Defrag Your IPod

Before installing a replacement battery in my creaky old iPod, I wiped the drive, which boosted the flagging battery life from four hours to more than eight – almost as good as new.

I had no idea why, but Stephen Clarke-Willson says he does:

"... defragging your iPod will extend it's battery life - over doubling it.

After a few years of use, your songs will be scattered all over the hard drive. The iPod has to work harder to grab all the pieces of a tune and play them back in order.

If you defrag your iPod, then your songs are stored in a contiguous spot on the hard drive, and the iPod does less work - much less work - to play them back.

The only way I know of to defrag your iPod is to reformat it, and then copy all of your songs back to it. It's worth it!"

Sounds reasonable, but it's also kinda fishy. What if you update your songs a lot, like I did? Too bad I'm too lazy to check into it.

Update: Evan Zimmerman writes, "Best bet is to use Diskwarrior to rebuild it once it's mounted on a Mac. Serves roughly the same purpose as defragging but doesn't require the drive be wiped out."