Using IFW or IFL to refresh an SSD partition
Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2026 11:03 pm
It's reported here and there that the sectors of an SSD that were written when the OS was installed, but never rewritten since then, may become harder to read over time, and things may slow down. The fix for this is to write the data again, or 'refresh it. One suggestion I've seen is to make an image of, say, the C: drive in Windows from an IFL thumbdrive, and then immediately restore the image. It seems that would accomplish the minimum refresh needed since it would only re-write the used sectors.
But it seems there could be a problem with this. If IFL writes a sector, the drive may want to write it to a different physical sector as part of wear leveling. But what does it do about the remaining sectors in that erase block? It seems this method might result in data being written many times to the drive by its controller. Is there some kind of cache on the drive that prevents this from happening?
Could someone explain exactly what happens during such a restore? And generally, is a restore a good way to refresh a partition or not? Thanks very much.
But it seems there could be a problem with this. If IFL writes a sector, the drive may want to write it to a different physical sector as part of wear leveling. But what does it do about the remaining sectors in that erase block? It seems this method might result in data being written many times to the drive by its controller. Is there some kind of cache on the drive that prevents this from happening?
Could someone explain exactly what happens during such a restore? And generally, is a restore a good way to refresh a partition or not? Thanks very much.