What I've seen, and experienced is: NEVER defrag a SSD. They simply don't need it, and the defrag process, EVEN ONCE, significantly reduces the life of the SSD (which is usually specified in TB written - reading is not a problem). Windows 10's optimize function, when it recognizes a SSD, simply invokes the SSD's TRIM function which makes erased space immediately available for writing new data rather than waiting for a garbage collection cycle to be triggered.
As for hard disks, I can't admit to having a Seagate drive die on me while in service, but I have had one get very noisy - so I replaced it on general principles. Though nothing is as noisy as an old Conner, like a fire truck siren. I've used all WD in recent years, and have replaced them mainly because I wanted an upgrade, not because they died. Of course, I'm using them in a single PC, not NAS or some other use that hammers the disks hard.
Edit: you do need to beware of recent lower-priced hard disks from both WD and Seagate. They've switched to shingled magnetic recording, which compared to conventional methods is far denser, but can be disastrously slower at writing than a conventional (CMR) hard disk. Essentially, it works like a SSD in terms of recording large blocks after staging in an on-disk (or small RAM) cache, and hides its poor write performance behind that cache. However, writing a large sequential file that exceeds the cache size, or hammering it with a ton of small files (which slows down any disk, but especially so for SMR disks), can extend write completion times into many minutes or even hours. Despite some of these being first offered in the WD "Red" line, allegedly for NAS use, they are not suitable for any kind of general file-server use. If you can afford the write time, their read performance is pretty much normal for their spindle speed, so for bulk media storage, for instance, they can make sense (write once, read many). Seagate is moving to SMR for lower-priced disks, too, but unlike WD they actually mention in the specs and on the package that they're using it. For any predictable HD speed, you need CMR.
Here's an interesting review of hard disk reliability, from Backblaze. Caveats: their use pattern probably is not the same as ANYBODY else's. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backb...stats-q3-2020/
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Originally Posted by mikeebb
...if it ain't broke, don't fix it?
