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SSD Defragmentation and Windows 8 Optimize Tool

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in Hardware, How-to, Windows-8

A solid state drive does not need defragmentation that's a fact. To make the story very simple think about memory sticks/USB thumb drives - did you ever defragment one? Bingo! Sure some tools like Raxco's Perfect Disk claim to be optimized for SSDs and from a certain point of view they do what they say but should you really bother with such a tool?

My personal advice is to keep your money and save for more memory or even a new SSD. After all the Windows 8 Optimize tool does about the same thing - when it detects that you are trying to defrag a volume that's mounted on a solid state drive a full TRIM command is ordered enabling the drive to increase its performance using internal algorithms.

To run an Optimize command on your SSD there are only a few steps to follow - right click the SSD volume in your file manager choose Properties then go to the Tools tab and finally just click Optimize. Pretty easy huh?

These being said here are a few hints if you are looking to save money while using a solid state drive: 1. NEVER buy so-called "SSD optimization tools" because there are also free ones that do the job well. After all there's not much to optimize. Better buy a second SSD for a RAID setup... 2. ALWAYS keep a fresh backup of your SSD at hand. Creating such a drive image can be done really fast and it may spare you a lot of trouble one fine day. Obviously there are plenty of free tools to do this. 3. If you are an average Joe/Jane using a computer don't bother to buy any kind of Windows optimization tools - there are a bunch of free ones and even a Windows full of junk files will run great when installed on a SSD.

Now about the free tools to use for the purposes mentioned above... they're coming soon keep your eyes on PCTips3000 and you'll get info on them & more sooner than expected. That's all for now folks! ;)