Affected version: Windows 10 version 2004 (As of August 29 as a patch has not been made available yet)
I’ll cut to the chase because of the urgency of this:
The latest version of Windows 10 (version 2004) has a serious bug where if you have a Solid State Drive (those fast drives that cost alot and really make your computer work faster), Windows 10 Version 2004 would treat it like a traditional hard drive and try to “optimize it” by doing a defragment.
While doing a defragment is great for hard drives, this bug would wreck your solid state drives as solid state drives do not need such optimization; in fact, it would shorten the lifespan of your solid state drive as it causes the SSD drive to be used in a way that it isn’t designed for.
I was wondering why the SSD part of my laptop seemed to be abnormally hot to touch at times – And I figured my laptop was suffering from this bug too. Other symptoms you might encounter include high SSD usage that might slow down the responsiveness of your computer (Since an actual defragment is being done on a solid state drive).
Fortunately, you can get around this bug very easily, by disabling the automatic optimization windows 10 is following (to unintentionally wreck your solid state drive).
But first: How do I check if I’m on the bleeding edge (ahem, buggy), version of Windows?
Easy!
- Press and hold down “Ctrl”, then press “R” on your keyboard (ctrl + r)
- A window called “Run” appears. type “winver”, then hit enter
- Your current version of windows will appear. If your windows version is 2004, this bug is affecting your computer. If you are on older versions of windows – Stay there and don’t update to this latest version of Windows for now.
If you are running Windows 10 version 2004, Follow these Steps to protect your SSD Drive:
- Right click the start button, Click on File Explorer:
2. In the file explorer window, scroll down and select “This PC”
3. Right click on your SSD Drive, select “Properties”. For most computers, This is usually your boot drive (C:)
4. In the pop up window that opens, select “Tools”, then “Optimize”
5. The “Optimize Drive” window will open. If your “media type” is solid state drive, continue following this guide. Under Scheduled Optimization, click “Change settings”. If all your drives are listed as “Hard Disk Drive” in this step, you do not need to do anything as this bug shouldn’t affect you.
6. Untick the checkbox “Run on a schedule”, then press “OK”
7. Press “Close” and “Okay” to close the other windows.
8. And you’re safe! Now, Follow #TechWithAaron to be informed when this bug is fixed.
As someone that wants my laptop to survive as long as it can, This bug annoys me: I’m quite surprised that besides all that beta testing Microsoft was doing, this serious bug managed to escape their testing procedures.
You might be wondering: What do I lose from disabling this?
My answer may be frowned upon by IT enthusiasts (even though I am an IT enthusiast myself): But I’d say not much. That’s because SSD drives are largely fast enough and most of them can do their own optimizations without Windows forcing the ssd to do it – so unless you’re the type that transfers lots of large data files (like transferring 10’s of Gigabytes of data per day) to and from your SSD everyday, most of us don’t need the absolute peak performance from our SSD’s.
However, If you really must have the highest performance from your SSD everyday, perhaps you can check back with this article to see when this bug is resolved, or just re-enable optimization next month (end September 2020) – I think Microsoft should have released a patch to this problem before this date.
For now, by following this guide, your computer is safe from the potential havoc this bug can cause on your solid state drive! 🙂
Aaron Tech Tips | Advise and Reviews for Tech and Audio Gear 💻🎧 