why is defragging not really a thing anymore?

Question

I was born in 1973, got my first computer in 1994, defragging was part of regular maintenance. I can’t remember the last time I defragged anything, even though I have several devices with hard drives, including a Windows laptop. Has storage technology changed so much that defragging isn’t necessary anymore? Is it even possible to defrag a smart phone hard drive?

edit to add: I apologize for posting this same question several times, I was getting an error message every time I hit “post”… but from looking around, it seems I’m not the only one having this problem today.

In: 821

Answer 1

Hard drives use discs to store data, it’s similar to a CD. Data is stored in any available space, so it might not all be in the same space. imagine listening to a CD, but each song is interrupted by another. Defragging is used to move data in a way that the data can be read without too much work. now you can listen to that song without interruption!

Nowadays, SSDs are fairly common, which are more like flash drives or SD cards. Each song is equally accessible in one of these, so there’s no need to defragment one. Phones use this media because it’s cheap and can be dropped without risking a disc to skip.

Answer 2

Hard drives use discs to store data, it’s similar to a CD. Data is stored in any available space, so it might not all be in the same space. imagine listening to a CD, but each song is interrupted by another. Defragging is used to move data in a way that the data can be read without too much work. now you can listen to that song without interruption!

Nowadays, SSDs are fairly common, which are more like flash drives or SD cards. Each song is equally accessible in one of these, so there’s no need to defragment one. Phones use this media because it’s cheap and can be dropped without risking a disc to skip.