The program also offers the option to defrag individual files and folders, as you can in Piriform’s free Defraggler. To understand how these might be of benefit, let’s review a few facts.Īuslogics’ Disk Defrag Pro ($30 30-day free trial) is a very capable defragger with a clean interface and multiple defragging options: simple defrag (no consolidation or optimization), SSD optimization, free-space optimization (defragging free clusters), and optimization by the Windows prefetch layout to make booting faster.

In addition, NAND is good for only a few thousand write cycles, so defragging can reduce the SSD’s lifespan by unnecessarily writing data to it.ĭespite those arguments, at least four defragging utilities purport to increase SSD performance through optimization: Auslogic’s Disk Defrag Pro, Condusiv’s Diskeeper, Raxco’s PerfectDisk, and SlimCleaner Intelligent Defrag. Defragging these “sectors” is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded: You can feel parts of the pattern, but you can’t see the whole picture.

The operating system sees it as a hard drive with sectors, but the data is spread all over the drive by the controller. “I found no hard evidence about SSD defragging anywhere I looked, so I decided to gather my own.”Ĭonventional logic dictates that you should never defrag an SSD, because the SSD controller writes data in a scattershot-fashion to multiple NAND chips and locations, using algorithms that only the controller understands.

Ssd defrag windows 10