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Intel 160Gb SSD has a lot of misaligned files and is fragmented

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I have an Intel 160Gb X-25M SSD that I've been using for about 1 year and it's been great. Last night when I ran my System Mechanic program, it said that my system drive (Intel SSD is my only drive) has 45,000 misaligned files (19Gb) and 3340 fragmented files (6.77Gb). I thought how can that be since I have TRIM enabled. So I did the cmd prompt query "disabledeletenotify" to make sure TRIM was enabled and it was. Next I put about 10Gb of data in the recycle bin and then emptied it to see if I had a lot of hard drive activity (to verify that TRIM was doing it's job) and didn't notice much activity on the hard drive light at all. So I'm wondering if TRIM is really working. Does anyone have any ideas? I've never seen this in System Mechanic before. I also ran the optimizer in the Intel toolbox which took about 2 secs, but didn't help the problem.

6 REPLIES 6

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

What is the problem? System Mechanic is telling you your drive is messed up? I'd suggest that System Mechanic is giving you irrelevant information when it comes to SSD and if it is moving data around to "align folders" it is most likely causing the drives performance to degrade rather than get better. I would not use that feature with SSD.

To keep your drive it top condition you can use Intel's SSD Toolbox. Check the System Configuration Tuner and make sure the system configuration is optimal. After that TRIM will take care of the rest.

There is no easy way to know if TRIM is working, but if you have met all the requirements for TRIM to function there is no reason why it would not be working.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Redux, what I am saying is that System mechanic is telling me that I have misaligned files and also fragmented files. I haven't allowed it to do anything to possibly correct the issues. I have been using Sys. mech. for as long as I've been using this SSD and it has never told me anything like this before. that's what made me think that TRIM is not working. I just ran the system configuration tuner and it tells me that everything is optimal. So I guess that what Sys. mech. is telling me is just a false report. Anyone ever seen this before?

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

acerzr2 wrote:

Redux, what I am saying is that System mechanic is telling me that I have misaligned files and also fragmented files. I haven't allowed it to do anything to possibly correct the issues. I have been using Sys. mech. for as long as I've been using this SSD and it has never told me anything like this before. that's what made me think that TRIM is not working. I just ran the system configuration tuner and it tells me that everything is optimal. So I guess that what Sys. mech. is telling me is just a false report. Anyone ever seen this before?

What is a "misaligned file" and "fragmented file"?

A file with its sectors spread out over a drive? SSDs do this on purpose for wear-leveling and to increase performance by spreading files over seperated NAND chips. A fragmented file has nothing to do with TRIM. TRIM cleans dirty blocks on the SSD and has to do with valid/deleted pages. You application must be looking at the pages and not just files to tell you anything about TRIM.

I would ignore what this tool is telling you and trust tools that are specifically designed for SSDs.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

A hard drive (HDD) is a mechanical device. To read data a reading head has to move over a spinning disk to find it. This process is horrifically slow when compared to SSD and over time it gets worse as the files start to fragment. Defragmenting the HDD therefore helps reduce the time it takes to read the data as the reading head has less distance to travel.

SSD is an electronic device, consequently access times are an order of magnitude faster. As DuckiHo states the data is deliberately distributed over the NAND to reduce wear. This is achieved via a complex algorithm within the SSD that only Intel know about.System Mechanic has no way of knowing what that algorithm is, but even if it did it would serve no useful purpose. If it did it would be cleverer than Intel's SSD and that is highly unlikely.

Consequently if System Mechanic is moving data around it is doing so with no knowledge of what it is moving and in the process it is generating writes that will actually degrade your drive.

Win 7 will automatically disable its built in defragmentation tool because it harms the SSD by inducing writes that are not necessary.

I'm surprised that System Mechanic do not warn you to not use this feature with a SSD.