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Question High fragmentation on OS drive. Time for format or new drive?

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
I've noticed for the last year or so, my OS SSD has been fluctuating in available size rapidly and after I defrag, it still says the drive is 26%+ fragmented. I was planning on building a new PC at the end of last year, but with prices being so high, I'll wait on the full build and just do some repairs if necessary.

So, what would be the best course of action for this?
 
I can recommend two things to gain space on a small SSD:
1. Disable hibernation and delete C:/hiberfil.sys by running powercfg /hibernate off as Administrator
2. Activate filesystem compression on C:
 
So, what would be the best course of action for this?

You really, really shouldn't defrag an SSD. It doesn't have any effect what-so-ever, since unlike a harddrive, every cluster has the exact same access time. In fact, you're damaging the SSD by doing useless writing. Further, the LBA map you're seeing from the OS has nothing to do with what is actually happening on the drive itself. The drive controller is transparently handling fragmentation, maintenance and wear levelling.

If you're running out of space, now is actually a good time to buy a large capacity SSD. Prices are quite low at the moment for 500GB and 1TB drives.
 
Whoops. I've been defragging my SSD for the last ten years on a semi-regular basis. I guess it wouldn't hurt to grab a bigger drive since the 124GB drive I have for the OS is pretty small. I have a separate drive for movies/music/mods/downloads, and another drive specifically for Steam. The download drive is the only hard drive in my PC so I guess I should disable the auto-defrag for my SSDs.

I can recommend two things to gain space on a small SSD:
1. Disable hibernation and delete C:/hiberfil.sys by running powercfg /hibernate off as Administrator
2. Activate filesystem compression on C:
The problem my drive has been experiencing for the last year or two is that it'll randomly go up to 27GB of free space and then over the next few weeks, the space will slowly drop down to 1-2GB. No idea why. I've asked numerous times on this forum about the issue, but nobody had an answer as to why it's happening or how to stop it. I figure since it's staying so low now and looking at SpaceMonger, I actually have about 18GB of free space left, but looking at My Computer, it's currently showing about 1.84GB of free space.
 
I would definitely look into what is eating space, (possibly something malware related?) though it would also be a good idea to get a larger OS SSD, there are good ones 500GB+ that are very inexpensive. Again, don't defrag SSDs.
 
Download wiztree to see if you can tell what's taking up all the space when it's down to 1-2GB.
I'll check into this, but I've looked with SpaceMonger and I can't honestly tell what's different. If Wiztree gives time frames as to when space changes that would definitely help, but I've taken screenshots of SM when it was at 20+ of free space and again when it was down to 1 and I couldn't find any discrepancies anywhere.

I would definitely look into what is eating space, (possibly something malware related?) though it would also be a good idea to get a larger OS SSD, there are good ones 500GB+ that are very inexpensive. Again, don't defrag SSDs.
I can't even count how many times I've scanned with damn near every utility known to man. Everything comes up clean. Kaspersky, MalwareBytes, Spybot, AdAware, Avast, etc. They all say everything is good other than the usual tracking cookie here and there.
 
I'll check into this, but I've looked with SpaceMonger and I can't honestly tell what's different. If Wiztree gives time frames as to when space changes that would definitely help, but I've taken screenshots of SM when it was at 20+ of free space and again when it was down to 1 and I couldn't find any discrepancies anywhere.
I guess SpaceMonger is similar. If something is using 20GB, I think there should be some distinguishable signs in the visual. It would be a huge file or a lot of small files in a group. I can't imagine some program scattering a bunch of little files all over different folders ...
 
I guess SpaceMonger is similar. If something is using 20GB, I think there should be some distinguishable signs in the visual. It would be a huge file or a lot of small files in a group. I can't imagine some program scattering a bunch of little files all over different folders ...
That's what I assumed as well since SpaceMonger gives a really good visual representation of what everything is inside the drive and I assumed 20GB would be pretty easy to spot, but the images were almost identical so I figured it was something I couldn't see and maybe it was a glitch (especially since the space fluctuates so rapidly without me doing anything other than playing games and checking my e-mails). At this point I'm probably just going to grab a much bigger drive and maybe do a format. It seems like it's going to be a little bit before CPU and GPU prices will come down so I might as well try to make sure I can still use this one.

Edit/Question: Since I've never swapped out OS drives before, would it be possible to just install the old OS on the new drive and leave the old OS drive plugged in as a spare drive and just drag the files over or will the PC not recognize both drives with OS installed on them? I'd prefer to minimize the amount of back and fourth transfers for what files I have on this drive.
 
A lot of SSDs come with a software to clone drives (example, WD has access to a WD edition of Acronis True Image that only works when you have a WD drive installed).
 
FYI to clear up any confusion - If you are using Windows 10, the "Defragment and Optimize Drives" utility is intelligent enough that it only defragments spinning harddrives and only trims SSDs.
It does NOT defrag SSDs, and it is perfectly safe to include them in the "Scheduled Optimization".
 
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