The Defragment and Optimize Drive tool suggests users to optimize the SSD drive, but it’s an error that can destroy the drive and all the files inside
Windows 10 May 2020 Update is the first core update that Microsoft has released this year for its operating system. As it often happens in the last few months, right after the release of the update, reports from users about problems found in the computer started to increase considerably. Problems recognized by the same Microsoft that has acted quickly enough to solve them. The news comes from a report published by the website Bleeping Computer.
Most of them have disappeared in the last weeks thanks to patches released ad hoc, but others are still present and one of them can destroy a very important component of the PC: the SSD. On computers nowadays the presence of at least one SSD is necessary to make it go much faster and to improve performance. Many users have reported that with the update to Windows 10 May 2020 Update, the operating system’s tool to better manage hard drives has started to give big problems. We’re talking about the “Defragment and Optimize Drives” application that is supposed to help users figure out when a hard drive needs to be defragmented to make the computer gain some performance. After the update, the tool shows wrong messages, risking heavy damage to the PC’s SSD.
Windows 10, SSDs at risk: what’s going on
“Defragment and optimize drives” is a tool that few people know about inside Windows 10, but it actually plays a vital role. It manages the health of hard drives and suggests users when to perform defragmentation and optimize PC performance.
Basically, an SSD should never be defragmented, but the Windows 10 tool uses a different optimization system for SSD drives and that’s why it’s preferable to keep it enabled. Just in case it works properly. On the other hand, after updating to Windows 10 May 2020 Update, the tool continuously suggests to manually optimize the SSD even if it has just been done already. Defragmenting the SSD drive only damages it to the point of complete disuse. A serious problem, especially if there are important files on the disk.
How to fix it
Microsoft is already aware of this problem and has made a patch that has been released only for the beta version of Windows 10. If the tests are successful, the update with the fix will be available for everyone as early as in the next few weeks.