The text below comes from an IT newsletter I get from time to time, I republish the info here as there have been a few questions about Camera Memory Cards etc. I thought it might be of some interest.

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Flash drives: to defrag or not to defrag?

QUESTION:

I use a 2 GB flash drive to transfer documents from my work computer to home and vice versa. Will defragging it speed things up? I seem to remember once reading that you shouldn't defrag flash drives but I don't know why.

ANSWER:

Defragging speeds up a regular hard drive because of the way it works. The drive head has to move back and forth to read different parts of fragmented files, which slows things down. So defragging (moving all the parts of each file to be contiguous to each other) speeds up access.

Flash drives work very differently. They don't have drive heads or other moving parts, and they can access a fragmented file just as quickly as one that's all contiguous. What's more, if you defrag a flash drive, you'll shorten its life because flash memory can only do a certain number of writes before it wears out. That's why you read that you shouldn't defrag flash drives.

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Personally I loose them or break them before they have worn out.

Available data indicates the average flash drive should be good for several hundred thousand write cycles, however, physical damage to the built-in USB connector appears to account for most "early" failures.

waldwolf

Like I have said in other posts I have formated and fiddled with USBs in the past without hassle but have lost them due to physical damage like slamming it in the safe door a few yews ago - duh !

I know one guy that uses a USB stick as part of his system RAM or something like that, I questioned the USB interface speed would be too slow to make it worthwhile but like another man's driving and choice of life partner one is best not to make adverse comments; "...so you have your swap file on floppy disk - good for you!"

Have a 256mg flash drive for nearly 5yrs - still as good as when I bought it.