Ok to Defragg? (hybrid drives)

[washd123]

I have 2 seagate momentus XT 750gb hybrid drives that use 8gb of SLC NAND Flash to speed up the mechanical drive. They work like a charm, however I'm wondering if I should or could defrag. I've gotten a lot of mixed answers, supposedly the official word from seagate is that it fries them, I don't see how considering the flash is inaccessible to the OS and the user. IT should just clear everything but the flash cache.

So what's your advice? should I? is it ok to?

 

[Jstn7477]

I've defragmented my Momentus XT 500GB several times. The only downside is that the drive will have to relearn what to put in the cache, but seeing how my drive's cache evicts data throughout the day on my laptop if I happen to use it a lot, it doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance.

 

[Mussels]

the drive will probably cache as you defrag, wearing out the flash faster.

 

[TheOne]

I have 2 seagate momentus XT 750gb hybrid drives that use 8gb of SLC NAND Flash to speed up the mechanical drive. They work like a charm, however I'm wondering if I should or could defrag. I've gotten a lot of mixed answers, supposedly the official word from seagate is that it fries them, I don't see how considering the flash is inaccessible to the OS and the user. IT should just clear everything but the flash cache.

So what's your advice? should I? is it ok to?

As you pointed out Seagate recommends treating the Momentus XT SSHD as an SSD.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articl...c=Product_Family:Momentus_SATA&fs=Search&pn=1

Momentus XT Enhancements

The new, innovative Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid drive is uncovering intricacies that traditional hard drives both are unaware of and whose dynamics they cannot enhance or improve.

However in the same spirit as the Momentus XT drive - fast response and adaptation - the Seagate Momentus XT development team is listening to all customer feedback/reviews. Seagate is enhancing the drive capabilities in real-time. Enhancements are released into firmware augmentation code as soon as they are verified, resolved, and tested. You will not have to wait for the next Solid State Hybrid products to experience the enhancements, as the Seagate support site offers a firmware detection tool to verify if you have the latest enrichments. See it at Document ID: 215451.

System configuration can sometimes limit the potential of all components in the system if they are set primarily for power savings, and if that is what is most important to the user, then it is helpful to keep these settings turned on. However, if your primary goal is high performance, then there are a couple of areas where users can fine-tune their system and realize the full potential of their storage.

1. Turn off Windows automatic defrag. Like SSDs, Momentus XT works best without frequent defrag.
2. Frequent Anti-virus scans can disrupt the performance optimization of the drive, so be aware of how often the Anti-virus software scans the drive.
3. In the Device Manager's (click on the Start icon > right-click on [My] Computer > select Manage > select Device Manager) Disk properties, enable "advanced performance" or install the Intel Matrix driver.
4. In some configurations with Windows 7 and Momentus XT, disabling super-fetch can improve performance.

For more tricks and tips, please visit the Seagate community forum.

 

[washd123]

so the best option is to not defragg?

I understand I shouldn't defrag often, that's clear, what's not clear if I should do it at all.

 

[Jstn7477]

It says "works best without frequent defrag" so I'd imagine it's fine. I've had mine for over a year and defragged it several times when it's gotten bad.

 

[Mussels]

i'd defrag occasionally, but as little as possible.


for example, my defragger has a 'fragmented files only' option which doesnt rearrange the files on the drive at all, which would have the least wear and tear on the SSD portion.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The software in the drive itself likely prevents fragmentation and defrags the HDD as needed. As such, I would never defrag a hybrid drive.

 

[Mussels]

The software in the drive itself likely prevents fragmentation and defrags the HDD as needed. As such, I would never defrag a hybrid drive.

a simple scan with a decent defragger would reveal if this is true or not.

 

[washd123]

I do manual defrags, so I think I'll just limit them like once every couple months, thanks guys

 

[Jstn7477]

Auslogics Disk Defrag shows as much fragmentation as there is on a normal HDD. The NAND chip (which is SLC and gets written to all the time) is used for reads only and presumably is just a copy of 8GB of random crap on the disk. Once a month defragmentation sounds reasonable.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I defrag maybe once a year (wishful thinking) and have had over 90% fragmentation for months with no detrimental effects noted. These drives are going on 7 years old too. Defragging is highly overrated.

 

[CaptainFailcon]

fragmentation has ZERO impact on SSD drives INCLUDING hybrid drives
hybrid drives place the most accessed files on the ssd thus mostly eliminating the access time caused by fragmentation in special cases if you are accessing something like a LARGE file thats EXTREMELY fragmented then you might beable to sense a bit of access delay but the software on the drive controller accounts for that as well so its all pretty much moot

 

[Mussels]

fragmentation has ZERO impact on SSD drives INCLUDING hybrid drives
hybrid drives place the most accessed files on the ssd thus mostly eliminating the access time caused by fragmentation in special cases if you are accessing something like a LARGE file thats EXTREMELY fragmented then you might beable to sense a bit of access delay but the software on the drive controller accounts for that as well so its all pretty much moot

the cache only covers a small percentage of the drive. if he hits an uncached file, he's got the exact same poor performance of any normal mechanical drive.