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.
Defrag is usually only for drives that are written to and data deleted often, creating gaps. If it’s just storage, probably ok. I’ve got 4x 20TB drives in my truenas, but it’s zfs, from what I’ve read, can’t or don’t need to defrag.
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
So it runs automatically in the background?
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.
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.
Defrag is usually only for drives that are written to and data deleted often, creating gaps. If it’s just storage, probably ok. I’ve got 4x 20TB drives in my truenas, but it’s zfs, from what I’ve read, can’t or don’t need to defrag.
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
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/optimize-and-defragment-drives-in-windows-11.3212/
Thank you. Turns out Windows is maintaining everything and no action was needed.