Defrag iPod??

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Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I Assume that because the iPod is a drive, that it gets fragmented. Is there a way to defrag it to make it run faster and clean up some space, and would it even make sense to do this?
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  • Reply 1 of 21
    cosmocosmo Posts: 662member
    Could you not put it into harddisk mode and defrag it using a defrag utility, the same way you would defrag any other drive?
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  • Reply 2 of 21
    digixdigix Posts: 109member
    Hmmm... Interesting. Anyway. The iPod's OS automaticallt blocked part of its hard drive to prevent your computer to erase the iPod's playable music files, so your defrag programs might be having some problems with the iPod.



    I think that you should talk to Apple regarding this, they have a place where you can sent feedback to.
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  • Reply 3 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    so it is impossible to defrag the iPod completely?



    I use mine every day to carry gigs of stuff around, and anything you can tell I can do to defrag it and up performance I would be greatful for!
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  • Reply 4 of 21
    cdhostagecdhostage Posts: 1,038member
    Here's the thing:



    the music portion is meant to be copied directly form your lbrary as a whole. Thus, unless you delete songs and fill up the spaces with others, there's no fragmentation.



    The HD portion can be dfragged like any HD.
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  • Reply 5 of 21
    the cool gutthe cool gut Posts: 1,714member
    [quote]Originally posted by cdhostage:

    [QB]Thus, unless you delete songs and fill up the spaces with others, there's no fragmentation.



    QB]<hr></blockquote>



    There are other ways a drive can get fragmented. Just the head scanning over the magnetic data causes fragmentation.
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  • Reply 6 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    My iPod isn't backed up (I don't have space, my IBM 45GXP crashed. Does anyone know who I can ***** and moan to, to get my money back!? Even Data Rescue isn't seeing my 45 gigs of data, though it shows up as blank on my Desktop)



    So if I use TechTool Pro 3.0.6 to defragment the iPod, nothing bad will happen? Has anyone else done this?





    Edit: my 45GXP was in a Mad Logix "Alien" firewire case. They said they couldn't help me. It crashed many months ago, but I absolutely have to get that 45 gigs of data back eventually, and I am feeling very helpless now. I wish all hard drives could be built like the iPod's! The thing had been dropped on pavement TWICE months ago, with two chipped corners (that is sad looking, sniffle) and it works great!



    [ 05-26-2002: Message edited by: Aquatik ]</p>
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  • Reply 7 of 21
    dogcowdogcow Posts: 713member
    [quote]Originally posted by Aquatik:

    [QB]My iPod isn't backed up (I don't have space, my IBM 45GXP crashed. Does anyone know who I can ***** and moan to, to get my money back!? Even Data Rescue isn't seeing my 45 gigs of data, though it shows up as blank on my Desktop)



    So if I use TechTool Pro 3.0.6 to defragment the iPod, nothing bad will happen? Has anyone else done this?





    Edit: my 45GXP was in a Mad Logix "Alien" firewire case. They said they couldn't help me. It crashed many months ago, but I absolutely have to get that 45 gigs of data back eventually, and I am feeling very helpless now. I wish all hard drives could be built like the iPod's! The thing had been dropped on pavement TWICE months ago, with two chipped corners (that is sad looking, sniffle) and it works great!<hr></blockquote>



    Have you taken your drive to a profesional data recovery place? Usally they can find just about anything left on it, as long a it hasn't been written over. But that kind of recovery = big bucks.



    As for hte iPod, I'm still a bit hesitent, be will probally play around with defraging it later.
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  • Reply 8 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Thanks in advance for the results Dogcow.



    DriverSavers, I'm sure they get it done. But for $800! Caramba! So do you think IBM would help me? I hate IBM now.
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  • Reply 9 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Dogcow did you defrag your iPod?



    I wonder how that copy protection works, just using ResEdit to try to make the folders visible didn't work, if I recall right. Podmaster can do it though, and their structure is weird. If someone doesn't, then I will write a hack for iTunes to allow iPod copying. It's very annoying.



    I'd just like to say, WOW iPods are awesome.



    We need another thing like this!
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  • Reply 10 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Dogcow did you defrag your iPod?
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  • Reply 11 of 21
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    defraging your ipod's drive would make it unrecognizable to your ipod's firmware- your best bet to speed up performance is to take the drive out and use some windex to polish up the platters.
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  • Reply 12 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Are you sure? I thought you were supposed to use a microwave. Something about compressed air too...
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  • Reply 13 of 21
    stefanstefan Posts: 24member
    I've defragged my iPod with Norton Speed Disk a couple times... no problems at all although I don't think it made anything faster.
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  • Reply 14 of 21
    tulkastulkas Posts: 3,757member
    [quote]Originally posted by janitor:

    <strong>defraging your ipod's drive would make it unrecognizable to your ipod's firmware- your best bet to speed up performance is to take the drive out and use some windex to polish up the platters.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Why waste Windex. Just get some bleach and water and soak it for a couple hours, that should clean it right up.
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  • Reply 15 of 21
    for me, i had my iPod set for manual control. it took me a couple of tries to realize, but when you defragment your iPod (with Windows' default defrag.exe), the estimated percentage does not show up, but things do get moved around in the space that shows disk space. after a while, the percentage will come up, it will defrag very slowly. it will go through the songs first, then the movies, then your picture thumbnails. this is a long process, seemingly hopeless, but very useful if you are patient. have a nice day :-)
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  • Reply 16 of 21
    I always defrag my iPod nano after I upload a mass amount of songs on it. It just keeps everything nice and steady. I defragged my friend's 30GB 5.5G iPod and it worked better than before (everything was smooth and such). Doesn't take long and it helps a lot. Hasn't harmed anything, too.
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  • Reply 17 of 21
    I started defragging my ipod (4g) once but it was taking a massive amount of time and also it seemed to get hotter than usual so i aborted the process. It didn't do it any harm anyway. I guess one way to defrag your iPod would be too uncheck all the songs in iTunes, let the iPod sync, and then recheck them and sync. This should copy everyuthing back 'whole'.
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  • Reply 18 of 21
    are you people serious?



    and defraging a NANO AFTER uploading songs to it!!



    to the OP, if your data is important to you and from what i read, seems to ONLY exist on the iPod then surely you should focus on getting the data OFF the iPod and backed up somewhere else FIRST.
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  • Reply 19 of 21
    I defrag my iPod classic every 2 weeks with Auslogics Disk Defrag because the Windows one is very slow and i notice that it is faster to load songs, videos and the album art. Defragging iPod Nanos and other flash based iPods is a waste of time because it is the same speed to read a non fragmented file than it is a fragmented file because flash does not have moving heads that have to find different parts of a file unlike the hard disk based models.
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  • Reply 20 of 21
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,558moderator
    Defrag programs should only be used where it's less feasible to move all the files off the drive and put them back again. If you just format the ipod, or restore it, it will wipe the data meaning the drive has completely contiguous allocation space. On copying data back onto the drive, it will copy it back in well ordered chunks.



    To get this order, defrag programs just take chunks and shift them around using the free space on the drive. If you imagine the Towers of Hanoi game, it's kind of the same thing. It's so much easier to complete the game if you just take all the pieces off the board and put them back in order. To get the same result, a defrag has to go through so many more steps so it takes longer and it heats up the ipod.
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