Should I defragment my USB Flash drive?

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Defragging isn't entirely about seek time -- many of Firefox's leaks were tracked to memory fragmentation -- as in, RAM.

There's also the issue of space -- it's an extreme, pathological case, but modern filesystems store files in extents. If a file is contiguous, that's one extent -- just the location on the disk, and the file size -- which has to be stored. If it's more fragmented, each fragment is stored as an extent -- which is at least a few extra bytes of space, and very likely some extra time and RAM to access.

For most cases, that's really not going to matter -- certainly, for a little 8 gig thumb drive, the life of the thing is a much bigger concern. But I wouldn't say never defrag, just don't do it weekly like you might with a hard disk.

Also, Ray: A 750 gig external flash drive? Are you sure? Those are absurdly expensive -- I paid $300 extra for a 128 gig internal flash drive. You've probably got a USB hard drive, which absolutely will benefit from not being fragmented.

I accidentally started to defrag my flash drive, then cancelled. Now I'm having MAJOR problems with certain files. I used to be able to use the files, now I get error messages that the files are corrupted, and such.
My problem is that it's an OLD flash (1.0?) I'm using it on a Win98 computer at work - transfering needed files into a newer computer. It's the only flash I have that will work in this computer.
So...if I copy the files onto the hard drive to where it's empty and paste them back in, do you think this would take care of the problem? Should I reformat or scandisk (or defrag anyway - to let if finish?) the flash before putting files back on it?
I know it wears it out, I just need it to live long enough to transfer all the files out.
(Does anyone know where I can get an older type flash/thumb drive that will work on Win98, first ed.?)

THANKS SO MUCH!!

Another reason to avoid it is that it may just stop working! I defragged a flash drive, and now I'm told that it's unformatted! To make matters worse, after I discovered this, I remembered doing exactly same thing and having the same problem a couple of years ago. Alas, life's tough when you're thick.

im not understanding as to why defraging is so bad for the flash drives..these flash drives,they contail the same memory chips as our pc memory itself uses..and pc memory never goes bad..unless you put it in backwards or somehow manage to fry it lol..in a way it makes sense,,but on the other side..memory is memory ..weather its being written to or used in I/O cycles..just a thought i had in my head...i could be wrong lol

Yes, you are wrong. Flash memory is a VERY different kind of memory than what's in your PC. When you turn off your PC the RAM in your PC loses everything in it. Flash memory retains what's in it when the power is removed. Flash memory wears out the more you write to it, and defragging is a VERY write-intensive operation. (Not to mention that defragging is nearly pointless on memory-based drives.)

24-Sep-2009

Defragging flash media DOES reduce its life-span, however, your reasons are slightly off. The life-span of flash drives are NOT reduced by writing to the drive. Flash memory uses a phenomenon (known as Fowler-Nordheim tunneling) to send electrons through a floating gate transistor where it remains even after power is turned off. This process does not "wear out" the media. Flash memory gets its name from the technique used to erase its data. To write data, an electric charge is sent through one transistor, called the floating gate, then through a metal oxide layer, and into a second transistor called the control gate where the charge is stored in a cell until it's erased. To reset all values, a strong electrical field, called a (yep, you guessed it) "flash", is applied to the entire card. Flash drives have two limitations: The bits can be erased only by applying the flash to a large block of memory and, with each ERASURE (not write), the block becomes less stable. In time (after 10,000 to 1,000,000 uses) a flash memory device will no longer reliably store data.

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