Should You Defragment an SSD? What Windows Does and Why
Windows says Optimize, old advice says never defrag an SSD, and Microsoft's docs say it happens monthly. Here is how those fit together.
Drives
Which drive to buy, and what the numbers on the box actually mean for how it behaves.
Does an NVMe SSD Need a Heatsink? How Thermal Throttling Works
An NVMe drive slows itself when it gets hot, by design. What sets the limit, what a heatsink changes, and how to tell if yours has ever throttled.
Why a Full SSD Gets Slow, and Stays Slow
Filling an SSD does more than shrink its write cache. It makes garbage collection expensive, and that slowdown does not end when the copy does.
Do SSDs Lose Data When Unplugged? How Long an SSD Holds Data
An SSD in a drawer is slowly leaking the charge that stores your files. What the one-year figure really promises, what speeds the loss, and how to keep it safe.
Will This M.2 SSD Work? Keys, SATA vs NVMe and Slot Wiring
Two M.2 SSDs can be the same size and fit the same slot while only one of them works in it. How to read the keys, the size code and the slot's wiring.
SMR vs CMR: Why Some Hard Drives Crawl Through Long Writes
Two hard drives can match on capacity, speed and cache and still behave very differently under heavy writes. The difference is how the tracks are laid down.
exFAT, NTFS or APFS: Formatting a Drive for Mac and Windows
Why a Mac can read a Windows drive but not write to it, what exFAT gives up to work on both, and which format fits which drive.
Why a 1TB Drive Shows Up as 931GB, and Where the Rest Goes
A new 1TB drive shows 931GB in Windows and something else on a Mac. Nothing is missing. Here is the arithmetic, and how to spot a gap it doesn't explain.
What the Symbols on a microSD Card Actually Guarantee
C10, U3, V30, A2 and a big number on the front. Three of those say the same thing, one is a ceiling rather than a floor, and one needs your device's permission.
TLC vs QLC: What Four Bits Per Cell Actually Costs
Two drives, same capacity, same headline write speed, different flash. What changes is sustained write, cold-read speed, and what the datasheet omits.
What TBW Actually Promises, and What It Doesn't
Every SSD lists an endurance rating in terabytes written. It is a warranty boundary derived from a lab workload, not a prediction of when the drive dies.
What a DRAM Cache Does, and Why Cheap SSDs Skip It
DRAM-less SSDs look identical on the box and cost less. Here is what the missing chip actually changes about how the drive behaves.
Why Your SSD Slows Down Copying Large Files
The write speed on the box is a cache speed, not a sustained one. Here's what determines how long it lasts, and why a fuller drive runs out sooner.
