I tried running defrag on a flashdrive in Vista Business and the cursor just
sat there spinning. This works fine in XP. Any suggestions?

This may be a dumb question on my part, but why would you want to defrag a
flash drive? It stores data in its electronic circuitry. Defragmenting makes
sense for HDDs, where the data is stored in different locations on spinning
disks.

"Victek" wrote in message
...
I tried running defrag on a flashdrive in Vista Business and the cursor
just sat there spinning. This works fine in XP. Any suggestions?

Because the LED flashing as the defrag runs is like so 70's discoteque

"Andy/Bandi" wrote in message
news:KGL9i.9588$kY6.4477@edtnps82...
This may be a dumb question on my part, but why would you want to defrag
a flash drive? It stores data in its electronic circuitry. Defragmenting
makes sense for HDDs, where the data is stored in different locations on
spinning disks.

"Victek" wrote in message
...
I tried running defrag on a flashdrive in Vista Business and the cursor
just sat there spinning. This works fine in XP. Any suggestions?

"Andy/Bandi" wrote in message
news:KGL9i.9588$kY6.4477@edtnps82...
This may be a dumb question on my part, but why would you want to defrag
a flash drive? It stores data in its electronic circuitry. Defragmenting
makes sense for HDDs, where the data is stored in different locations on
spinning disks.

That's a valid question. I haven't personally done tests to see how much
(if any) difference it makes to defrag a flash drive, however it does come
up occasionally. For instance I bought an mp3 player and the
troubleshooting section in the manual recommends defragging the memory if
the music playback "slows down". That sounds dubious to me, but there it
is. I googled the NG's and read a couple of threads about it. Some people
say defragging flash drive can't make any difference since there are no
moving parts. Yet, others mention that they have experienced deteriorating
performance and defragging solved the problem.

"Victek" wrote in message
...


"Andy/Bandi" wrote in message
news:KGL9i.9588$kY6.4477@edtnps82...
This may be a dumb question on my part, but why would you want to defrag
a flash drive? It stores data in its electronic circuitry. Defragmenting
makes sense for HDDs, where the data is stored in different locations on
spinning disks.

That's a valid question. I haven't personally done tests to see how much
(if any) difference it makes to defrag a flash drive, however it does come
up occasionally. For instance I bought an mp3 player and the
troubleshooting section in the manual recommends defragging the memory if
the music playback "slows down". That sounds dubious to me, but there it
is. I googled the NG's and read a couple of threads about it. Some
people say defragging flash drive can't make any difference since there
are no moving parts. Yet, others mention that they have experienced
deteriorating performance and defragging solved the problem.
Well, to answer my own question the free Jkdefrag program is Vista
compatible and will defrag flash drives.

end of line.........

To what benefit. Why don't you want to defrag the system RAM. If it needed
defragging, which it doesn't, don't you think that would make more sense?
Why worry about a drive that is used so very much less than the system RAM
is accessed.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

"Victek" wrote in message
...


"Victek" wrote in message
...


"Andy/Bandi" wrote in message
news:KGL9i.9588$kY6.4477@edtnps82...
This may be a dumb question on my part, but why would you want to
defrag a flash drive? It stores data in its electronic circuitry.
Defragmenting makes sense for HDDs, where the data is stored in
different locations on spinning disks.

That's a valid question. I haven't personally done tests to see how much
(if any) difference it makes to defrag a flash drive, however it does
come up occasionally. For instance I bought an mp3 player and the
troubleshooting section in the manual recommends defragging the memory if
the music playback "slows down". That sounds dubious to me, but there it
is. I googled the NG's and read a couple of threads about it. Some
people say defragging flash drive can't make any difference since there
are no moving parts. Yet, others mention that they have experienced
deteriorating performance and defragging solved the problem.
Well, to answer my own question the free Jkdefrag program is Vista
compatible and will defrag flash drives.

end of line.........

As I said earlier in the thread, I'm not certain that it makes a
difference - some people believe it does and it caught my attention because
it was listed in the troubleshooting section of my mp3 player manual. I
haven't been able to find a rigorous test with a definitive result. I'm not
sure that a comparison with defragging system ram is valid because system
ram erases itself when the system powers down - there is little opportunity
for fragmentation to grow. OTOH, fragmentation on a flash drive does
increase over time, just as it does on a hard drive. Whether it has any
impact on data transfer speed or data integrity is the (unanswered)
question.


"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
To what benefit. Why don't you want to defrag the system RAM. If it needed
defragging, which it doesn't, don't you think that would make more sense?
Why worry about a drive that is used so very much less than the system RAM
is accessed.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

In message "Victek"
wrote:

Yet, others mention that they have experienced deteriorating
performance and defragging solved the problem.

If parts of the memory space are starting to deteriorate, defragmenting
would move the data to other places on the drive. This could give the
appearance of resolving the problem, at least until/unless you need to
access whatever data was placed on the bad portion of the drive.

--
If quitters never win, and winners never quit,
what fool came up with, "Quit while you're ahead"?

On Jun 7, 8:00 am, "Victek" wrote:
"Andy/Bandi" wrote in message

news:KGL9i.9588$kY6.4477@edtnps82... This may be a dumb question on my part, but why would you want todefrag
a flash drive? It stores data in its electronic circuitry. Defragmenting
makes sense for HDDs, where the data is stored in different locations on
spinning disks.

That's a valid question. I haven't personally done tests to see how much
(if any) difference it makes todefraga flash drive, however it does come
up occasionally. For instance I bought an mp3 player and the
troubleshooting section in the manual recommends defragging the memory if
the music playback "slows down". That sounds dubious to me, but there it
is. I googled the NG's and read a couple of threads about it. Some people
say defragging flash drive can't make any difference since there are no
moving parts. Yet, others mention that they have experienced deteriorating
performance and defragging solved the problem.

Defragmenting Flash for the purpose of file access is beneficial when
the fragmentation is really, really bad (several thousand fragments
per file). As an example, that could happen on some flash-based iPod
playing large audio/video clips. Where you will see benefit is in free
space consolidation as flash and SSD (solid state disks) use erase-on-
write technology. Badly fragmented free space can slow flash devices
down beyond even HDDs for sequential writes (what a large video file
saved to the device would do). It's still OK to defrag flash/SSD on
occasion and when fragmentation gets really bad - maybe every 6 months
or so.

Michael

Given that flash drives aren't that large, wouldn't it make more sense to
just create a directory on the hard drive, move the contents of the flash
drive to that directory, then immediately move them all back? That _should_
write them all sequentially. You _may_ need to format the flash before
moving the files back, but I don't think that would be necessary...

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"mmaterie" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Jun 7, 8:00 am, "Victek" wrote:
"Andy/Bandi" wrote in message

news:KGL9i.9588$kY6.4477@edtnps82... This may be a dumb question on my
part, but why would you want todefrag
a flash drive? It stores data in its electronic circuitry.
Defragmenting
makes sense for HDDs, where the data is stored in different locations
on
spinning disks.

That's a valid question. I haven't personally done tests to see how much
(if any) difference it makes todefraga flash drive, however it does come
up occasionally. For instance I bought an mp3 player and the
troubleshooting section in the manual recommends defragging the memory if
the music playback "slows down". That sounds dubious to me, but there it
is. I googled the NG's and read a couple of threads about it. Some
people
say defragging flash drive can't make any difference since there are no
moving parts. Yet, others mention that they have experienced
deteriorating
performance and defragging solved the problem.

Defragmenting Flash for the purpose of file access is beneficial when
the fragmentation is really, really bad (several thousand fragments
per file). As an example, that could happen on some flash-based iPod
playing large audio/video clips. Where you will see benefit is in free
space consolidation as flash and SSD (solid state disks) use erase-on-
write technology. Badly fragmented free space can slow flash devices
down beyond even HDDs for sequential writes (what a large video file
saved to the device would do). It's still OK to defrag flash/SSD on
occasion and when fragmentation gets really bad - maybe every 6 months
or so.

Michael