[kbz1960]

There is code which removes old, deleted code from the flash memory and it is called fstrim. When a flash drive has files deleted this leaves gaps in the structure which have to be indexed to allow reuse. Similarly for each file stored there has to be indexing of the various places it is stored. When a hard drive gets greatly fragmented operations slow down. Defragmentation speeds things up. This code does a similar thing for the tablet See reference below.


AnandTech | Android 4.3 Update Brings TRIM to All Nexus Devices

Should You Defrag an SSD? - Help Desk Geek

[FF22]

I didn't think flash drives need defragmenting and it even wasn't good to do it on them?

You're just trying to up your post count!

Actually, I recall similar advice/warnings with my first pcmcia card. The "bytes" only had a limited WRITE ability, so that moving all that data around to clean it up and re-order it, would use up those WRITE cycles.

Ah, I see you referenced an article on this. So the more things change (pcmcia is now SD cards), the more they stay the same!

[jpash549]

Perhaps fstrim does not defragment the Solid State storage on the N7 but it does do substantial maintenance on the memory which does take out the garbage and speed up read-write operations. This operation has a linux heritage and perhaps one who is more erudite than I am will explain it and also state what the PB and Apple or others do about the problem.

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