Syncing the iPhone

[iphone_aggie]

Does deleting a song or ringtone on the iPhone leave a data fragment? I'm talking about when you use the checkbox selected to "Manually manage your music and videos." I was just wondering if anyone knew how the file structure works for the iPhone and that if you manually delete then you leave fragments that might make your flash drive have less space than is actually available.

 

[iphone_aggie]

polite bump

 

[teryan2006]

Re: Fragmentation

Flash memory doesn't have fragmentation. Just like how SSDs don't get fragmentation. The controller handles wear-leveling and error correction.

 

[GMJeff]

Flash memory works similar to a hard drive in a sense, deleting a file just alters the File Allocation Table to represent that the sectors holding the deleted data are now useable. When in reality, there is data still stored there. It is then overwritten by data at a later time.

I am sure it is not that simple and there is a more long winded explanation for it.

I have come across some of my SD cards that are non-useable, but I know had data on them. I can then use recovery software to read the memory card and read the data, even if it was deleted previously.