2023-06-26 21:00:59
If you’re a computer user at all, you’ve heard of fragmentation and defragmentation of hard drives. Admittedly, with the development of SSDs, this question is less crucial today than in the past, but it remains relevant. It is therefore always useful to understand this phenomenon and to know what solution to implement to limit it.
What is fragmentation?
Each time a file is saved on a computer, it is written to disk in the form of blocks. To take an analogy, it’s a bit like when you write a text in a notebook, with a breakdown per page. At the beginning, when the medium is blank, all the parts register consecutively, one following the other. But each time a file is deleted, the place it occupied is freed up to accommodate new files which obviously do not have the same size. Quite quickly, the new files are cut into different segments – fragments – scattered all over the place. To continue with the analogy of the notebook, it is as if the texts found themselves scattered over non-consecutive pages. This phenomenon is known as fragmentation.
While fragmentation is not a problem on SSDs, which use electronic circuits, it is different on magnetic hard disks, which are mechanical devices: like vinyl turntables, they have an arm that moves so that the read and write head is positioned in the right place. And when a disk is very fragmented, the head makes incessant movements to read and write files, which affects its performance – in terms of access time and throughput – by slowing down the computer at the same time, which becomes much less responsive.
And fragmentation is an insidious phenomenon. Because in addition to the files that you consciously create or download, there are countless elements that come from operating system updates and invisible data from the Internet (cookies, cache, etc.). As a result, whatever you do, your discs become real Swiss cheese!
But as this phenomenon has been well known for ages, it is well under control. And operating systems such as modern hard drives include functions to limit it. Like defragmentation, a function of bringing together the scattered fragments of files to speed up their reading. The operation was particularly effective and sensitive with the first hard drives… and it still is today! But technologies have evolved, and with them the answers provided by new defragmentation and optimization tools for the latest storage media.
SSDs, on the other hand, use electronic circuits, instead of mechanical devices. Illustration Photos Bigstock
Should you defragment your hard drives?
Yes, magnetic hard drives should always be defragmented so as not to slow down file access. But if you have a PC under Windows 7 and a fortiori under Windows 8 or 10, or even a Mac equipped with an OS dating back less than ten years, your operating system takes care of everything. In any case on internal disks, whether hard disks or SSDs. If you haven’t touched any system settings, it optimizes your disks regularly and automatically, focusing on times when you’re not using the computer.
In Windows, the operation is just as automatic as in MacOS. But with the tools provided by Microsoft, it is also possible to launch a specific optimization and to modify the programming of the defragmentations planned by Windows.
When should you defragment?
If you have a fairly simple use of your computer (you modify few large files), leave it to your operating system.
In order not to see a computer’s performance drop, it is important to delete unused files from time to time to keep, for example, 10 to 20% free space on the disk (regardless of its technology). This gives the system more leeway to store new files, and its defragmentation and optimization mechanisms will take care of the rest.
On their website, disk manufacturers offer free optimization and repair software for download (more often for Windows than for macOS and Linux).
Should an SSD be defragmented?
This is a statement that we often come across: “It is dangerous to defragment an SSD. Remember that an SSD is a disk composed solely of electronic memory cells (like a USB key), unlike the magnetic hard disk with its reading head which moves. Three remarks on SSDs:
– The usual defragmentation of hard disks is of no interest on an SSD, since there is no mechanical arm to move. Regardless of the location of a memory cell and a fragment of a file, it is read at the speed of an electron.
– Write operations on an SSD increase its wear: launching a utility that spends its time moving file fragments from one place to another might reduce the life of the medium.
– As SSDs and electronic memories still need to be optimized regularly, they have their own optimization mechanisms: these are called TRIM commands.
Sources: writing and web
If you’re a computer user at all, you’ve heard of fragmentation and defragmentation of hard drives. Admittedly, with the development of SSDs, this question is less crucial today than in the past, but it remains relevant. It is therefore always useful to understand this phenomenon and to know what solution to implement…
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