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Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?

Many thanks.

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>> Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?<<

yes it's possible, no, it's not necessary... hard drives have to
physically move heads to get to different parts of a fragmented file
which takes time, but there is no physical movement within flash memory
so there is no disadvantage from fragmented files.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

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On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 18:12:41 -0800, Kent Shih wrote:

>Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?
>
>Many thanks.
>
It is not necessary. Defragmenting hard drives is meant to reduce
travel time of the physical read/write heads. There are no such moving
parts in an SD card.

--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.

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Reply to message from "Kent Shih" <kentshih@yahoo.com> (Sun, 27 Mar 2005
21:12:41) about ""defragment?"":

> Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?

> Many thanks.

While it is possible, it is not recommended. SD cards are used for storage,
not dynamic swapping, etc. which really reduces the effectiveness of
defragging. Second, the manipulation required to complete the defrag will
only take away from the total write reserve of said card. Only slightly,
certainly , but habitual defragging writes will accumulate. Third, the card
itself is pretty smart, and any fragmentation will be minimal by nature.


In a word (or 3), not an issue.

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"Bruno" <spamthis@server.com> wrote in message
news:c8se41532r4mt4v5tk0kjq6u673qq29see@4ax.com...
| On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 18:12:41 -0800, Kent Shih wrote:
|
| >Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?
| >
| >Many thanks.
| >
| It is not necessary. Defragmenting hard drives is meant to reduce
| travel time of the physical read/write heads. There are no such
moving
| parts in an SD card.
|
| --


Yes you can do it.

Why do you want to?

There are no moving physical parts so the time to reach any segment of
data is essentially the same as the time to reach any other so you
won't gain speed. However, it *will* put your files and directories in
a nice and neat order if that is important to you, and order space
contiguously.

One thing that is worth doing is checking the disk integrity- scandisk
in Windows, Norton's disk doctor etc. This will check things like the
partition table, boot record, FAT's, lost clusters.

You can do this by putting the card into a card reader where it will
show up as another drive and you can run the utility to check the
drive. After you have ran scandisk/disk doctor etc. you can run your
defragmentation utility, expect the files to be neater but not much
else in the way of advantage- it shouldn't do any harm though.

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On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:52:16 +0100, alan smith wrote:

>However, it *will* put your files and directories in
>a nice and neat order if that is important to you, and order space
>contiguously.

And that, my friends, is a completely useless exercise.

--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.

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"Bruno" <spamthis@server.com> wrote in message
news:s01g41903rcqi66dn14c86d7tp99bdlocp@4ax.com...
| On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:52:16 +0100, alan smith wrote:
|
| >However, it *will* put your files and directories in
| >a nice and neat order if that is important to you, and order space
| >contiguously.
|
| my completely useless exercise.
|
| --

Cut the bits you don't like? I cut some from your statement to lose the
sense of what you said as you carefully cut mine losing the sense of
what I said.

It's called choice. People have it, some people like to use it. It may
be useless to you but you can't take it from others. Luckily.

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"alan smith" <alan@REMOVEmral.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in news28le0$67l$4
@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk:

> Yes you can do it.
>
> Why do you want to?
>
> There are no moving physical parts so the time to reach any segment of
> data is essentially the same as the time to reach any other so you
> won't gain speed. However, it *will* put your files and directories in
> a nice and neat order if that is important to you, and order space
> contiguously.

Would it make file recovery tools easier to use when the format gets
screwed up?

Of course, anything important should be backed up so you don't have to rely
on such extreme measures.

Scott

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On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 14:57:06 +0100, alan smith wrote:

>
>"Bruno" <spamthis@server.com> wrote in message
>news:s01g41903rcqi66dn14c86d7tp99bdlocp@4ax.com...
>| On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:52:16 +0100, alan smith wrote:
>|
>| >However, it *will* put your files and directories in
>| >a nice and neat order if that is important to you, and order space
>| >contiguously.
>|
>| my completely useless exercise.
>|
>| --
>
>Cut the bits you don't like? I cut some from your statement to lose the
>sense of what you said as you carefully cut mine losing the sense of
>what I said.
>
>It's called choice. People have it, some people like to use it. It may
>be useless to you but you can't take it from others. Luckily.

I stand by my statement. Defraging an SD card is a totally useless
exercise. Of course, it is your choice if you want to do it anyway.

And why so touchy, there, alan?

--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.

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My understanding from the engineers is defragging is not necessary.

Every time you write to the SD card the data on the card is written
is re-written completely. So in essence your SD is defragged every
time you write to it.

I would point out the SD card has a limit of like 1 million writes to
the card, i've never heard of anyone having a card wear out in this
manner.
Your device will die first.

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DW wrote:

> My understanding from the engineers is defragging is not necessary.
>
> Every time you write to the SD card the data on the card is written
> is re-written completely. So in essence your SD is defragged every
> time you write to it.

Your explanation makes it sound like the whole SD card is completely
rewritten, 1GB in total for example, even for a byte change. Which
obviously can't be as we know how long it takes just to write 1MB of
data to the card.

What do you actually mean?

Nikki

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On 28 Mar 2005 07:46:26 -0800, DW wrote:

>Every time you write to the SD card the data on the card is written
>is re-written completely. So in essence your SD is defragged every
>time you write to it.

No.


--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.

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Kent Shih wrote:
> Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?

It may be pointless to defrag one memory card, but if you have a CF card
and a SD card it would be good to be able to defrag them as one drive,
so files were moved to different disks to maximize storage potional.



--
Marc
See http://www.imarc.co.uk/ for contact details.

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Kent Shih wrote:

> Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?

Yes, it's easy. Using a card reader, copy the data on the card to a
folder on your desktop. Now delete everything on the card. Copy the data
on your desktop back. Easy


Marc


--
Marc
See http://www.imarc.co.uk/ for contact details.

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On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 17:28:59 +0100, Marc wrote:

>Kent Shih wrote:
>> Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?
>
>It may be pointless to defrag one memory card, but if you have a CF card
>and a SD card it would be good to be able to defrag them as one drive,
>so files were moved to different disks to maximize storage potional.

I give up. Next topic please.

--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.

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On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 17:41:19 +0100, Marc wrote:

>Kent Shih wrote:
>
>> Is it possible to defragment SD card? Is it necessary?
>
>Yes, it's easy. Using a card reader, copy the data on the card to a
>fo