Well flash media is a bit different than standard hard drive platters. On a traditional hard drive the read/write head physically moves on the magnetic platter so a files contents could be spread out in a totally random pattern on your hard drive, which the files system of your OS locates via the FAT (file allocation table)-if this gets messed up it won’t know where to look up were the data is placed, there are third party utilities geared at repairing and locating files out there. What a defrag program does is that it moves and organizes files so the most accessed files are at the inner portion of the hard drive so it will read faster (you know pi comes into play here) and all the files are organized as contiguous rather than all over the hard drive increasing both read and write performance.
Windows Vista defragmenter is a bit better than that found in its predecessor XP, but doesn’t do a good job of organizing files like third party products such as Diskeeper my persona favorite and Perfect Disk. Yes it does do basic stuff like grouping files and moving them so they are read sequentially rather than having them spread over the hard drive and it does increase performance and does a pretty good monitoring files. The amount of disk activity for me dropped when I stopped using the one for Windows Vista and started using DiskKeeper, which I run on servers and workstations at work and I am happy to get a free copy via the RedCarpet program when each new version comes out. I have been a customer of theirs since version 1.
OK back to flash based drives like memory cards, USB thumb drives and SSD drives (solid state drives) write data contiguously from the get go and don’t have the same problems that conventional platter drives have. However, flash based memory has a limited number of read/writes. The device actually has built in technology to move your data across the entire device so you don’t wear out one place so it will last longer. So if you degrag your flash based device you are adding thousands of write operations each time you defrag, thus shorting your devices life span. The only reason to defrag would be for recovery utilities, because its easier to recover lost files that aren’t spread out, but a good backup program and policy is highly recommended especially the ones that are set and forget like OneCare or Acronis.
So in summary the answer is - No do not defrag your SSD drive. Unless you want to shorten its life span.
Written by Steven Hughes - Visit Website
