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I purposely did a bunch of large file operations at the same time knowing it would cause the MFT to grow and become full of runs and building a large attribute list with the idea of just defragging when done. However Win10 won't let me defrag the drive because it's SSD, it just wants to trim it. I want to defrag so the low level file system layout isn't all broken up to a bunch of lookups. I could now make copies of the files then delete the originals, but that is manual, that's why I did it all at once so I could just walk away for a few hours.

How can I override Win10 and the like to defrag an SSD drive or is there a 3rd party available?

Thanks!

user3161924
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    You really don't need a defrag, it correctly stops you from doing so. There is no point, the only visible result will be the reduction of SSD life. Trim is really all you need to keep SSD tidy and fast. – Nikita Kipriyanov Jan 08 '23 at 05:09
  • In this case the MFT will be badly fragmented and tons of small runs that will require a lot of look-ups for the data instead of fast an efficient. I don't need to defrag all the time and I'm not worried about wear, I'll be long gone. –  Jan 08 '23 at 05:50
  • Not, it doesn't. It is cached. Anyway, this is not a business-related question and therefore off topic on ServerFault. – Nikita Kipriyanov Jan 08 '23 at 07:01
  • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/contig – Greg Askew Jan 08 '23 at 08:07
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    @NikitaKipriyanov that's absolutely not true, [Windows will mildly defrag SSD drives to reduce metadata overhead](https://superuser.com/a/1150677/241386) exactly like what the OP expected and OP doesn't need to do anything because Windows defragmenter automatically manages that – phuclv Jan 08 '23 at 08:41
  • @phuclv is that true for alternate drives/drive letters or only the system drive in relation to volume snapshot being enabled. I guess I could monitor it and check back in a month, but that contig utility in this case may be handy as I could script it for this special one-time need. – user3161924 Jan 08 '23 at 19:45
  • I once wrote a defrag utility but I haven't used it for years. Still works for me, uses the Windows defrag API for moving files so is as safe as can be. At the time I wrote it SSD's weren't an issue. https://www.disktuna.com/da-disktuna/. Getting folder structure is a tad slow but I do not intend to fix it. – Joep van Steen Jan 12 '23 at 01:00

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UltraDefrag portable version 7 has the option to defrag the MFT.

It will also defragment a SSD if your ok with the whole excessive writing to your SSD thing.

cybernard
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