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I kind of anthropomorphize the devices in tests like this, so it's a bit sad to see the poor things made to run until their legs fall off. But it's nice to know they run farther than expected.


running a defragment operation on a few of these makes them emit some electronic noise if you listen closely. :D


For real though, don't defrag an SSD. It's pointless and wears it out for no reason.


The old Windows defrag with the small blocks was like visual bubblewrap.

We need more system utilities that are fun to watch.


I agree that it's not a good idea to defrag an SSD. But I'd like to nitpick your assertion that there is no reason. Even on excellent drives, 4k random reads/writes are not as fast as sequential.

For example, the SSD in my machine, a 120gb Intel 330 series, can do ~88 MB/s of random 4k reads, but 500 MB/s of sequential, a multiple of ~6x.

Now, a Seagate 5 TB drive will do 146 MB/s of sequential reads and ~470 kB/s of random access, a difference of ~310x, so SSDs are punished for poor access patterns significantly less.

But it's probably possible to manufacture a situation where defrag would indeed give significant benefits. Whether it's ever seen in the real world is another story.

[1] http://ark.intel.com/products/67287/Intel-SSD-330-Series-120...

[2] http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/desktop-h...


Random reads are still significantly slower than sequential reads on most SSDs.




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