Defragmenting an iPod
 

Howdy all. I have an iPod Mini, and I ran across a linky that cought my attention: How to defragment your iPod hard drive. As my 4GB drive is pretty small, I didn't see a big speed increase, but those with larger iPods might be interested in this. Before I post the link, I want to make sure that you guys know that some folks who did this had to reset their iPods, because the defrag failed. Also, I did not use the XP defrag app. I used Diskeeper. Do some reading before you attempt this. It worked fine for me. Don't blame me if you FUBAR your iPod. Just trying to help. Linky:http://www.ipodhack.com/modules.php?...c=2133&forum=4

there is no reason to defrag your ipod. most ppl have enough room they never would have to delete anything. it wont make a difference but its just one of those look what i can do things that ppl show on "hacking" websites

Did you click the link?

Hmm.. I've used my friend's ipod regularly since the day he got it til the present (a span of years). He consistently transfers/deletes music, because he has an absurd number of mp3s. I haven't really noticed it taking too long to load songs, or to switch from menu to menu.

But I guess if you notice that it does take a long time to load, maybe it is time to try out this defrag.

no i didnt click the link, but considering that most ppl leave songs on their ifarts its not important. also i see no reason for defragmenting something like that.

the only thing i defragment is my 5 gig hd that my os is installed on. the other 300gigs in mycomputer have been defraged about 2 times in the last 18 months

and since my os wasnt on it there was no speed diference noted with my system

Thanks for the link. I always seek every little thing possible for my IPod because my 20GB one is filled to the brim with songs.

I've seen many recommendations to never do this. Some people have ended up with unusable iPods that can't even be reformatted.

The safest way to defragment is to use the Apple iPod software updater to "restore to factory settings"; that erases the iPod HD. Then, reload everything from your hard drive, and it'll be completely defragmented. Of course, this only works if you have all your music on the computer HD to start with.

Does it really make any difference? I have nothing to back this up, but wouldn't the read rate of even a badly fragged iPod hard drive still be faster than the rate in which the music is played? Meaning the drive is not in a constant state of reading the data from the disk, it reads into a buffer then is dormant until the buffer is depleted, reading again. A badly fragged iPod drive would only be slightly less efficient meaning it had a little less time in its dormant status between reads. I suppose someone could figure out how long it would take to read 1 gb of data continuously and compare that to the amount of time it would take to play the data once converted to audio. The difference being the amount of time the drive would be dormant during reads.

Once I get my iPod hooked up to my computer I think I'll give this a try and see how it goes. I have about 50 gigs of music, so I'm constantly shuffling what's on my iPod and what's on my computer, so I'll be sure to report if I had any improvements with my setup.

I just use the updater software and format the drive.

Then I upload my music again to the player. It keeps a clean 'house' and helps me ditch the trash files that keep annoyig me when they pop up on shuffle and that I vow to delete but always forget.

My biggest friend right now is the 'Find Duplicate Tracks' under Edit in iTunes.

WillyPete, how can you use Find Duplicates whil viewing the contents of an iPod? It's greyed out for me. It works fine when viewing all songs in library.

That's what I use. then sync it.

I think you're missing the point of defragging. A defrag is not really for creating space, but to get each file arranged in a linear space on the disc. This makes file reads more efficient because they are not in two or more places on the drive. A by-product of that is that, yes, the free space is all in one place.

...but if you only add files and you never delete, there's nothing to cause file fragmentation, so pattycakes is correct.

i like it i like it

If that's what pattycakes meant, then of course pattycakes is correct. But if that's not what pattycakes meant, then...uh...I have no idea what pattycakes meant...(gee, really wrote myself into a corner there....) Just wanted to make sure that people don't get the idea that defragging somehow makes magic space appear. :D