If you’re running NVME or SSD, you don’t have to worry about fragmentation at all and neither will NTFS or Windows.
On rotational media, recent versions of windows do it when it needs it. NTFS itself has become better about not splitting up files when there’s contiguous space available.
Need? Probably not unless they’re nearly full. Get some benefit from? at least a little. NTFS and 11 try to keep fragmentation at bay without killing your disk. New writes that won’t fit in a hole are pushed ahead of the platter until they will.
Go run optimize drives, it’ll tell you what the state is
ptu@sopuli.xyz 18 hours ago
So it runs automatically in the background?
rumba@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
If you’re running NVME or SSD, you don’t have to worry about fragmentation at all and neither will NTFS or Windows.
On rotational media, recent versions of windows do it when it needs it. NTFS itself has become better about not splitting up files when there’s contiguous space available.
finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I have two 10 terabyte external hard drives that go whirr (so I assume there are platters in there). Do they need a defrag? I’m running Windows 11.
rumba@lemmy.zip 20 minutes ago
Need? Probably not unless they’re nearly full. Get some benefit from? at least a little. NTFS and 11 try to keep fragmentation at bay without killing your disk. New writes that won’t fit in a hole are pushed ahead of the platter until they will.
Go run optimize drives, it’ll tell you what the state is
elevenforum.com/…/optimize-and-defragment-drives-…