Nuvi 660 defrag...

Are you trying to use your computer to defrag the nuvi while it's connected to your computer?

This is probably not advisable, as the nuvi will perform its own defrags.

Exactly, and why I posted this instead of going ahead with it. So...what/when does the 660 do its own defrag., and do I disregard what my PC says are fragmented files?
Thanks!

There are quite a few threads discussing this topic. Just search for "defrag".

My personal opinion, which is worth nothing, is that defragging a flash drive does absolutely no good.

I'm with this. It's not like a hard drive that is constantly writing, rewriting, overwriting. At best I'd think it's a waste of time, and at worst, who know what it might do to your GPS. The OS is NOT Windows... Garmin uses a proprietary OS so using a Windows defragger could cause irreparable damage.

More info on "SSDs (Solid State Drives), Write-times improving after Defrag, plus Write-cyles" from the desks of the experts:

http://downloads.diskeeper.com/pdf/HyperFast.pdf

http://www.corsair.com/_faq/FAQ_flash_drive_wear_leveling.pd...

The operating system isn't what's getting defragged, it's "sections" of the drive. If the defrag is working correctly, the operating system "sections" will now be lined up instead of being splattered all over the drive.

Some say the drive will 'wear out' from defragging. Per Corsair's "Wear Leveling and Life Span" FAQ on their USB drives, their better flash drives are guaranteed for at least 100,000 writes per block (that's each section of the drive). These drives use "wear leveling". When referring to a 8GB drive, their data sheet says "one can write 210 GB of data to the drive each day, for ten years!". I don't think any defrag agenda will exceed this.

I've defragged all of my Flash drives and have never lost one because of 'wearing it out by over-writing'. If you don't physically lose it, you'll replace it with new technology before this happens.

RT

^^
nice marketing material

I'm pretty darn sure they have more expertise on this subject than we do!

RT

I don't doubt they do.

But keep in mind both are marketing flyers. Not scientific papers published by unbiased parties. (Do you REALLY think Corsair is going to say "Yes, our flash drives might die after two years")

Also keep in mind that Garmin doesn't use the most expensive parts. And they definitely aren't using top of the line Corsair flash drives!

I see no 'marketing' advantage for them to specify the speed increase after defragging like they did.

As I said previously, I suspect most users will either lose or upgrade their drives/USBs way before they wear them out from defragging.

I've defragged all of my flash drives and GPS, never had a problem with any of them. Everyone has a right to their opinion, but I will continue to defrag until a better 'expert' (Corsair) can show otherwise.

PS ... I don't think either one of us knows what parts Garmin uses in their GPSs.

RT

Drive isn't big enough too make any real difference is it?

This is a solution in need of a problem.

I seriously doubt defrag is going to speed up your GPS by any noticeable amount.

And at worst it could kill your flash based device.

If you're a real geek and like to really bone up on Solid State drives and defrag, here's a brain cell killing article with lots of links to more excruciating detail:

http://arstechnica.com/news/2009/02/sector-remap-fragmentati...

When I first got my Garmin 660, and then 680 and finally my 880, my previous 2 models I use to defrag each time I receive an update using Diskeeper. I really can't actually say that it helped it or not, but since this topic began, I stopped and still wondered if defragging the gpsr did any harm or good.

Believe your utility! You will accomplish nothing by defraging solid state memory. A hard disk drive is a sequential access device. Meaning that it reads data best when that data is sequencially stored. You defrag a HD to arrange the data in sequence and to minimize the distance that the head needs to move to get to the next piece of data.

Solid state memory is a random access device. Meaning that the read time is the same regardless of where the data is stored on the device. There is no advantage to storing the data sequentially as it takes just as much time to access data at the next memory address as it does to access data that is stored 2 gig away.

After all, you don't defrag the RAM in your computer even though your CPU is reading and writing data to it thousands of times a second.

Jack J

Thanks, all.

So I guess all the time I spent defragging my 16 GB SDHC card (full of MP3 files) was a total waste! I swear they seemed to load faster....