I recently just read about this setting. It defrags the pc. I am using a 160gb ssd for my main drive. My other internal drive is a 500gb hdd. This setting should be set to off in Norton correct? Its bad for it to defrag a ssd. Why can the program not detect when using a ssd and disable that feature? I am using Windows 8 64 bit.
Idle Time Optimizer lets you configure Norton Internet Security to defragment your boot volume or the local disk that contains boot volume when your computer is idle. Norton Internet Security automatically schedules the optimization when it detects the installation of an application on your computer and your computer is idle. If you start using your computer again, Norton Internet Security stops the optimization task and starts optimizing the next time that your computer is idle. This way, the background job of optimization does not affect the computer performance.
Optimization rearranges file fragments into adjacent or contiguous clusters in the hard disk. It improves the computer performance by reading the files into the memory faster. Optimization also maximizes the usable free space on a disk by grouping most frequently used files and infrequently used files. In addition, it consolidates free space to avoid fragmenting newly added files.
You can manually optimize by using the Optimize option in the Performance window that appears when you click Performance in the main window. You can also view the occurrences of optimizations during the last three months in the Events graph in the Performance window.
I recently just read about this setting. It defrags the pc. I am using a 160gb ssd for my main drive. My other internal drive is a 500gb hdd. This setting should be set to off in Norton correct? Its bad for it to defrag a ssd. Why can the program not detect when using a ssd and disable that feature? I am using Windows 8 64 bit.
Idle Time Optimizer lets you configure Norton Internet Security to defragment your boot volume or the local disk that contains boot volume when your computer is idle. Norton Internet Security automatically schedules the optimization when it detects the installation of an application on your computer and your computer is idle. If you start using your computer again, Norton Internet Security stops the optimization task and starts optimizing the next time that your computer is idle. This way, the background job of optimization does not affect the computer performance.
Optimization rearranges file fragments into adjacent or contiguous clusters in the hard disk. It improves the computer performance by reading the files into the memory faster. Optimization also maximizes the usable free space on a disk by grouping most frequently used files and infrequently used files. In addition, it consolidates free space to avoid fragmenting newly added files.
You can manually optimize by using the Optimize option in the Performance window that appears when you click Performance in the main window. You can also view the occurrences of optimizations during the last three months in the Events graph in the Performance window.
Hmm. I guess it does not hurt it either way since it will not defrag a ssd and it is smart enough to know that. I went ahead and turned it off any ways. I also turned it off on my other machine that uses Windows 7. Since it does it automatically any ways.
Maybe what they meant is that PC Optimization does not run on the SSD itself, but it DOES run on the PC's hard disk drives. But I'm not convinced about that since there is no clear mention about it in the documentation.
Hi Axonn:
I agree with you, the documentation on this topic is poorly written.
I did some digging in the Norton Customer Support site and found one article here titled Optimizing Your Permanent Disks Manually that states that "disk optimization does not run on PC with solid state drive". My understanding is that the Insight Optimizer will only defrag a "normal" HDD drive that serves as the boot volume (i.e., the drive where your Windows OS is installed), but I could be wrong about that.
The support article here titled Optimizing Your Boot Volume has some additional information on the difference between a Windows defrag and a Norton Optimizer defrag.
---------- Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2013 v. 20.2.0.19 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 17.0 HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Thing is, in my case, the optimizer kicked in even though my boot drive is an SSD. I suppose it was defragging my hard disk, but I didn't hear much sound from the system, so I suspect it was messing with my SSD, which is a big no-no. Ah, anyway...
How long did the optimizer run (look in Norton Tasks in the Performance pane)? I believe it is normal for the optimizer to launch, if enabled, but it will stop without defragging when it checks and sees that the drive is SSD.
Hey SendOfJive :). I've no idea for how long it would have ran because I stopped it right away. I was around the computer when it started. I believe the documentation should be updated and polished a bit.