windows 8.1 defragged my SSD?

[Virgorising]

So you spent all this time arguing with SSBrain and didn't bother to read the link that he posted in message #10?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36833053&postcount=10

How unjustifiably harsh and inelegant of you.:thumbsdown: The journey to truth, again, is not linear.....at least that journey is my default mode, and I have no sick desperate need to be right about everything. I count that as a huge blessing.

Did I buy into the data from the MS employee? I did!!! Mea maxima culpa. Not a cardinal sin, not a capital crime....just garden variety human stuff.

 

[Virgorising]

I looked into this a little in this thread.

OUTSTANDING!!!!:thumbsup:

 

[KingFatty]

Wait a minute, didn't Microsoft respond by saying that it's just a bad message in the event log?

Apparently Windows does *NOT* defrag the SSD. It just triggers a message when it performs TRIM, and then another that says defrag happened. As though clarifying that the TRIM achieved the equivalent to a defrag.

Go back to that link, toward the bottom, it's clarified. Also notice that the timestamp for the TRIM event log and the Defrag event log are the same, which reinforces the idea that no actual defrag occurred because it cannot be instantaneous (i.e., the two different log entries would have different times).

Maybe I'm mistaken, but after reading that link, it seems that no defragging actually happens.

 

[KingFatty]

How unjustifiably harsh and inelegant of you.:thumbsdown: The journey to truth, again, is not linear.....

I guess you can make the journey to truth super-extra-long or very direct. I think it's harsh, but sometimes it's helpful to get those little jabs now and then. Just think, sometimes a person will hand you a shortcut to the truth like in post #10, but leading a horse to water does not mean the horse is ready to drink of the truth yet, and likes to argue over whether there is actually water in the trough.

 

[Virgorising]

Wait a minute, didn't Microsoft respond by saying that it's just a bad message in the event log?

Apparently Windows does *NOT* defrag the SSD. It just triggers a message when it performs TRIM, and then another that says defrag happened. As though clarifying that the TRIM achieved the equivalent to a defrag.

Go back to that link, toward the bottom, it's clarified. Also notice that the timestamp for the TRIM event log and the Defrag event log are the same, which reinforces the idea that no actual defrag occurred because it cannot be instantaneous (i.e., the two different log entries would have different times).

Maybe I'm mistaken, but after reading that link, it seems that no defragging actually happens.

Obviously, that was my take as well....but clearly it morphed. Perhaps YOU need to slow down, chase all those data.....and connect to that noble, not linear adventure. If so, this will help U celebrate that in others.

And even in the face of all the info here....perhaps the jury is still out re this important phenomenon for anyone running 8. I honestly do not yet know.

I only know I would rather eat refined carbs than run it.()

 

[Virgorising]

I guess you can make the journey to truth super-extra-long or very direct. I think it's harsh, but sometimes it's helpful to get those little jabs now and then. Just think, sometimes a person will hand you a shortcut to the truth like in post #10, but leading a horse to water does not mean the horse is ready to drink of the truth yet, and likes to argue over whether there is actually water in the trough.

I fear you are coming from some old pain perhaps from some kinda abusive childhood. The 'jabs" in this event, given the actual chronology in this thread if you can get it objectively ......were, I submit, exactly as I portrayed them.

Scratch a bully, find a coward. And nobody is some inviolate figure of authority, some arbiter of truth (starting with YOU)....and, even more important, nobody ALIVE is here to buy into anyone's take with alacrity.

Please now desist from this toxic unjustified acrimony and rationalization of meanness/unkindness. Healthy humans are never capable of and always offended by such.

 

[Jovec]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but after reading that link, it seems that no defragging actually happens.

Secuce Erase -> Install Windows -> Patch via update -> Record current bytes written -> Defrag via auto maintenance -> Record current bytes written = Difference of ~ 5.3GB written

Secuce Erase -> Install Windows -> Patch via update -> Record current bytes written -> Defrag by manually running -> Record current bytes written = Difference of ~0.2GB written

(Details here)

 

[KingFatty]

Please now desist from this toxic unjustified acrimony and rationalization of meanness/unkindness. Healthy humans are never capable of and always offended by such.

It is a self-analysis, I am the type of horse that will argue over whether there is water in the trough. I like to argue and seek the truth, and I bet I take longer wandering journeys than you, oh kindred spirit...

Look, I've already contradicted my very own self from about 4 months ago, where I said the opposite on this matter right here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36442712&postcount=3

 

[Virgorising]

It is a self-analysis, I am the type of horse that will argue over whether there is water in the trough. I like to argue and seek the truth, and I bet I take longer wandering journeys than you, oh kindred spirit...

Look, I've already contradicted my very own self from about 4 months ago, where I said the opposite on this matter right here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36442712&postcount=3

I appreciate yr identifying the kind of equine you identify with, and having the character to share yr confusion. I mean it! But am the kinda filly who is adverse to unproductive acrimony and combat....forget truly unjustified meanness. Polar opposite of heady, productive for all involved exchanges and discussions....and dynamic, healthy debates.

Re differential judgements; again, I am just so grateful my immediate take on 8 way back, was what it was. Does that mean I am some perfect human who has never made a mistake and doesn't make them ongoing??

Does the bear use a litter box?:sneaky::biggrin: (Have no clue, that just appeared outta nowhere.)

 

[SSBrain]

Go back to that link, toward the bottom, it's clarified. Also notice that the timestamp for the TRIM event log and the Defrag event log are the same, which reinforces the idea that no actual defrag occurred because it cannot be instantaneous (i.e., the two different log entries would have different times).

If you trigger a defragmentation manually through the system console with the defrag /D command, you will see that at the end of the process (which will generate significant drive activity and cause host writes to increase accordingly - by about the same amount of used drive space if file system fragmentation is high enough) that a trim pass will also be invoked. That is likely why a trim event is reported in the event log as well when that occurs automatically.

This is also shown in Jovec's thread on Anandtech forums linked previously.

 

[KingFatty]

Cool, thanks for clarifying.

 

[Virgorising]

Cool, thanks for clarifying.

I Ditto.....this truly is the ultimate clarification. And, that MS apparently did not address this bug....I still find shocking. Might be naive, but it's true.

 

[SSBrain]

It looks like this was the intended behavior all along, after all. Have a read at this recent blogpost about the SSD defragmentation issue:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRealAndCompleteStoryDoesWindowsDefragmentYourSSD.aspx

An excerpt:

[...] I dug deeper and talked to developers on the Windows storage team and this post is written in conjunction with them to answer the question, once and for all

"WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH SSDS, WINDOWS AND DEFRAG, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, IS WINDOWS DOING THE RIGHT THING?"

It turns out that the answer is more nuanced than just yes or no, as is common with technical questions.

The short answer is, yes, Windows does sometimes defragment SSDs, yes, it's important to intelligently and appropriately defrag SSDs, and yes, Windows is smart about how it treats your SSD.

The long answer is this.

Actually Scott and Vadim are both wrong. Storage Optimizer will defrag an SSD once a month if volume snapshots are enabled. This is by design and necessary due to slow volsnap copy on write performance on fragmented SSD volumes. It’s also somewhat of a misconception that fragmentation is not a problem on SSDs. If an SSD gets too fragmented you can hit maximum file fragmentation (when the metadata can’t represent any more file fragments) which will result in errors when you try to write/extend a file. Furthermore, more file fragments means more metadata to process while reading/writing a file, which can lead to slower performance.

As far as Retrim is concerned, this command should run on the schedule specified in the dfrgui UI. Retrim is necessary because of the way TRIM is processed in the file systems. Due to the varying performance of hardware responding to TRIM, TRIM is processed asynchronously by the file system. When a file is deleted or space is otherwise freed, the file system queues the trim request to be processed. To limit the peek resource usage this queue may only grow to a maximum number of trim requests. If the queue is of max size, incoming TRIM requests may be dropped. This is okay because we will periodically come through and do a Retrim with Storage Optimizer. The Retrim is done at a granularity that should avoid hitting the maximum TRIM request queue size where TRIMs are dropped.

 

[Dari]

It looks like this was the intended behavior all along, after all. Have a read at this recent blogpost about the SSD defragmentation issue:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRealAndCompleteStoryDoesWindowsDefragmentYourSSD.aspx

An excerpt:

So, if SSDs are the only drives in our computers, can we just leave things as they are instead of futzing with the Task Scheduler?

 

[SSBrain]

So, if SSDs are the only drives in our computers, can we just leave things as they are instead of futzing with the Task Scheduler?

Apparently yes. And even if they will eventually get defragmented for OS housekeeping, this won't occur at a rate high enough (reportedly, once a month) to affect their life significantly for the end user.