I discovered just now that the "Automatic Maintenance" option of the Action Center may try to run DEFRAG against your SSD (which is generally considered a very bad practice) On my system, Windows 7 in installed on the SSD and I am dual-booting W8 CP from a .VHD file on a mechanical drive. Probably because of this setup, W8 is unable to detect that F: is an SSD, and by looking at the Event Viewer, I discovered that it just spent 10 minutes defragmenting my SSD. This is a warning for users with a similar setup: by leaving W8 unattended there is a risk of shortening the life of your SSD.
i think its no defrag.. its optimize...i think it starts the TRIM command of the SSD... so i think what you say is 50% false
Terminology aside, we should run defrag and deselect the SSD (and the System Reserved partition, if it's on SSD, which it probably is). Problem solved, but it does beg the question why MS seemingly ignored this. They're very aware of these things (recall the epic blog post on SSDs on the Building Win7 blog), so it doesn't make sense. I wonder if it's actually doing what we think it is.
They're scheduled, the application log says it happened, so it's looking and quacking like a duck so far.
I just went into the optimize drive setting and when I run optimize drive it shows that it is trimming the ssd drive (50%). It said it was run 2 days ago. If you have an ssd drive it will trim it and not defrag it.
By looking at the event log, it seems to me that F: (the SSD) was both trimmed & defragged The disk defragmenter successfully completed defragmentation on Disco C (F: ) 03/03/2012 12.56.59 The disk defragmenter successfully completed retrim on Disco C (F: ) 03/03/2012 12.56.59 the previous action ended minutes before. Please note that C: is a VHD on an HDD, and it is BOTH trimmed and defragged? The disk defragmenter successfully completed defragmentation on Windows 8 (C: ) 03/03/2012 12.43.19 The disk defragmenter successfully completed retrim on Windows 8 (C: ) 03/03/2012 12.43.19 ... at least the information published in the event log looks confusing (I omit the details, other data partitions on mechanical drives where defragged but not trimmed a few minutes before)
AFAIK you do NOT defrag SSDs, I would check with the mfg for suggestions on what to do as far as maintenance. I have 5 OCZ SSDs in my machine, and I use their recommendations. ETA - the post above from MS is one option, I opted to turn it off on all drives pending a reply from OCZ. ETA2 - OCZ reply - "I see no reason to disable drive optimization for any installed SSDs." They seem to agree with MS.