is connected.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Question #1:
I was told before that I should " NEVER defrag SSD" however looking at Defraggler it shows that 2 of my SSDs have high fragmentation, just out of curiousity is this normal? and should I do anything about it?

Correct, you should never defrag an SSD. Defragging causes excess writes and you gain little, if any benefit from it.

Fragmentation in the basic definition is data from files that are not together. This is common to happen with SSDs because of the nature of wear leveling and TRIM. However, since SSDs have much better "random access" performance than hard drives, fragmentation has no practical performance impact. Also, even with hard drives, the way they're commanded in how to pick up data now makes fragmentation even less of a problem. I forget where I read it, but a modern HDD needs well over 50% fragmentation before there's a noticeable performance impact.

Question #2:
My SSD NVMe was on 92% "Health" few days ago, right now it's at 90% and that is scaring me.. I've had drives for years that always remained 100%. I've had this NVMe for only 11 months now.

Is this normal? should I be worried? can I fix it somehow? what should I do?

You'll need to actually examine its SMART data and other stats to see what's going on. For all I know, it weighed some stat more than another and that one stat happened to increment 1 point.

Question #3:
For some reason, my G: (external SSD USB 3.0) drive is set as "Removable (exFAT)" whilst the rest are NTFS, is this okay? should I change it?

exFAT and NTFS are file systems. exFAT is designed more for removable storage while NTFS is designed more for internal storage, though using NTFS on external storage isn't a problem either.

Note you can't change file systems without reformatting the drive. Which means wiping the data.

 

[xxxbabyxxx]

1)don't use defrag on ssd
2)the only way is to stop using it
3)look like that how you format the external. it is working now?

Thank you for replying:
For #3:
I've recently bought this external SSD, I've got few games installed on it and that's it, but today I noticed that the format is different where all of them are NTFS and that one isn't.
Do you suggest changing it? I always have it plugged and i am installing games there and using it for that purpose pretty much.

For #2: Well that is where my OS is installed, I am just worried because I've got no idea what caused it to not be 100% and I am sure it was higher than 90% few days ago :/

 

[xxxbabyxxx]

1. Leave 'Defraggler' alone. Any recent Windows OS handles management of an SSD all by itself.
2. Need MUCH more info on this change from 92% to 90%.
3. Need more info on the drive and how it is connected.

Thank you for replying!

1. Okay, does that mean I can & should still use defraggler for the external hard drives that aren't SSDs? would that be okay? like my E & F Drives.
2. I honestly got no idea, I was pretty sure that it was above 90% few days ago, I wanted to screenshot it tonight and I noticed its at 90% :/
3. All of my drives are connected to a USB 3.0 Hub, which is connected to my motherboard. I've got no more USB 3.0 ports on my PC to support all of my drives.

For some reason it won't show up in CrystalDiskInfo to give you information on it but.. this is what I bought https://pcandparts.com/hp-p500-1tb-external-portable-usb-ssd/

 

[USAFRet]

Thank you for replying!

1. Okay, does that mean I can & should still use defraggler for the external hard drives that aren't SSDs? would that be okay? like my E & F Drives.
2. I honestly got no idea, I was pretty sure that it was above 90% few days ago, I wanted to screenshot it tonight and I noticed its at 90% :/
3. All of my drives are connected to a USB 3.0 Hub, which is connected to my motherboard. I've got no more USB 3.0 ports on my PC to support all of my drives.

For some reason it won't show up in CrystalDiskInfo to give you information on it but.. this is what I bought https://pcandparts.com/hp-p500-1tb-external-portable-usb-ssd/

1. Defraggler is cute, but NOT really necessary.
2. Drive type, size, current consumed space, amount of TBW...none of which is visible in your pic

 

[xxxbabyxxx]

Correct, you should never defrag an SSD. Defragging causes excess writes and you gain little, if any benefit from it.

Fragmentation in the basic definition is data from files that are not together. This is common to happen with SSDs because of the nature of wear leveling and TRIM. However, since SSDs have much better "random access" performance than hard drives, fragmentation has no practical performance impact. Also, even with hard drives, the way they're commanded in how to pick up data now makes fragmentation even less of a problem. I forget where I read it, but a modern HDD needs well over 50% fragmentation before there's a noticeable performance impact.


You'll need to actually examine its SMART data and other stats to see what's going on. For all I know, it weighed some stat more than another and that one stat happened to increment 1 point.


exFAT and NTFS are file systems. exFAT is designed more for removable storage while NTFS is designed more for internal storage, though using NTFS on external storage isn't a problem either.

Note you can't change file systems without reformatting the drive. Which means wiping the data.

Thank you for the detailed reply
I'd have to keep an eye on my C: which became 90% because I am not really sure how and why that happened.

As for your last line, does that mean I should maybe consider making my G: drive NTFS since it's always plugged in? I am using it to Install STEAM LIBRARY GAMES even! so it needs to be always ready uninterrupted as I'd never plug it out!
or should I leave it as exFAT? what do you suggest in this scenario? I didn't change anything it just came like that out of the box

 

[USAFRet]

As for your last line, does that mean I should maybe consider making my G: drive NTFS since it's always plugged in? I am using it to Install STEAM LIBRARY GAMES even! so it needs to be always ready uninterrupted as I'd never plug it out!
or should I leave it as exFAT?

If it currently works and you can access it no problem....leave it.

 

[xxxbabyxxx]

1. Defraggler is cute, but NOT really necessary.
2. Drive type, size, current consumed space, amount of TBW...none of which is visible in your pic

This is the info shown for my C: Drive, the NVMe one.

As you can see for some reason my G: Drive is not showing on that program, I wonder if it's because its set to be "exFAT" and not NTFS like the rest of the drives.

Are these info enough or do you suggest a program I can run tests on?

Speccy could detect my "G" drive, and this is what it showed:

 

[USAFRet]

1. I see no specific "problems" with any of your storage devices.
2. Have known good backups, just in case.

 

[xxxbabyxxx]

1. Defraggler is cute, but NOT really necessary.

Sorry but about this note, do you mean it's not necessary for me to defrag my external hard drive? I constantly move hundreds of GBs and write/delete them actively on those (from videos to pics etc), do you mean I should use Windows 10 defragging (without the need to defraggler) or should I not even defrag my external hard drives at all even?

 

[USAFRet]

Sorry but about this note, do you mean it's not necessary for me to defrag my external hard drive? I constantly move hundreds of GBs and write/delete them actively on those (from videos to pics etc), do you mean I should use Windows 10 defragging (without the need to defraggler) or should I not even defrag my external hard drives at all even?

The defrag function built into Windows is fine.
You can specify when it runs automatically...weekly or whatever.