Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: T-Man on August 29, 2020, 03:08:01 am
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Saw a mention of this on a community I'm part of, so passing on:
Here's a Bleeping Computer article on it (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-tests-fix-for-bug-that-defrags-ssd-drives-too-often/) and a PC Gamer one which was what I first ran across (https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-10-bug-wrecking-ssd/). I only half-understand this so happy to give the floor to those more in the know (and if they post advice later on in this thread, is a safe to assume their advice overrules mine).
Apparently the recent Win update included a bug that has confused the auto-defragmenting scheduler (if you go to that it will always say 'needs optimization'). Microsoft has a fix in testing now so that should be out soon, but this bug will cause the scheduler to constantly see SSDs as needing to defragment and so do so every time it reboots, which in the case of SSDs will apparently shorten their lifespan quite a bit over a long period. Normal hard disks should be fine its just Solid State Drives at risk from this.
For those worried a temporary fix is to switch off the automatic scheduling for defragmenting (though worth remembering you've done this so you can switch it back when the fix is out). I don't believe doing this will cause immediate issues but if I am wrong do say so anyone. If you would like to do this I found the option (at least on my Win10) in Settings>Storage>Optimize Drives (it is a small option at the bottom of the Storage page); there is a small checkbox at the bottom for if you want to do automatic scheduling or not. It should be possible to just re-check that when the fix is out and you want the automatic scheduling restored.
I know many community members here have a lot more understanding of this sort of thing, so feel free to add to or correct any of this.
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A reminder that modern SSDs are rated for literally Petabytes of write operations; a couple extra defrags will shorten their lifetime, but not by enough to actually matter.
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I thought that defragmentation was completely unnecessary on SSDs, and also more harmful than normal operation since every bit is rewritten during one (or something?).
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Win10 is aware of your media type and I believe it does different things to SSDs for optimization than it does for hard disks.
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Win10 is aware of your media type and I believe it does different things to SSDs for optimization than it does for hard disks.
I had a read of the PC Gamer article. It seems that it may do the less-harmful optimization every time you reboot instead of weekly or whatever, and if you have "volume snapshots" enabled, it may do a real defrag even on an SSD. So probably not a really big deal for most users.
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Well and because of what The_E already said. The idea that SSDs will have lower life than HDDs if you use them too much is left over from early SSDs. It's not really a thing anymore because of just how much data modern SSDs are rated for.
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One of my secondary drives is a Samsung 850 Evo, which I bought five years ago and which was my main drive for a number of them. According to its SMART data, it has a cumulated uptime of 1.8 years, and has had 30 Terabytes written to it, with 91% lifetime remaining on the drive.
This will literally last longer as a usable piece of hardware than it will last as a piece of hardware that is actually used; at some point in the next 2 years, it will be replaced.... and likely still have most of its lifetime remaining.
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A reminder that modern SSDs are rated for literally Petabytes of write operations; a couple extra defrags will shorten their lifetime, but not by enough to actually matter.
EDIT to add: while true, beware if you are running an SSD without DRAM cache or otherwise a cheap knock-off no-name brand SSD. Those shouldn't be trusted anyways, and under increased load... it's better off just not using them at all to be honest. Look up reviews for the brand if you're not sure.)
This bug is basically down to Win 10 mis-reading the SSD as a regular drive (normally it will run TRIM on an SSD if you select it for "Optimization" which is what the Defrag util is now classified as - it will defrag spinny disks, and run TRIM on SSDs, at least when they are detected correctly).
To fix this bug, get Windows to reassess what type of drive you have (apparently Windows detects SSDs by running a benchmark (!!) on them).
Launch an elevated Command Prompt (Hold Win + X then press A; or alternatively, search cmd or powershell, right-click > run as admin) then:
Run winsat formal or winsat diskformal (formal should run all assessments, diskformal runs all for the disk, but hey, Windows gotta Windows, I'd just run both to be sure).
However note winsat assessment supposedly may not work with drives having multiple partitions (?? - Pressing X to doubt here).
Someone also mentioned using fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0 which should be set this way (to 0 instead of 1) for SSDs to enable TRIM, so make sure that's set correctly (set 0). To check, run fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify
Sources:
https://superuser.com/questions/1006877/windows-10-optimize-drives-shows-ssd-as-hard-disk-drive
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/fsutil-behavior (info on disabledeletenotify 0 / TRIM here)
https://computingondemand.com/fix-windows-recognizing-ssd-as-hard-disk-drive/ (goes into the details of what winsat and its arguments and switches do)
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or, you know, don't do that and just wait until MS rolls out a patch? Because unless your drive is already on its last legs, it won't be affected by this bug in any meaningful way?
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...which, incidentally, is what happened at the beginning of September. This bug should no longer be present in Windows 10.
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or, you know, don't do that and just wait until MS rolls out a patch? Because unless your drive is already on its last legs, it won't be affected by this bug in any meaningful way?
EDIT:
...which, incidentally, is what happened at the beginning of September. This bug should no longer be present in Windows 10.
...I mean, you're not really "doing" anything besides telling Windows to take a second look, at which point it corrects its behavior. Every step taken will just reset Windows to default behavior when it detects SSDs, and not using any hackish workarounds either. But yeah, the patch works, unless you're one of those people that disables Windows updates. And you're right about lifespan, unless you're one of those people that buys cheapo SSDs. :shrug: IDK how prevalent those kinds of people are or if any happen to frequent this board, but there's the info if they needed it.
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TLDR: My Nvme should be fine then? (it's 2 weeks old)
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Yes.