Reference number: CH001064

Do I need to defrag my SSD or other flash drive?

Question:

Do I need to defrag my SSD or other flash drive?

Answer:

No. Unlike a traditional hard disk drive a Solid-State Drive (SSD), jump drive, flash drive, and thumb drive have no moving parts. Which means even if you were to defragment the drive it wouldn't increase the performance of the drive since defragging a drive is designed to arrange the data on the drive so the access arm can get to it quicker and read it in one section of the drive instead of having to move to multiple portions of the drive.

In addition to having no benefit to the drive, defragging a flash drive can significantly decrease the life span of the drive since each time information is written to the drive the flash memory is degraded.

Additional information:

• See our defrag, flash drive, and SSD dictionary definitions for additional information about these terms and related links.