Comments for Should I defragment my USB Flash drive?

Comment from Beau M on 2009-11-09

2009-11-10T07:57:01Z

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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Comment from shawn on 2009-09-23

2009-09-24T05:05:48Z

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

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Comment from Ashamed on 2009-05-20

2009-05-20T09:22:31Z

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.

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Comment from Tiffany on 2008-12-15

2008-12-16T02:12:00Z

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!!

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Comment from David Masover on 2008-11-27

2008-11-28T04:18:06Z

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.

Couple of things are getting confused here. Defragging, particularly in the scope of this article, has nothing to do with RAM. Nothing. Defragging is all about disks and disk-like devices such as USB flash drives. Thus the FireFox thing mentioned is totally unrelated.

Similarly the extent thing doesn't really make sense either. Files use no more disk space whether they are fragmented on disk or not.

Finally, I stand by my statement: there is never a reason to defrag a USB flash drive. If, for some reason you want it "defragged" (and I see no real reason to), a) copy the files off the flash drive to a location on your hard drive, b) delete every thing from the flash drive, c) copy the files back. Same results with a lot less flash/disk writing.

- Leo
28-Nov-2008

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A comment on: Should I defragment my USB Flash drive?

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Comment from Ray on 2008-11-21

2008-11-21T21:54:23Z

Leo, I saw your article about flash drives not necessarily needing defragmentation. I have a 750 gig maxtor usb I use for storing my Norton Ghost backups. After doing a backup, my 750 gig shows to be 99% fragmented. Running XP Defrag program takes up to 6 days running continuously. After it has been defragged, it's time of my next weekly backup with norton ghost, and I'm back to square one...it's 99% fragmented again. Is this a problem leaving it this fragmented, or is there a better and faster way to defrag the 750 gig?

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Comment from Steve Bukosky on 2008-11-06

2008-11-06T20:08:20Z

Facinating. I did not know that they can wear out. I thought that they would work until some catastrophic failure, like a static spike or chip failure would render the whole device useless. What are the symptoms? Should they just be disposed of after a certain time?

Failure more: I would expect read/write errors of various forms. CRC errors and th like. I'd a) make sure that the flash memory is not the only place you keep that data, and b) when those errors start to occur, dispose of it.

- Leo
07-Nov-2008

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Comment from Cyclo User on 2008-10-13

2008-10-13T22:36:12Z

Actually, defragging your flash drive can have some benefit but only if your hardware needs it. For example, the CycloDS and many other MicroSD to DS adapters require the card to be mostly unfragmented to work properly. There is even a debate on the official forums about whether it is best to use a defragmenting program or to simply copy everything off, reformat, and restore everything.

In a case like that I would not defrag, and I would not reformat. I would simply copy all the files off, delete all files from the flash drive, and the copy them back. Reformatting isn't needed, and would likely perform more writes to the flash than is necessary.

- Leo
14-Oct-2008

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Comment from Paulc on 2008-10-05

2008-10-05T15:56:51Z

I have an ocz 64gb SSD, which when new windows reported as 56GB. everytime I do a diskclean up I lose space not gain it. Last time I checked it I found I had 26GB installed inclunding hidden system file. 56-26 = 30GB of free space, but windows reported it as 20GB. I had lost 10GB over a few weeks. I decided to defrag the drive and got all the space back. Is this a windows or drive problem. Vista 64bit btw.

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A comment on: Should I defragment my USB Flash drive?

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Comment from El Bogarto on 2008-09-25

2008-09-25T18:26:56Z

@ Henry Cossak:
You might be noticing a performance increase in regards to file writes; it's been proven to my personal satisfaction that writing to fragmented free space will be slower than writing to contiguous free space. The bigger the file being written, the bigger the performance impact. No noticable difference in read time, though.

Personally, I defrag my heavily written flash drives once every 6 months or so.

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Comment from henry cossak on 2008-09-01

2008-09-01T08:25:09Z

interesting article leo, i totally agree about the wearing out of flash/solid state storage.

But i have been testing numerous SD and micro SD cards and the read/write benchmarks show a noted improvment after a defrag! how can this be explained?

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Comment from Ben on 2008-05-07

2008-05-07T13:47:26Z

Connie Ramirez -
In the May 1, 2008 edition of Windows Secrets several anti-virus programs were evaluated. The results were obtained from Virus Bulletin's April 2008 edition and tested 37 antivirus solutions. The tests were run on Windows Vista PCs and included a list of viruses known to be circulating in the wilds of the Internet as of January 2008: worms, bots, polymorphic viruses, file infector viruses, and even legacy virus strains.

Five products notched perfect 100% detection rates (prices include one year of virus-signature updates): Avira Antivir Personal (free for noncommercial use), ESET NOD32 ($40), Fortinet FortiClient ($28), Frisk FPROT Antivirus ($29 for up to five PCs), and Symantec Norton Antivirus ($40).

You can install and register free copies of Avira on each of your 4 computers from www.free-av.com. Understand that AV products seem to change rankings with each other depending on latest updates, test authorities, etc. As Leo has said many times, better to use something rather than nothing at all.

http://ask-leo.com/whats_the_best_popup_blocker_antivirus_software_antispyware_software.html

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Comment from Gramps on 2008-02-26

2008-02-27T06:48:33Z

"Hmmmm... makes me wonder how many MacBook Air owners may defrag their new SSD drives, potentially reducing the lifespan of the device."

Fortunately for OSX users, fragmentation isn't much of a problem. HFS+ (the standard file system for MAC users) uses a combination of methods to reduce fragmentation.Such as aggressive read ahead and write behind caching, journaling, and delayed allocation. not to say that files don't get fragmented, but there is much less of a performance hit from the few files that do get scattered across the drive.

That being said, great tip. Never, ever, ever defrag a SSD.

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Comment from Tensor on 2008-02-25

2008-02-25T14:41:01Z

The magnetic hardrive is a -mechanical- device that is, by orders of magnitude, the slowest* component in a modern PC of which all other components are solid state (CPU, RAM, GFX etc). File fragmentation increases the work that this mechanical device has to do, thereby worsening an existing performance bottleneck. Hence the need for defragmentation. In addition to preserving overall system performance, defragmentation may also improve the life of the drive in the long term, improve chances of file recovery (if the HDD crashes) and a defragmented drive may also reduce battery consumption in laptops. Infact, in the corporate space, unattended intelligent automatic defrag of workstations and servers is becoming the norm since it eases the workload of the IT people yet reduces user complaints of poor performance.

However, as Leo has so precisely explained, flash drives derive none of the benefits of defragmentation that are applicable to mechanical HDDs. So, there is no use defragging your thumb drive or ipod nano.

IMO, even with the rising popularity of SSDs, there is still a long way to go before they can seriously threaten the trusty magnetic-mechanical workhorse in our homes. As of now, the SSDs simply cannot compete on the price to performance ratio for home users.

* Excluding optical drives, that are infact even slower, but are only of peripheral interest (pun unintended) compared to a HDD.

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Comment from David Ball on 2008-02-20

2008-02-21T05:24:35Z

Hmmmm... makes me wonder how many MacBook Air owners may defrag their new SSD drives, potentially reducing the lifespan of the device. Using Flash for hard drives (Solid State Drives) is still an expensive, limited storage medium that is slowly gaining momentum. As more manufacturers (such as Samsung) throw their weight behind the technology we should see lower prices and increased capacities. The next couple of years could yield some very interesting drives in this arena - low power consumption, fast boot times, and potentially better performance that disk based drives.

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A comment on: Should I defragment my USB Flash drive?

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