Taken from an interview with an Intel Engineer from hardocp......Originally Posted by ewitte
Q. Do SSDs need to be defragmented?
A. Unfortunately this answer isn't exactly straightforward. Solid state drives generally do not organize data the way that HDDs do, or the way the operating system is expecting them to. This is done to overcome the limitations of flash memory (eg. wear leveling). For that reason, standard defrag tools will not make correct decisions about how to optimize the file system layout on an SSD. I would cautiously suggest that anyone using any SSD should disable automatic defrag on that drive and don't bother running it manually. SSDs are exceedingly fast at seeking, so fetching a seemingly scattered file is going to be nearly as fast as fetching a file that is written sequentially. A traditional HDD will fetch that same scattered file drastically slower, which was the original motivation for defragmentation.
That said, there certainly are best and worst case layouts for data organization on SSD media. Currently the firmware is responsible for keeping everything as organized as possible. There might be a new opportunity for tools to be developed that will "defragment" an SSD, but they may need inside knowledge of how each SSD works. The magnitude of the fragmentation problem is reduced though, because the performance difference between an optimal layout and worst case isn't nearly as crippling as with a HDD.
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