Will defragmentation harm the hard drive?

Defragmentation is harmful to the hard drive. Disk defragmentation will perform a full-disk read and write on the entire disk space, which is a process of reading and writing a large information capacity on the hard disk; disk defragmentation will frequently erase and write the hard disk, which will greatly reduce the life of the Flash inside the SSD. .

The operating environment of this tutorial: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

Disk defragmentation refers to optimizing files stored discontinuously in mechanical hard drives. Disk defragmentation can improve the running speed and read and write performance of the hard disk, but too frequent defragmentation can also cause damage to the hard disk.

#In the era of mechanical hard disks, when it comes to how to maintain hard disk performance and improve hard disk life, the term disk defragmentation will definitely be the focus of discussion, and it is also the focus of almost all It is a fact recognized by everyone. There is no doubt that in the era of mechanical hard disks, the disk defragmentation function is definitely the most conscientious function for hard disk maintenance under Windows systems. However, in the era of solid-state drives, this function has become the most useless and even strictly prohibited. So why is this? Why can’t solid-state drives be defragmented?

First of all, let’s understand why mechanical hard drives need disk defragmentation.

In the era of mechanical hard disks, files were not stored regularly and continuously in continuous clusters on the disk, but were scattered across the entire disk. In different places, especially after long-term reading, writing and deletion, a large number of scattered files irregularly fill different places on the disk, resulting in a large number of fragmented files over time. At this time, when the magnetic head of the mechanical hard disk is reading, it will inevitably increase the number of swings of the magnetic head, thereby greatly reducing the reading efficiency of the disk. In other words, the seek time is extended and the efficiency is reduced.

So through disk defragmentation, after reintegrating these fragmented files, the reading time of the magnetic head can be reduced, the seek time is shortened, and the overall performance is therefore improved. get promoted. This is also the key to improving the performance and life of hard drives in the era of mechanical disks.

The difference between solid-state disks and mechanical hard disks is that solid-state disks are based on the electronic storage mechanism of flash memory particles, making the seek time almost unchanged in theory, that is, no matter what When disk defragmentation is performed, the seek time will not change, and performance and lifespan cannot be improved. In addition, the Flash particles responsible for the storage function in the solid-state disk have a lifespan, so the storage method of the SSD is essentially different from the traditional mechanical hard disk. In order to prevent flash aging caused by frequent reading and writing of a certain storage unit, SSD adopts a "wear leveling" mechanism to average the number of times of reading and writing each block.

# Disk defragmentation will frequently erase and write the hard disk, which will greatly reduce the life of the Flash inside the SSD. Because disk defragmentation will perform a read and write operation similar to the entire disk for the entire disk space. The built-in garbage collection mechanism of the solid-state disk is already a good "disk defragmentation". The SSD controller has its own software (algorithm) to clean up the Flash space.

#The disk defragmentation function of Windows is a product of the era of mechanical hard disks and is not suitable for SSDs. My suggestion is that SSD users don't have to use disk defragmentation. Therefore, when using SSD solid state drives, it is strongly recommended to turn off the disk defragmentation scheduled task in the Windows scheduled task.

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