Defrag a Storage Card On Desktop PC?

[MarcFou]

I know there are applications to defrag a storage card and scan for errors.

I was wondering though... I'm using WinXP and O&O Defrag. I just did a complete defrag on my 512MB SD card. It was 60% fragmented and now only 0.6% (Some folders were locked).

Here is my question. Is this method actually effective? Has anyone else tried something similar?

When viewing the volume information everything was reported correctly. ie FAT, Cluster Info etc.

[DaViD_BRaNDoN]

I'm one of those people who defrag their memory cards as well. I use the Windows XP built-in Disk Defragmenter. Not sure if there's any improvement but I'm doing it for a peace of mind, at least I can tell people that my memory cards are more efficient than their as I've defragmented them. Hehe... 8O

[MarcFou]

Well, that at least tells me there arent any negative side effects. Just a matter of does it really make a difference.

I also did a disk check for errors and had one 4kb file recovered as a lost chunk. So it seems that error checking under a PC does do something.

I'm just looking for an alternative to installing yet another utility on my device. When you end up having more utilities than productivity applications you start to wonder what purpose your ppc serves.

[Menneisyys]

Defragging a card does result in some performance increase. (I wouldn't have believed in this before benchmarking my cards myself.) I wouldn't, however, recommend using any Pocket PC-based storage card handler apps for defragging/disk checking for the reasons outlined at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39583 . Use plain filecopy from the card to the HDD of your desktop PC / format the card / copy the files back scheme; it'll work if you also copy hidden files (with, say, Total Commander).

More info on generic storage issues: http://pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17921

[Sven Johannsen]

You know, if you have a card reader, you can copy all the files of the Flash card to a folder (watch for hidden ones), format the card and copy the files back. Bet it's faster than defragging and does the same thing.

[MarcFou]

Thanks for the information guys! Some interesting points made.