Database Users

Micro Drive vs SD Card...simple test.

Hi all.
I have read many posts about different experiences and possible issues with hard drive. IMHO & from personal experience of using HDD in Smartphone etc..it is best to install ALL programs to either device memory or SD card. Use your MD solely for data storage and media (photos, movies and Music).
Personally, I would, like wu, install all GPS software to SD card, as it will ensure that the shock resistant technology won't even be needed for sensitive programs.
The HDD is a mechanical device peeps, it will inevitably put more of a strain on the battery.
Simple test for all you owners of the Athena:
1) Choose any movie and transfer a copy to your SD card and a copy to the Micro Drive.
2)Ensure your battery is fully charged at the mains then disconnect the mains and use TCPMP to bench-test the entire movie from MD....look at media properties afterwards and take a snapshot of all the details or note it down....now check battery consumption.
3) Recharge battery to max again and repeat the process using the SD card and record the results.
If you find the MD is performing better (I'd be happily surprised) then technology has moved on considerably in the last few months. If however SD card is performing better, power consumption wise, then you know for sure which will last you longer.
Whatever the result is I will still be setting my Ameo (when I get it ) as stated above, but it would be interesting to see from TCPMP what speeds the movie is benched at from both storage mediums.

mackaby007 said:
Hi all.
I have read many posts about different experiences and possible issues with hard drive. IMHO & from personal experience of using HDD in Smartphone etc..it is best to install ALL programs to either device memory or SD card. Use your MD solely for data storage and media (photos, movies and Music).
Personally, I would, like wu, install all GPS software to SD card, as it will ensure that the shock resistant technology won't even be needed for sensitive programs.
The HDD is a mechanical device peeps, it will inevitably put more of a strain on the battery.
Simple test for all you owners of the Athena:
1) Choose any movie and transfer a copy to your SD card and a copy to the Micro Drive.
2)Ensure your battery is fully charged at the mains then disconnect the mains and use TCPMP to bench-test the entire movie from MD....look at media properties afterwards and take a snapshot of all the details or note it down....now check battery consumption.
3) Recharge battery to max again and repeat the process using the SD card and record the results.
If you find the MD is performing better (I'd be happily surprised) then technology has moved on considerably in the last few months. If however SD card is performing better, power consumption wise, then you know for sure which will last you longer.
Whatever the result is I will still be setting my Ameo (when I get it ) as stated above, but it would be interesting to see from TCPMP what speeds the movie is benched at from both storage mediums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agress, that is a good way to test it. I have broken my SD card so i can't test it now, but personally i will install all the programs and navigation software on SD, and move the music, movie file to MD.
However i should let you guys also know, i have tested the writting and reading speed between these two using Pocket_Mechanic PRO, and the MD result is much higher than sd for some reason....

wu5262 said:
I agress, that is a good way to test it. I have broken my SD card so i can't test it now, but personally i will install all the programs and navigation software on SD, and move the music, movie file to MD.
However i should let you guys also know, i have tested the writting and reading speed between these two using Pocket_Mechanic PRO, and the MD result is much higher than sd for some reason....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting Wu. seems like MD hardware has made significant improvements.
My biggest concern is that if I install to MD and it by chance fails, I will have lost everything, but to SD, I don't foresee major problems.
I think when I get my Ameo, I will do a full setup between Device memory & MD and do a full backup with Spb Backup to SD card.
Then hard reset and do a full set-up to device memory & SD card, also with a full backup to sd card.
Save both back-up files to PC, just in case.
Then give each method a trial run for a week to see which, if any yields better results.
Hope you get your new SD card soon. So is the Athena SDHC compatible then? I think I read one of your posts somewhere that you had to rename the SD card to 'Storage Card' and then all worked well. Is that right Wu? And what is the largest available SDHC card on the market right now? Is it 8Gb?
I hope so. That would effectively give us in excess of 15Gb of storage space. Woohoo.....that's almost comparable to the Sony UMPC with 16Gb in-built Flash memory!!
Makes one wonder what is truly possible to do with the Athena.....dual boot O/S's? WM6 & Linux (when they get it functioning as reliably as WM O/S's).
This all getting quite exciting....possibilities possibilities.

mackaby007 said:
Interesting Wu. seems like MD hardware has made significant improvements.
My biggest concern is that if I install to MD and it by chance fails, I will have lost everything, but to SD, I don't foresee major problems.
I think when I get my Ameo, I will do a full setup between Device memory & MD and do a full backup with Spb Backup to SD card.
Then hard reset and do a full set-up to device memory & SD card, also with a full backup to sd card.
Save both back-up files to PC, just in case.
Then give each method a trial run for a week to see which, if any yields better results.
Hope you get your new SD card soon. So is the Athena SDHC compatible then? I think I read one of your posts somewhere that you had to rename the SD card to 'Storage Card' and then all worked well. Is that right Wu? And what is the largest available SDHC card on the market right now? Is it 8Gb?
I hope so. That would effectively give us in excess of 15Gb of storage space. Woohoo.....that's almost comparable to the Sony UMPC with 16Gb in-built Flash memory!!
Makes one wonder what is truly possible to do with the Athena.....dual boot O/S's? WM6 & Linux (when they get it functioning as reliably as WM O/S's).
This all getting quite exciting....possibilities possibilities.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes i am very exciting as well, Athena has got lots of possibilities.
Anyway, i think SDHC still not function very well,, or it could just be my card is fake ! so i go for the sandisk ultra 2 GB this time (non SDHC). The one i bought before is transcend SDHC 4G. don't know is there any bigger one, but i will suggest all Athena here but the normal mini-sd now, and wait a bit until there are more choice for SDHC. i think it's not very stable at this moment either to do with card or rom or machine.

wu5262 said:
Yes i am very exciting as well, Athena has got lots of possibilities.
Anyway, i think SDHC still not function very well,, or it could just be my card is fake ! so i go for the sandisk ultra 2 GB this time (non SDHC). The one i bought before is transcend SDHC 4G. don't know is there any bigger one, but i will suggest all Athena here but the normal mini-sd now, and wait a bit until there are more choice for SDHC. i think it's not very stable at this moment either to do with card or rom or machine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that Wu. Standard SD card it is then. They come up to at least 4 GB since last year, so a bigger version is imminent if not already on the market.

Oh am I sorry to report that I am having serious issues with this Micro Drive of the Athena.
SD wins hands down for me...like MD is snails pace in comparison.

mackaby007 said:
Oh am I sorry to report that I am having serious issues with this Micro Drive of the Athena.
SD wins hands down for me...like MD is snails pace in comparison.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also i notice one thing, even you got your Ameo later then i do, but my ROM version is newer for some reason
Here is mine: ROM 1.24.709.3
Strange....

wu5262 said:
Also i notice one thing, even you got your Ameo later then i do, but my ROM version is newer for some reason
Here is mine: ROM 1.24.709.3
Strange....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That may explain why I'm having problems then. Well I suppose it's not that negative after all then as it seems that the Ameo ROM may be suffering similar issues to the X7500 Rom. Still hope for the future then.

mackaby007 said:
That may explain why I'm having problems then. Well I suppose it's not that negative after all then as it seems that the Ameo ROM may be suffering similar issues to the X7500 Rom. Still hope for the future then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, actually you want to avoid the same problem that the Advantage have right now, basically, if you take Advantage on the road, you are likely to damage some sector on the Micro Drive when you come back, that's their ROM problem, as you can see, it's quite a big issue, so that must fix it before they release it.
I don't think Ameo has the same problem, but it so, it's bad because until you update the Rom, you probably damage the Micro Drive already.....

Defrag Storage Card, Don't Do It.

This is just a quick heads up. It was new to me and I had never came across the issue before on here, so I am posting my results.
I was doing some routine maintenance on my PC and I had accidentally left one of my external USB Stick drives in the machine. I noticed that in the Defrag options, it now gave me an option to Defrag the external drive. I thought to myself, thats kinda cool, I bet my 6gb Micro SD card on my phone could benift from a good defrag. I quickly popped my Micro SD card from my phone, plunked it into a USB Key Reader and told Diskeeper to Defrag the Micro Card. I was thinking, this should be great, I have thousands of files on my Micro Card, a good Defrag should be a cool thing. A few mins later it said it was done so I pulled it out and put it in back in my phone.
The next day I went to launch TomTom and it took 5 mins just to launch the app. I thought it had froze or something. I was fighting with it, driving me nuts. I re-installed TomTom, still taking 5-8mins now to load the app. When I tried to get directions it would take up to a min just to plot a route. (should only take a few seconds) I re-flashed the phone with a new ROM, then reinstalled TomTom and it did not help at all. Everything on the storage card was taking forever to load. Even the music apps were bogging down really badly.
Today, I yanked the Micro Card out of the phone, placed it in a USB key and copied the contents to a temp Dir on my desktop, formated the card, then wrote some data to the card and formated again.
Finally I put all my data from the temp Dir back onto the card and put the card back in my phone. Launched TomTom and took about 5 seconds rather than 5 mins to load. Everything is back to perfect.
I was hoping to Increase speeds with the Defrag of the Micro SD card and in fact it killed it horribly.

Lol, good to know. I would have thought the same thing!

a little common sense would have told you that would be a bad idea.
defragging is designed to 'defragment' files and put the most used files all together at the start of the drive. meaning a hdd head doesn't have to do a lot of skipping about for one file. then yet more skipping to find the next file, and a whole load more skipping to find different pieces of that file, etc etc.
the fact that solid state media doesn't have a drive head renders defragmenting unnecessary, plus as SSDs also have a limited number of write cycles the excessive writing required to move files around the card reduces its lifespan.
hope this helps

It depends
After owning several Pocket PCs with various expansion types, defragging has it's benefits and it's pitfalls.
(The following comments are based on percieved experience. I've not done any benchmarking.)
I've found using cheap card readers can definitely cause problems with cards, particularly when defragging. It can result in various errors in the files and sometimes even render the card unreadable/unwritable. Even reformatting has no effect. To solve the problem I've often had to use a digital camera to reformat the card before it can be read/written by a PC via card reader.
Multi-media files seem to be the type of file that benefits most from a contiguous file that needs to be read/written by the Windows Mobile device. Particularly video. Why this is so, I do not know. But when watching video or listening to audio skipping and stuttering seem to be much less aparent when the file is contiguous. Also, I've been able to resurrect some .jpg files unreadableby my WM device by doing a defrag. Again, no idea why.
Almost any file that needs to be constantly read seems to benefit from a contiguous file, e.g. GPS maps.
Safest way to make files contiguous is to copy the contents of the card to a hard disk, reformat the card, then rewrite to the card.
Just my 2 cents.
Would be interested in anyone else's observations, particularly with media files.

Defragging files on flashcards is pointless - skipping from sector to sector in a row takes as much time as to skip into random sectors...
Frequent writes on cards descrease their lifetime... So that - defragging anything else than hard disks is harmful for media.

maybe unrelated, but is the option "encrypt files in the storage" (or something sounds like that) from within the windows mobile's settings pose any danger? i.e. conflicting with PIM backup files etc.
thanks

Please read
Just found this article

dave852 said:
a little common sense would have told you that would be a bad idea.
defragging is designed to 'defragment' files and put the most used files all together at the start of the drive. meaning a hdd head doesn't have to do a lot of skipping about for one file. then yet more skipping to find the next file, and a whole load more skipping to find different pieces of that file, etc etc.
the fact that solid state media doesn't have a drive head renders defragmenting unnecessary, plus as SSDs also have a limited number of write cycles the excessive writing required to move files around the card reduces its lifespan.
hope this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well said, SD cards and USB drives are flash drives and as so they don't need defragmentation and also as it was mentioned in the quote, it reduces it's lifespan.
Cheers

With Sandisk offering a 5-year limited warranty for their ordinary microSDHC and a 10-year limited warranty on their Ultra microSDHC cards and an expected minimum life of 15 years and maximum of 75 years (according to a Sandisk forum moderator) does it really matter what you do?
With storage memory sizes and formats moving so fast, who expects to keep using these things bought today on a daily basis on 5 or even 10 years' time?

how to defragment your SD card?

a stupid trick: connect your blackstone to the PC in "drive mode", and defragment it from the PC by right-clicking on the disk drive, properties --> tools-->defragment!
...no need of special software...

i knew that it is not reccomended to defragment flash drives/cards

Why would you defrag? No heads to move to the appropriate sector, no gain from defrag.

On other devices i used PocketMechanic very often to defragment cards, repair of loose clusters and such card stuff. Allways without any problem.
But PocketMechanic doesn't work stabil on the HD, be careful!

no moving parts of flash mean seektime is very very low
and as such fragmentation dont slow things down
and flash having a limited number of writes before it dies
like a cd-rw/dvd-rw just more of them
so defragging flash mem lowers it's life because of the writes
and dont speed things up because seektimes is not an issue

memory cards are older than the blackstone!
tons of information on the topic, let's start from the internal one:
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/inde...ocket PC memory cards? Do I need this at all?

I think we may look at memory cards in the same way as a SATA SSD. In this case you can consolidate free space, which is excessively lighter on the writes than an old fashion full defrag.
Software that offers this option is available, and one example is Perfect Disc 10 and 11 (to my experience/knowledge).
So my advise is that if you need to defrag your SD card, which is a type of solid state drive, try to use free space consolidation only. This will be much easier on the wearing of the cells. I'm not quite sure of the P/E specs of SD Cards, or if they provide some wear leveling, but I'm reluctant to believe the latter is provided today for SD Cards like it is for most SATA SSD's.

I think SD card defragmentation is worth it when you have a HUGE and SLOW SD card.
I have a 32Gb SD card (from Kingston) in my Nexus One. I use Google Music Beta, Google Listen and Titanium Backup a lot! Since I reinstall/often upgrade my phone (I'm a geek after all and I'm totally happy!), the Music Beta Cache if often wiped out, I do daily Titanium Backup tasks and at least 3-5 podcasts are downloaded/wiped everyday.
This means a lot of fragmentation is "building up" on my SD card. Since, it is a slow SD, I often experience sluggishness or long load time even after a "fresh" install. The OS must read large files that are splitted on my VERY slow SD card, this does not help!
The problem is to get real numbers to prove this, It is mostly noticeable by navigating through the UI and/or loading some apps.
This was my 2 cents...

Wizcode Defragment

Anyone ever use this utility?? It seems like it would be a great tool to use!!
http://www.wizcode.com/devblog/comments/wizcode_announces_defragment_mobile_beta

talon4x4 said:
Anyone ever use this utility?? It seems like it would be a great tool to use!!
http://www.wizcode.com/devblog/comments/wizcode_announces_defragment_mobile_beta
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why don't you install it and give it a shot? Then let us all know how it goes.
By the way, they do have a support forum. Here's a direct link to the Defrag topic -> http://www.wizcode.com/forums/viewforum/35/

It's an excellent utility tool, although one glad to have only when need arises. It is great for scanning the SD card for errors and repairing them, as directory FAT table can causes mayhem when out-of-whack. There's actually two copies of the directory that PMP checks for also.
Finally, as controversial as defragging a SD card can generate, there's no question everything runs faster and smoother done once in a while or after adding/deleting large files.
Handago regularly substancial discounts and Wizcode has 50% off sales.

Looks like mines already too screwed up to be helped

I think I'll hold off until I get a larger card. Right now I only have a 2gb card which isn't big enough for anything so I only have a couple programs installed to it. Which means it probably isn't too heavily fragmented.
Thanks for the info!!

PMP is very picky about defragging ONLY an error-free card. Running the error scan (select repair) even several times until the full report shows 0 errors. Then, the defrag can process.
Mounting the same card in card reader on a PC will very likely also complain about errors or even suggest reformat.

wouldn't it be easier to back up your sd card on your pc the format the card and copy your files back to the sd card.

Directory errors on a 2GB SD card with just music and videos and directory errors on a large 8/16/32GB card with majority of applications, Windows system dll's off-loaded to SD, etc are two entirely different scenarios.
Wiping and reload is obvious solution for one, but much, much more can be at stake grappling with damaged directory data (SD cards have no controllers like CompactFlash, so the directory is all there is).
Even copying a filled 16GB SD card WITHOUT errors to PC folder can be tricky, frustrating experience. Some programs won't transfer. Some lose licenses. I've found copying blocks of data one-at-a-time essential for success, paying particular attention to Application Data, caches, thumbnails and any files made up of minuscule data bits.
It's not the videos that's troublesome, it's system files constantly accessed that can crumble.
Fixing errors BEFORE attempting copying a 16GB SD to new 32GB SD helps a smooth transition, which isn't as rudimentary as would seem.

I don't understand how files get fragmented on a sd. There is no moving parts like a hard drive. I belive there is no gain from trying to defrag a sd card. you are better off checking file intergity than trying to defrag.

bmhome1 said:
Fixing errors BEFORE attempting copying a 16GB SD to new 32GB SD helps a smooth transition, which isn't as rudimentary as would seem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is fixing disk errors not defragmenting. Defragmenting is physically moving pieces of files so they can be accessed faster. sd cards don't pull and dump files like a hard drive they are accessed at locations on the sd. no moving parts so there is really no way for them to get fragmented. Solid state drives work the same way there is no reason to ever defragment a SSD. As always with transfering files there is alway a chance of data loss or corruption weather file integrity is good or bad.

Assassin5150 said:
sd cards don't pull and dump files like a hard drive they are accessed at locations on the sd. no moving parts so there is really no way for them to get fragmented. Solid state drives work the same way there is no reason to ever defragment a SSD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is not true. Fragmentation occurs in solid state memory, same as HDDs. Fragmentation is due to the way the file system works, not because a drive is mechanical or not.
http://www.wizcode.com/articles/comments/flash_memory_fragmentation_myths_and_facts/
Same goes with SSD's. They fragment, and just because there are no mechanical parts, does not mean you will not see a performance drop due to fragmentation.
"It is a misconception that SSD does not suffer from file system fragmentation. . . While this is a significant improvement, mechanical seek time only makes up a part of total access time . . . Zero mechanical seek time certainly does not mean zero I/O time. No matter how fast an SSD can be, its I/O time can never be zero. File system fragmentation affects I/O time in an SSD even when the mechanical seek time is zero."
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/101053

This is a quote fron Intel. Do I need to defragment my Intel® Mainstream Solid-State Drives (using Windows* Disk Defragmenter* or similar program)?
No. SSD devices, unlike traditional HDDs, see no performance benefit from traditional HDD defragmentation tools. Using these tools simply adds unnecessary wear to the SSD. It is recommended that you disable any automatic or scheduled defragmentation utilities for your Intel SSD.
http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-029623.htm#5
Corsair also suggest that defragmenting should not be done as well.
The whole point of defragmenting is to move files on a standard hard drive so they can be accessed faster by the limitations of a mechanical hard drive.

It seems that defragmentation of an SSD from a performance standpoint is debatable.
But you are saying that solid state devices do not create fragments, which is false.

by design they fragment. It's called wear leveling to prevent wear from one sector of the memory block or page. if not it would use one specific block or page over and over causing premature failure. all flash memory and ssd use the same type of wear leveling. Yes defragmenting flash memory or a ssd will not increase performance and will cause more wear doing more harm than help. SSD and flash memory life expectancy is based on a number read/write cycle. That's why I suggested formatting the sd card instead of defragmenting which is nothing but hundreds or thousands read/write cycles.

I did state defragging SD cards IS controversial, but there's more than the standard retort against doing so. Visit the Wizcode statements and THEIR concepts and decide independently, if not only worth doing, but actually beneficial for performance.
It's when one finds a heavily populated SD card that won't even mount on PC desktop anymore, that in fact there's repair solutions available.
PMP is TWO tools: 1st: error detection and repair and 2nd: OPTIONAL defragging.
It's pointless to dismiss a utility without actually using it.

bmhome1 said:
It's pointless to dismiss a utility without actually using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can use windows to scan and fix errors on a sd card. There is no bennefit to defragmenting a sd card as I stated just more wear. So I am going to dissmiss a product that someone is trying to sell me that doen't give a real solution to a problem but actually does more harm than good. But it's your money do what you want with it.

What is actually wearing on a card? There's no moving parts like a HDD. Fragmentation can occur on any read/write media. As it gets used, files get deleted (installing and uninstalling programs), moved (photos and music), and other I/O operations that cause things to get scattered. Defragmentation can optimize how things are stored. No, there isn't the problem of the write/read heads jumping all over the disk to find fragmented data, but by defraging the card you limit the space lost from improper cluster size usage.

SSD running an OS and SD storage for 99% PLAYBACK have NO relationship.
Simply, does a 1.5GB video run smoother not broken up into 20 pieces vs one contiguous file? Absolutely, no matter what it's stored on.
That's enough reason alone to have PMP onboard.
It's free, fully functional 30 day trial. It's 2.5MB. It's $7.50 - 15.00 invested after liking enough to buy. What is the issue?!?
Oh, precious write cycles used up. I doubt my 32GB SD won't get retired long, long before 100,000 cycles.
Anyways, I defragged ONCE so far, and don't expect to EVER again...unless mysterious slowdowns creep up.
Then simply run the damn app and find out exactly what it reports and act accordingly...
or blame Win6.5, Sense, card speed or whatever less-informed conclusions to dream up.
Personally, I don't have the time.
Also, anyone who has actually transferred 15GB from SD to PC and back knows how agonizing long the process. And error checking/repair using Windows desktop is equally endless waiting. That is, IF that's an option, what do you do when the SD card can only be reformatted offered?

Miami_Son said:
What is actually wearing on a card? There's no moving parts like a HDD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Solid state memory is limited to a certain number of read/write cycles before failure (unlike HDD, which can theoretically be re-written infinitely . . . its the mechanical parts that fail). And de-fragging solid state memory actually requires many read-write cycles. Assassin is right about that.
But its controversial how long it will actually take to make an SSD or SD card fail. Some have theorized decades, and even de-fragging it on a regular basis isn't going to make much of a difference. Some claim the life spans of these devices will be much shorter. The formats have not been around long enough to really know.

Just as with hard drives, the greater the FREE space on the SD card starting out, the quicker and less taxing on write cycles. In other words, DON'T wait until your SD card is close to full (at least 10% minimum free space traditionally) and expect defragging to go smoothly and/or fast. The less free space available the more churning processing.
My 32GB card freshly loaded with 15GB from retired 16GB SD and numerous movies (totalling around 17GB) had low level of fragmentation (under 15%) and defragged quickly (five minutes) due to all the free space to shuffle files. The most fragmented file was a 1GB video for some reason. It was hardly a drama event, greatly helped by exceptionally informative GUI during processing.
Pocket Mechanic Pro has been around almost a decade, going back to Win Mobile 2002. It defragged my 2003 iPaq's very, very expensive 4GB SD card too many times to count. That card is still in use today.
The wear cycle concern is blown WAY out of proportion. Since 2001, I've been abusing dozens upon dozens CF, SD, SDHC and microSDHC filling up repeatedly, reformatting, defrag when needed, never a single burp from any (anybody want 32MB CF cards
Ironically, Intel's first SSD launch didn't go so well. The lightning speed fell off a cliff very quickly, due to guess what. Their next-generation SSD revised algorithms addressed slowdowns along with the timely introduction of trim command. This was all in the past year. It's hardly time yet to become didactic regarding SSD's.

No need to format your SD card any more.

Do not format you SD card, in this way you will loose all your data.
You just need to Defragment you SD card and in this case you will never loose your data but also you will found that your SD card is back to High speed.
Defragmentation can be done using any windows just right click on your SD card then go to tools tab then click on defragment.

Interesting.....
Things never get fully deleted off SD cards anyway...

part of the sd tech is something called wear leveling..
doing a defrag on your memory card is not going to be very accurate.
the card has an on board chip that spreads out the writing of sectors to keep them from wearing out. this is transparent to the system.
Do not defrag a memory card. This consumes write/erase cycles and shortens the MTBF.

aarons6 said:
part of the sd tech is something called wear leveling..
doing a defrag on your memory card is not going to be very accurate.
the card has an on board chip that spreads out the writing of sectors to keep them from wearing out. this is transparent to the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried it on my HD2 and it works, and booting Android come faster as if i format it.
Defragment : it reorganize all the blocks in the SD card (re addressing the blocks)
which make running or opening a file is faster and it give more space.
It only effect on SD card files and not Android system files.
Android system files are found in data.img which is a virtual disk (Formatted as EXT2)

zaidsa3sa3 said:
I tried it on my HD2 and it works, and booting Android come faster as if i format it.
Defragment : it reorganize all the blocks in the SD card (re addressing the blocks)
which make running or opening a file is faster and it give more space.
It only effect on SD card files and not Android system files.
Android system files are found in data.img which is a virtual disk (Formatted as EXT2)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes but because of the write leveling circuit those files are not organized contiguous in the first place.
they are placed in order of what sectors get written to less.
or at least thats how its supposed to work

But, the data.img is one big file on your sd card...
I could see doing a defrag once in a long while, like if you load up with a bunch of MP3s you plan on leaving there. But, if you constantly move files on & off, and defrag often, then you're just wearing your card out faster.

I thought defragmentation was only effective on hard drives?

aarons6 said:
yes but because of the write leveling circuit those files are not organized contiguous in the first place.
they are placed in order of what sectors get written to less.
or at least thats how its supposed to work
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try it before you judge
Am pretty sure of what i am talking about.

I think its better on your card to just copy everything on your card to your computer, then format card and copy everything back at once. I thing defragging causes too much writing and erasing on the sectors... it will make your card wear out quicker.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Defrag is only good for harddisk to save seektimes and minimize head movement
on a SD Card is nothing like that, no head that must seek thing.
There is no need to defrag SD Cards or SSD Disks

Quick format : it only clear the address table and it will not rearrange the blocks.
Defragmet is similar to full format but it is much faster and without loosing your data.
For me i will go to Defragment option.
BTW SD card doesn't have a read/write head that may scratch the cylinder (Harddisk),
it is a 0/1 operation (no mechanical parts) so it will not brick your SD card.
"SD card lifetime is 10 years or more."

ByteFax said:
Defrag is only good for harddisk to save seektimes and minimize head movement
on a SD Card is nothing like that, no head that must seek thing.
There is no need to defrag SD Cards or SSD Disks
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It will reallocate the blocks in the sectors which will put all related blocks in sequence, which will make running an application faster with more free space on your sd card.
Try it and read about it before you judge.

Can you tell me where did you find that kind of info? I thought you shouldnt defragment sd cards and ssd drives. That just doesn't sound right to me...

100% correct.
ByteFax said:
Defrag is only good for harddisk to save seektimes and minimize head movement
on a SD Card is nothing like that, no head that must seek thing.
There is no need to defrag SD Cards or SSD Disks
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Click to collapse
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

The normal reason people suggest formatting your SD card is so that you can select a larger cluster size, to help with R/W speed and therefore battery life.
A defrag doesn't do this (obviously), so there will be times where a format is definitely the right thing to do.

zaidsa3sa3 said:
It will reallocate the blocks in the sectors which will put all related blocks in sequence, which will make running an application faster with more free space on your sd card.
Try it and read about it before you judge.
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Click to collapse
Can you tell me the access time of a Hard Drive and the one from a SD card?

Access time of a HDD is usually ~9ms-~11ms depending on the size, rotation speed and make. SD/SSD's usually have access times below 0.5ms, but, SD's are quite slower than SSD's which is why people want NAND support so much. NAND is not fast as transferring data but it's access write/read time is at least 10 fold faster.

TonyCubed said:
Access time of a HDD is usually ~9ms-~11ms depending on the size, rotation speed and make. SD/SSD's usually have access times below 0.5ms, but, SD's are quite slower than SSD's which is why people want NAND support so much. NAND is not fast as transferring data but it's access write/read time is at least 10 fold faster.
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Click to collapse
hehe, knew that but my point is that defragging only works on a HD because the head needs to go from one position to another.
Mechanical things take a much longer time so that is why we (I use a SSD so no need to) have to organise the data on the drive so it can read/write in one go.
Actually on SSD's they spread the data around since they wear out. So the controllers randomizes the data around so 1 cell isn't abused all the time.
I would love to see the benchmark of a fragged and defragged SD card.

Guys
I tried it using 2 HTC HD2 T-mobile 16gb as the senario below:
Me :
Install new build mdj v.4.1 without Formating
defrag sd card
run es file explorer
Time taken for the application to load 3 sec
My Cousin:
Install new build mdj v.4.1 without Formating
run es file explorer
Time taken for the application to load 8 sec
Do you think it's the same ?????????????????????

It seems to me that sd cards are going to wear out, probably in about the same amount of time , whether they are defragged or not. We're talking thousands of write cycles here, so 7 or 8 defrags throughout the life cycle of the card isn't going to be a huge deal. And if you wear it out a little faster, that's the price you pay for a possible performance increase. I know sd cards aren't cheap, but they're not ungodly expensive. So I would say format the card when you first get it, try and load all your crap onto it at once (as much as possible) as opposed to slowly adding files as you go, and to yes do a defrag on it at key times, say like if you're removing one Android build and installing another. The benefits of defragging may be small, or even non-existant, but the same can be said of the extra wear that defragging puts on the card.