Can an SSD get cluttered and require a reformat to speed up PC to new specs?

Satearn

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With HDD, I have always reformatted the disk a couple of times a year.

This always gives you an immediate performance boost, and it will last for about 6 months to a year, then I reformat again.

I haven't reformated my SSD samsung Evo 120gigs in 2 years ( I do A LOT of installing, moving files around, deleting etc...) and things are starting to feel a little sluggish, I did a test and the read and write speed are fine, drive has about 5000 hours on it.

Has anybody had any success in restoring factory performance by reformat/reinstall Windows with SSD that is as effective as doing it with an HDD?

https://pasteboard.co/HiuBSlr.png
 

Satearn

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Well never got even close the same results with HDD.

Virus scans, defrag, uninstalling programs, deleting junk, nothing, and I say NOTHING works better than a re-format. It absolutely nukes everything!

I have a great system where I can do all of this very quickly with portable apps etc...

So the question remains, will a re-format of SSD have the same benefit it does on HDD?

Cheers;)
 
It depends on exactly whats causing the "slow downs".
A clean install of windows is always nice, I had to do it to fix some broken audio drivers, and a clean OS is just so nice.

Now, there could be other things causing issues, but you cant tell for sure. I would also recommend considering just how many write cycles you want to go through on an SSD, they arent as durable as an HDD.
 

USAFRet

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Software is your problem, not the physical drive.
There is simply too much extra junk that is either running, or didn't get fully uninstalled.

All a fresh OS install or reformat does is start it from day one again. It does not 'speed up', but simply bring it back to before you filled it up with too much junk.
 

JoeMomma

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Reformatting a SSD won't speed it up. much.
Keeping your SSD less than half full will.

My first 120 GB SSD was constantly nearly full, it got slower and slower until it died.
Then I got a 400GB SSD and keep plenty of extra blank space on it.
And I assigned a generous chunk of space for over-provisioning.
That saves some NAND cells so when the main cells die, the PC replaces the dead cell with an over-provisioned cell.
 

Satearn

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Thanks guys, so I'll reformat then, the whole process takes me about an hour, pretty much cut and paste, only thing I need to re-install is Adobe Master Suite, the rest is open source portable, and everything browser based in synced in the cloud , so a walk in the park.

Will post here after done to share how it performs better after re-format.

Thanks
 

Satearn

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Actually my SSD is near full, I knew it made a difference, but not that much...I got 6 gigs free out of 111 gigs, maybe time to a manual clean up also!

 

Satearn

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Does it damage it permanently? If I clean it up now it will be ok?

This is the state of the drive now:

HiuBSlr.png


5000 hours, all tests say it's good.

So you recommend I drop it to 85 gigs?

 

Satearn

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Ok, well I did reformat, difference is insane, I went from 10 500 on Geekbench mulitscore to nearly 17 000, nearly double the speed.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/8089955

The i5-8400 runs insanely fast, I share the disk with a new Acer laptop with an i3-7100, it gets about the same speed as my friend's ASUS with an i7-7700hq, only about 10% slower.

So conclusively.

Does reformating SSD help performance, HELL YEAH, tons and tons, so happy now!

Cheers!