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[Blue Boy]

I have been thinking if there is a need to defrag the external HDD. I asked the same question on an Audiophile forum and found that nobody ever had thinking about that.
I have a feeling that here is many more people into computers than us" hifi-nerds" that can  answer this. So anyone know if there is a need for defrag, and i think of both the external drive you use and maybe the HDD you use for back up.

[MrC]

PC file systems need occasional defragmentation.  File system blocks or storage, as you add and delete files, are consumed, released, consumed, released.  Over time this spreads out what would normally be contiguous file storage into portions broken up over the (disk) partition.  Defragmentation helps bring these fragments together, for faster file access.  It is more complex than this simplistic explanation, but this gets the general idea across.

[Vincent Kars]

I think MrC sums it up nicely.
It is by and large a performance issue. The more a file is defragmented, the more head movements are needed. This is detrimental performance wise.

If we talk a dedicated HD, audio only, it is probably not very fragmented. You write a file once and it won’t change much. The only time it will be re-written is when the tags don’t fit into the header.

However you can always use the Win defragmentation tool to analyze it.

From Vista on, Win schedules defragmentation automatically on a weekly base.
Don’t know if this also applies to external HDs.

As I have 1 computer with a noisy HD, I use the defragmentation to reduce its noise level.

Some do think any electrical activity is detrimental for sound quality.
Memory Playback is a nice example. Reading the whole track in memory first minimize HD access during playback.