Should I Fragment My iMac HD?

[Bazza01]

I have a 3TB internal HD which has 512GB of SSD.

Am I supposed to fragment this drive? I have had the Mac for over a year.

Recently it was nearly full but I have moved all media to an external HD which has reduced the content on the internal HD to about 180GB.

Just not sure if I'm supposed to fragment as I seem to recall reading that a SSD should not be fragmented.

Thanks for your advice.

 

[ChrisA]

I think you meant "de-frangment", not "fragment". If so just don't worry about it. SDD changes things because there is not physical head movement not rotational latency. Just leave it be.

 

[tjwilliams25]

To build on what @ChrisA said, SSDs don't have a fragmentation problem, yes, but it's not a problem with OS X like it is with Windows. OS X actually takes care of the defragmentation process for you, so you don't have to worry about it.

 

[ChrisA]

To build on what @ChrisA said, SSDs don't have a fragmentation problem, yes, but it's not a problem with OS X like it is with Windows. OS X actually takes care of the defragmentation process for you, so you don't have to worry about it.

Even modern Windows systems are better. The concept of "de-fragmenting" was invented when Windows was still using a FAT file system on hard disks. No, actual;;y it was invented before Windows, back when DOS ran on floppy disks that used FAT. The results of de-fragging a DOS floppy was dramatic. It could double the apparent speed.

With an SSD on any OS you would get longer life by NOT de-fraging the SSD. An SSD only has some many writes to it before it fails and defanging likely does more writes than normal use. But don't worry they last a long time

 

[Bazza01]

Thanks all for your replies.

ChrisA - Yes, I did mean Defrag

I will leave as is.

Thank you.