Formatting & Defragmenting on Portable USB Drive?
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Thread: Formatting & Defragmenting on Portable USB Drive?

  1. #1
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    Formatting & Defragmenting on Portable USB Drive?

    I got a 1gb usb drive and it came up while I was defragmenting my drive. Can I use Windows XP to defragment the, or for formatting from FAT to NTFS?


    Portable drive is a Kingston Technologies 1GB DataTraveler USB Flash Drive

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    I'm not certain about defragmenting it, but you can certainly format it, either from Disk Management or by right-clicking in Windows Explorer and choosing Format. Or if it has data that you don't want to lose, go to the Command Prompt and type "convert X: /fs:ntfs" without the quotes, where X: is the drive letter of the USB drive.
    Nick.

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    one more question... will this work with a Mac? I mean they run on Intel processors now...

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    I know next to nothing about Macs, but it would probably be safer to leave a flash drive formatted as FAT. I'm not sure how well, if at all, Macs cope with NTFS. No doubt someone with more experience of them can give a definite answer.
    Nick.

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    thanks!

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    Nix is offline Aka: Nix*, NNiixx, Nix23
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    P.S. I defrag mine all the time, never had a problem doing it.

    Touch wood.

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    Defragmenting made sense in hard drives' world because pieces of a file scattered across a disk took time for the heads to reposition and for the platters to rotate to the proper position to read all pieces. Having them in a contiguous block allows the drive to read a file with minimum delays.

    This time-consuming mechanical movement does not apply to electronic chips, like Flash memory drives. They read a file in contiguous blocks or in "fragmented" bits equally fast. It doesn't make sense to defragment one.

    Apart from that, you'll only add unnecessary stress to the individual storage mechanisms, which have a limited (large, but limited) number of write cycles before they fail. Fortunately, USB sticks are cheap, but your data may be not - and people tend to discover this when storage fails and they don't have a working backup elsewhere.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by puterfixer
    Defragmenting made sense in hard drives' world because pieces of a file scattered across a disk took time for the heads to reposition and for the platters to rotate to the proper position to read all pieces. Having them in a contiguous block allows the drive to read a file with minimum delays.

    This time-consuming mechanical movement does not apply to electronic chips, like Flash memory drives. They read a file in contiguous blocks or in "fragmented" bits equally fast. It doesn't make sense to defragment one.

    Apart from that, you'll only add unnecessary stress to the individual storage mechanisms, which have a limited (large, but limited) number of write cycles before they fail. Fortunately, USB sticks are cheap, but your data may be not - and people tend to discover this when storage fails and they don't have a working backup elsewhere.
    I agree with that 100%. It's all risk with no real gain to defrag a flash drive.
    Nick.

  10. #10
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    so would it be better to buy a hard drive enclosure and make a portable drive? I'll probably try a 2.5 in hdd, i just dont want any data loss.

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    My strategy for backup is to use an external drive, as well as a separate internal drive. I create data backups on the separate internal drive, then copy them onto the external drive. Really important stuff I burn to DVDR as well.

    If you have two computers on a LAN, you can back up your data onto the other PC. I used to do that, but I find the external drive is more convenient.
    Nick.

  12. #12
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    thanks, I'll try the enclosure then. i tried wirelessly sending data but its really slow

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