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Released Oct 15, 2026, 11:01 AM EDT
Rob LeFebvre is an editor and author concentrating on customer and business innovations for a broad variety of outlets. He’s been composing online for more than 15 years; before that he was an unique teacher for kids with extreme impairments.
Rob has actually been an Editorial Director at Lifewire, a news author at Engadget, and a senior factor at Cult of Mac. He’s discussed PCs, Macs, cellphones, and video games, produced newsrooms from the ground up, and has comprehensive experience evaluating hardware, software application, and video games throughout his profession.
Some SSD guides and online forum threads still duplicate the very same recommendations: open Optimize Drives and turn off the schedule. The reasoning appears noise, as the tool still has “defragment” in its name, defragging an SSD carries out additional composes for no speed gain, and every compose chips away at the drive’s life expectancy.
On a contemporary Windows PC, however, changing it off is among the couple of tweaks that can make your drive slower.
That name is misinforming: on an SSD, the tool mainly does something else completely. Disk drives get defragmented, however SSDs get cutand Windows runs that task weekly by default. Turn the schedule off, and you’re turning off the upkeep your SSD depends upon.
The guidance made good sense when Windows dealt with every drive the very same
Blame Windows 7 and a couple of old guides
A standard defrag hails back to disk drives with moving parts and mixes file pieces around so the disk drive’s read head moves less. SSDs do not have that checked out head, so defragmenting them does not do anything for them, however it does indicate you’re composing to the drive regularly. That’s something that you wish to prevent on an SSD, as more composes implies a much shorter life.
Microsoft altered the method it dealt with SSDs back in 2009, leaving out drives that determine as SSDs from arranged defrag sessions, as random checks out were currently quickly enough. Early SSDs might end up not identiying themselves properly, so Windows 7 likewise ran a random-read speed test as an alternative. Users who didn’t rely on the detection system turned the entire schedule off by hand, and now we have it as a basic guidance point.
Lots of guides wind up informing readers to uncheck Run on a schedule in the defragmenter. Some SSD fine-tune guides can still state to uncheck the scheduleand some upgraded this year still list “ disable defragmentationas an SSD modify, and other online forum users still suggest disabling automated defrag on NVMe drives or perhaps reaching turning off Windows’ whole upkeep regimen.
This was likely a legitimate option for Windows 7 with a mis-detected drive, however for Windows 10 and 11, the schedule does not run a weekly defrag on SSDs, so it winds up being bad for your system to disable.
On an SSD, “Optimize” primarily indicates TRIM
What the button in fact does
TRIM informs your SSD which obstructs do not have any legitimate information, so it can eliminate them before they’re required. TRIM can likewise lower wear by preventing additional combine operations on the drive. That’s usually not what individuals think about when they disable the schedule. Windows currently sends out TRIM commands when you erase files.
The set up task really does a retrim, sending out TRIM tips for each unused sector on the disk volume. Retrim is utilized since TRIM demands can get dropped if the line fills, and this captures what got dropped.
Without the schedule, then, the TRIM would stop following updates or motorist modifications, and the retrim can recuperate 20 to 30 %of the composes speed on an overlooked SSD. Disabling the function makes that failure far more possible.
Windows does defragment SSDs, and it has a great factor
The once-a-month exception
defrag
With the schedule on, Windows performs in truth run a tracitional defrag, plus the retrim, on your SSD when each month, and altering the schedule’s frequency will not alter that cadence.
That’s due to the fact that the OS requires to handle file system accounting, which uses when volume photos (System Restore) are onHeavy fragmentation slows picture copy-on=compose, and NTFS can strike an optimum piece count that will trigger mistakes as the files get bigger.
These additional composes are relatively minimal. Samsung ranks the 1TB 990 Pro at 600 TB composed, so even a regular monthly pass that rewords 5 GB includes just 60G of composes each year, which has to do with 0.01% of the score.
Examining it takes less than a minute
Ensure the schedule is on
Browse defrag from your taskbar and open Defragment and Optimize Drives. Make certain your SSD’s Media type states Solid state drive while you’re there.
Under Set up optimizationselect Modification settings and ensure the schedule is on at a weekly cadence.
To ensure TRIM is allowed, you can run fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify in an admin terminal. An outcome of 0 ways TRIM is on.
Wish to retrim today? Type Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter C -ReTrim -Verbose in PowerShell, or defrag C: /L in Command Prompt. Both run a retrim without tinkering anything else; the/ L switch is defrag’s retrim flag.
Let Windows do the uninteresting part
Third-party defraggers that disregard your drive type can do a complete HDD-style defrag hand down your SSD, which’s bad for its health. Free area matters more than your optimizer schedule, too, given that an almost complete SSD loses its SLC cache and slows composes to it.
Eventually, the tweak initially implied to secure your SSD originates from the Windows 7-era of computing, around a detection concern that no longer exists.
Make certain you leave Optimize Drives on its weekly schedule and make certain you have enough totally free area on your drive rather.
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