SSD more space used after defragmentation.

[RdeFuijk]

Hi,

I defraged my SSD (which I now know is pointless), because I thought it would help. However, after my PC was done defragmentation, I booted it up, and my C disk now has only 15GB free space left, yet before the defragmentation, I had about 34GB free space. For some reason it gained about 20 GB, yet when I select all files and check the space it takes up, it's only about 40GB, so on a 120GB disk that should be a lot more.
Does anyone know what might have happened here? I don't even know where to look.

 

[gilbadon]

NEVER DEFRAG AN SSD! It does not help anything. It harms them and causes it to do unnecessary IO and causes the drive to have a shorter life.

 

[RdeFuijk]

NEVER DEFRAG AN SSD! It does not help anything. It harms them and causes it to do unnecessary IO and causes the drive to have a shorter life.

So I've heard. I just didn't see any harm in it, and didn't think twice about it. But any idea what might have happended here? I tried a system recovery but it doesn't seem to work, I get this unspecified error.

 

[bartNL]

Hi,

I defraged my SSD (which I now know is pointless), because I thought it would help. However, after my PC was done defragmentation, I booted it up, and my C disk now has only 15GB free space left, yet before the defragmentation, I had about 34GB free space. For some reason it gained about 20 GB, yet when I select all files and check the space it takes up, it's only about 40GB, so on a 120GB disk that should be a lot more.
Does anyone know what might have happened here? I don't even know where to look.

Did you abort the defragmentation before it was finished? This can result in an even worse situation than when you wouldn't defragment at all. (source: experience) Also, which program did you use to defrag an ssd? Are there programs that allow you to do so?

 

[thently]

?? Stopping a defrag does nothing ... Maybe if the drive is bad but other wise nothing. Source IT Admin 20 years. I start and stop defrags on servers all the time depending on load..

Thent

 

[tigerwild]

bartNL nailed it, however he didn't mention something I also would mention:

... that if your OS defaults to defrag at startup or periodically, you ALSO need to go into the system configuration and turn these processes off. Proper use of a large SSD, and a large RAM disk will nearly always eliminate the unnecessary writes on a SSD while also helping to keep your files unnecessarily fragmented.

In windows you can use the start menu search for 'task scheduler' and disable all check for 'Defrag'. disable it.

 

[RdeFuijk]

Hi,

I defraged my SSD (which I now know is pointless), because I thought it would help. However, after my PC was done defragmentation, I booted it up, and my C disk now has only 15GB free space left, yet before the defragmentation, I had about 34GB free space. For some reason it gained about 20 GB, yet when I select all files and check the space it takes up, it's only about 40GB, so on a 120GB disk that should be a lot more.
Does anyone know what might have happened here? I don't even know where to look.

Did you abort the defragmentation before it was finished? This can result in an even worse situation than when you wouldn't defragment at all. (source: experience) Also, which program did you use to defrag an ssd? Are there programs that allow you to do so?

I used the Windows 7 defrag software. I did not abort the defragmentation. I tried a system recovery, but when windows started up again, I got a unspecified error. There doesn't seem to be any damage, I just find the extra used space weird, and it seems to increase the boot time of Windows.

 

[gilbadon]

Maybe you filled your hard drive full of Memory Dump files from getting a ton of errors while defragmenting. Use the program CCleaner and see what happens...

 

[RdeFuijk]

Maybe you filled your hard drive full of Memory Dump files from getting a ton of errors while defragmenting. Use the program CCleaner and see what happens...

I already used CCleaner, it deleted about 300 MB, so that's not it.

 

[RdeFuijk]

bartNL nailed it, however he didn't mention something I also would mention:

... that if your OS defaults to defrag at startup or periodically, you ALSO need to go into the system configuration and turn these processes off. Proper use of a large SSD, and a large RAM disk will nearly always eliminate the unnecessary writes on a SSD while also helping to keep your files unnecessarily fragmented.

In windows you can use the start menu search for 'task scheduler' and disable all check for 'Defrag'. disable it.

I already made sure Windows won't defrag on itself anymore. But that does not explain the 20GB extra on my C drive after the defrag. I think it might have dumbed a lot of temp files on my disk, but I have no idea where to find those files, and how to clean the disk. CCleaner does not seem to help. "pagefile.sts" and "hiberfil.sys" seem to take a lot of space though.

 

[gilbadon]

What probably happened is when the files were transferred from one place to another, the starting arrays never got deleted. That makes the drive believe it is filled with x data when it is really filled with nothing. You may have a lot of empty space that is not registering as empty because pointers still believe it is being used.

Try fixing the registry but you may be forced to reformat the drive and reinstall windows =(

 

[bartNL]

?? Stopping a defrag does nothing ... Maybe if the drive is bad but other wise nothing. Source IT Admin 20 years. I start and stop defrags on servers all the time depending on load..

Thent

If you say it.. I don't have that much experience of 20 years, but I once cancelled a defragmentation, and the result was an even more fragmented disk. And somehow my free space shrinked a few gb's just like RdeFuijk described. But that could be because of the tool i used to defrag the disk.

 

[RdeFuijk]

What probably happened is when the files were transferred from one place to another, the starting arrays never got deleted. That makes the drive believe it is filled with x data when it is really filled with nothing. You may have a lot of empty space that is not registering as empty because pointers still believe it is being used.

Try fixing the registry but you may be forced to reformat the drive and reinstall windows =(

Well, I was surfing the web about files that windows sees as files, but aren't really there. I found out that there were too much "shadowcopy's''. I deleted those, and now I got my space back.