Defragmenting the X5?

[kyu]

If I defragment the X5 should it make my player read/access files faster? And would it even be safe to do? I'm curious now to try.

[PigCorpse]

It should be faster, but it depends on how many files you have. It's safe because it is just like any other hard drive.

[bradavon]

Yes it will make it run more efficiently but like defragging a standard computer hard disk you won't notice a dramatic improvement.

Personally I'd ask Cowon first just in case it damages the OS.

[kyu]

So I grabbed my balls and defrag'ed it. It reads a little faster. Not too much of a difference, but still noticable. I tried viewing/listening to everything and nothing has changed. I can still use everything just fine. So everything is safe.

[Caravaggio]

Its just a portable hard drive, nothing bad will happen. If you constantly add and delete stuff from the disk, a defrag will noticably improve time.

[danson]

So I grabbed my balls and defrag'ed it. It reads a little faster. Not too much of a difference, but still noticable. I tried viewing/listening to everything and nothing has changed. I can still use everything just fine. So everything is safe.

sure about this little faster? how much?. I don't think that this is possible, because everytime you add/delete something the X5 edits its Database of the filesystem. The reading and browsing is based on this Database. Defrag won't change the speed of reading the Database.

Maybe in random mode the gap between the songs could get shorter, but i donn't think so. As the X5 runs on a linux OS defrag should't be necessary

[bradavon]

I think Kyu means it reads faster through the menus and besides if you add what you want (in one big heap) and then defrag the contents aren't going to change to often.

Doesn't Linux get defragmented?

p.s - Thanks for the heads up Kyu. I'll have to defrag mine also then.

I'm a little surprised it appears in defrag being a removable drive. I don't recall the ZIP drive appearing but then again you can defrag a floppy disk.

[danson]

I'm not sure about this linux on the X5, but i guess it would be wise if the X5 did this by itself, in order to save battery

[Fido]

The amount of performance improvement would depend on how fragmented the drive is.
When there isn't enough room for a file to fit into one spot on the hard drive it is split into peices to fit in areas that are available, ie. if there isn't a solid chunk of available memory, but there are smaller chunks. So the player would have to find the peices and put them together to use them, that's why a badly fragmented drive gets slower. But if a file is only fragmented into a few pieces that isn't enough to slow anything down. The only time this could even happen is if you recently deleted alot of files after filling the hard drive up. But since music files are so small anyways they would only be fragmented into a few pieces, this is only a problem with larger files, like videos. But in the short amount of time the X5 has been out it would be impossible to signifigantly fragment the drive. You should only have to check it after many many months.

[bradavon]

It won't take long so there is no harm in doing it once every 1-2 months.