SSD maintenance question

[perdomot]

From what I've read, a SSD does not need to be defragged but what about deleting the temp files and other space hogging stuff? Will deleting that stuff affect SSD longevity/performance?

 

[Concillian]

It will affect both longevity (negatively) and performance (positively). SSDs are faster when they're empty because if they're not, they have to delete first before writing. Anandtech's SSD anthology explains why it can't just delete any old time unless the OS supports TRIM.

My experience with SSDs however, is that you don't really notice the slowdown in write speed after it's filled once. Yes, it's writing slower, but throughput on writes isn't what you notice when you are using an SSD, the latency being approximately a factor of ten lower than rotating storage is what you notice, and that's still unchanged... as is read speeds. It's really not as big a deal as people make it out to be.

 

[perdomot]

Thanks for the info. I bought the OCZ vertex 30GB SSD to be my C drive with just the OS and apps on there so the write speeds have never been much of an issue as reads are more important to me for performance. I just installed Win 7 OS on the SSD with my usual apps and its just over half full and performance feels great. Not sure if I have access to the TRIM function with this SSD but I'm reading the article on the main page about this now. My main concern was about what happens when I deleted the temp files. Did this use up the life of memory cells like a defrag did. Thanks again.