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I've been wondering if it changed anything to defrag an SSD drive in order to move all the used clusters "in front" and keep the ones "in the back" open for, for example, partioning the hard drive more efficiently.

Does it change anything, or will creating a partition automatically use clusters from different places of the SSD independently?

One of my colleague told me it helped gain a lot of volume and allowed him to install another OS (on the same partition though, so slightly different topic). The OS refused to install before defrag becaues of space issues.

Anyway, do you guys have any thought/information about this?

Gil Sand
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    [Don't](http://superuser.com/a/601133/326042) [defrag](http://superuser.com/a/1655/326042) [SSDs!](http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/69599) – Matthew Champion Mar 06 '15 at 12:37
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    I know it shouldn't be done, that's why I'm asking here if what my colleague did really made a difference or he just f*cked up my drive :D – Gil Sand Mar 06 '15 at 12:38
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    Your friend decreased your devices lifespan, how much, not a great deal. Don't let your friend touch your computer – Ramhound Mar 06 '15 at 12:54
  • +1 Fully d'accord to @MattChampion's answer. Particularly I want to point out [Wear leveling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling). – user236012 Mar 06 '15 at 12:56
  • That's what I thought. – Gil Sand Mar 06 '15 at 12:58
  • Defrag does neither help or hurt (a modern ssd drive). What makes sense though, windows volume shrink does not know how to relocate data to the front of the partition in order to be able to use all free space for shrink – Dan Mar 06 '15 at 13:36
  • @MattChampion nope, sometimes it is good, that's why Windows does it from time to time if you have volume shadow copies on it (system restore points): http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRealAndCompleteStoryDoesWindowsDefragmentYourSSD.aspx – magicandre1981 Mar 06 '15 at 17:10
  • The advice not to defrag SSDs has been obsolete for several years now. It does not harm a modern SSD. There are benefits, but they are very slight. (With a modern SSD, you can hit the IOPS limit long before you hit the throughput limit. Reading or writing to a defragmented drive takes fewer operations because each operation can transfer more data.) – David Schwartz Sep 20 '15 at 00:55

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