LogFAQs > #968848137

Never defrag an SSD. You will literally physically wear it out. However, HDDs, yes you should occasionally defrag them. And yes, when writing new data to a drive, if previous data was stored there, it might leave a pattern in storage like +++xx++++xx+++xx+++ where + is places where data is stored, and x is places where no data is stored. this can significantly slowdown the drive. Defragmenting a drive reorganizes all the data on the drive so everything that should be indexed together will be placed together. So that pattern above will then look like +++++++++++++xxxxxx where new data can be written to the x's and it will then be faster to retrieve all the data since it will all be placed, for lack of better term, "in order".