Running low on disk space. Can I Defrag my SSD?

darkevangelist

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Aug 21, 2014
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I have a Samsung 840 EVO 120Gb SSD and I am running quite low on space in it. On analyzing the disk I see there's around 22.5Gb of fragmented files.

Should I defrag it? If not is there any other way of freeing disk space?
 

ifIwasarichman

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Jun 18, 2014
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Normally a ssd does not benefit from a defrag as you describe, mainly because it does not suffer the seek time problems related to hdds. It only tries to reorganise what is on the drive to improve speed by accessing data easier, it does not remove any data. When was the last time you cleaned out the drive? Do your temp files, etc, get stored on this drive? Do you have duplicate files or old unnecessary files and folders taking up space? It may need a good clean (not sure on your level of knowledge so I put in the basics).
The best idea would be to attach another "storage" drive and move all excess files and folders (and maybe even load some of your not often used, and not speed sensitive programs) to that.
I run several systems with both of these drives and depending on the ssd size, normally only have the essentials on the ssd (OS and main programs, plus anything I need quick access to) and everything else goes to a storage drive.
Without seeing your system and what it is used for, it is hard to say what is your best solution. But if you can, try to do something along these lines to free up space on your ssd.
Also, do a search on the net (preferably more recent articles) about "why not to defragment a ssd" to get a better, more detailed explanation for the why's and wherefores, as to whether or not you should do it. Also pay attention to the ssd vendors software (example - Samsung's Magician Software) and things like trim. You may not have your ssd fully optimised and it may be filling up with garbage. There is a lot to explain and I have only touched on some parts (not enough room or time to explain everything, sorry), this is why I wrote to do a search and read. Then come back with any questions.
 

urbanrider

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Feb 13, 2012
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You shouldn’t really be de-fragmenting your SSD. It just causes un-necessary read/write cycles on the drive. This is beneficial to a classical spinning hard drive because it re-arranges the data on the disk so that its close together, thus reducing seek time when the mechanical head has to travel to the data to read the info. It just re-arranges the data and won’t really save you any space.