Deactivating Windows 7 Defragmentation for Solid-state Drives

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Solid-state Drives (SSDs) should not be defragmented. Although defragmenting can improve performance for standard hard disks, defragmenting SSDs does not provide performance benefits, but rather reduces it (see Optimizing SSD Performance & Deactivating Defragmentation).

If a partition is stored on a data medium that indicates it is an SSD, Windows 7 will not defragment the partition.[1]

Checking If Windows has deactivated Defragmentation for SSDs

  1. Right-click on the desired drive (such as C: and select the Properties menu option. Then, click on the tab Tools and Defragment Now….
    Windows-7-Defragmentierung-01.png
  2. All of the drive will be displayed. Click on Configure Schedule.
    Windows-7-Defragmentierung-02.png
  3. Click on Select Disks.
    Windows-7-Defragmentierung-03.png
  4. If the drives on the SSDs are missing from the following screen then the SSD has been properly detected by Windows 7, and Windows 7 will not defragment this SSD.[2] If the drives on the SSDs are listed here, remove the checkmark so that such drives will not be defragmented.
    Windows-7-Defragmentierung-04.png

References

  1. Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives (Engineering Windows 7 Blog, microsoft.com): The automatic scheduling of defragmentation will exclude partitions on devices that declare themselves as SSDs.
  2. SSD and Windows 7 (social.technet.microsoft.com)

Additional Information


Foto Werner Fischer.jpg

Author: Werner Fischer

Werner Fischer, working in the Knowledge Transfer team at Thomas-Krenn, completed his studies of Computer and Media Security at FH Hagenberg in Austria. He is a regular speaker at many conferences like LinuxTag, OSMC, OSDC, LinuxCon, and author for various IT magazines. In his spare time he enjoys playing the piano and training for a good result at the annual Linz marathon relay.


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