How to Defrag a Flashdrive

[budmarks]

I can't get IObit SmartDefrag to defrag my flashdrive. I have checked it with Windows and it is very badly fragmented. I checked this after I noticed how slow the flashdrive had become. Since I can't get IObit to do it, I tried the regular Windows defrag utility.

 

Guess what? The built-in Window defrag utility ruined some of my important files. I would rather use IObit SmartDefrag because it work so much better on my hard drives.

 

Is there a way to defrag a flashdrive with IObit SmarDefrag, or something else that works better than the Windows built-in utility?

 

Bud Marks

(budmarks)

[solbjerg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

 

Take a look at this article.

 

Greetings solbjerg

[bhebbes]

Right-click on the flash drive in Windows Explorer and select Properties. Check file system (eg. FAT). Click Tools tab, and select Defragment. Ensure file system in Defragmenter is correct.

Iobit defrag doesn't seem to recognise flash drives -they're not shown as available for selection to defrag.

As flash drives don't have moving read heads, defragmenting may not matter.

[ektorbarajas]

Hi there. Other programs like Diskeeper, indeed recognizes flash & external HDD, and defrag them.

 

Also such drives got fragmented over time and this can reduce performance.

 

I'm not sure if Iobit is thinking on implementing that functionality to SmartDefrag, IMHO it would be great, but first the first: make smartdefrag autodefrag works 100% AND also autodefrag other local volumes and not just drive C.

 

Best regards

[JustDave]

A flash drive doesn't suffer from head movement delays like a real HDD, so fragmentation isn't really a big deal. Also, all flash based devices have an erase-write limitation, usually spec'd as tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of erase-write cycles; the continual erasing and re-writing that any defrag app does can't be good for a flash drive.

 

If you insist on defragging, the easiest and fastest way I've found is to copy the contents of the Flash drive to a folder on the PC, erase the flash drive, then copy the contents back to the flash.

[solbjerg]

Hello Dave!

 

Exactly my sentiments!

 

Best regards from solbjerg