As you can imagine the hard disk based players do use mechanical devices. Defragmenting does add wear to that device and could push an unit that would have lasted a year or 2 down to a few weeks.
Why should you care what others say? Do what you want.
I do want to share that I found some stuttering to vanish by pushing the sound file over to Apple's encoding rather than variable rate MP3.
Bob
Hi all
I have heard many solutions to solving the issue of the 5.5G ipod freezing or stuttering when skipping through songs, my ipod has now sadly developed the same problem and its annoys the hell out of me when it lags. I have heard from apple that they do not recommend to defrag the ipod (it is of course in hard disk mode), however i have heard that defragging has solved the issue that I am facing or at least "make the ipod faster". I would like to know if there is any fact to what apple say or what other people say. I am hoping that someone can point me in the right direction and either help me solve the issue with my ipod or at least stop me from "physically" destroying it.......

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