[chrismini]

I'm sure there are folks out there who have done this, but here goes. First go to FileHippo.com and download a program called Piriform Defraggler. It is a fully functional freeware program similar to, but I think superior to the program that comes with Windows. Install the program and it will show your HD and a bunch of other stuff. Click on analyze and let it's do it's thing. Don't worry if your HD has lots of fragmentation. You can deal with that later. This is for dealing with your music files. Click on the file list tab and then click on type. Scroll down to where your music files are using their extension. For instance 80% of my files are AIFF and the rest ALAC which is in the MP4 container. You will be surprised at how many fragments some of your file have. I've had some over 500! Click the boxes on the left. If you've never done this before, this can be a daunting task. After all your files are clicked, click the defrag checked box and let your machine do the rest. If you've clicked a lot of files, it could take a while. While I can't say with certainty whether or not it improves sound quality, but it will definitely save some wear and tear on your hard drive.  
 
For you Mac users I'm sure there's a program out there that will perform similar tasks. I actually wish I had a Mac. Too much $$$.
 
Good listening everyone!

 

[TwilightCoda]

Ah, yes. The good ol' defrag. SSD users, and most Mac users: don't bother. Only HDDs can do this. You're safe. SSD architecture defragments itself (well, technically, it just doesn't get fragmented to begin with), and you literally cannot defrag an SSD. Don't waste your valuable megabytes on a defragmentation program or RAM cleaner.

Note on Macs: a few years ago, Apple switched over to either full SSD, or weird hybrid "Fusion Drive" things. I'm not entirely certain if you can defragment a Fusion Drive, but I'd give it a go, seeing as it's mostly HDD. EDIT: Turns out defragmenting a Mac is a semi-bad idea. See here, and make up your own mind, I suppose: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/how-defrag-speed-up-mac-os-x-2016-3600241/

 

[dukefx]

Would have been great advice 20 years ago.

 

[Blueshound24]

So I have a SSD for the O.S. Windows 7 on my C drive, and a 2 TB HDD for my D drive for music, documents, pics, etc. I know you are not supposed to defrag a SSD. According to your O.P. you are defragging only your music files? Why not defrag your entire HDD?
 
In my case, with Defraggler, I could click on on my D drive, (the HDD), and defrag the entire drive and not just my music files. I have 758 GB of music files and would not be able to tick all those boxes in my lifetime.
 
Maybe I'm not understanding why you are only selecting your music files?

 

[chrismini]

I'm not ignoring other files! I'm just concentrating on music files. I'm doing this as I rip music files onto my HD. I run a full defrag on my entire HD at least once month. In fact Defraggler shows zero fragmentation.

 

[obobskivich]

Windows, since Vista, automatically defrags any eligible drives in the system (it will pass over SSDs and other flash-based storage, like DOMs and USB media - the default schedule runs weekly if I remember right, you can change it to whatever you want of course) and continuously monitors for fragmentation. This isn't necessary for SSDs (as explained above, and it can be "hard" on them too - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047513/fragging-wonderful-the-truth-about-defragging-your-ssd.html). "Hybrid drives" or "Fusion Drives" (if you live in the Apple Reality Distortion Field (TM)) are primarily mechanical disks with a NAND cache attached - they still benefit from defragmentation (because they're mechanical drives), and that's acting on the mechanical section (the NAND cache is generally invisible to the host system on such drives, but some manufacturers do odd things, like Western Digital has made drives were the NAND section is separately addressable, for reasons beyond comprehension; in this case you can still defrag the mechanical piece, and the SSD is a separate entity to the host).

+1 on not bothering with a Mac. This is (more or less) true of other UNIX-like operating systems as well, depending on the file system of choice.

This does nothing to "save wear and tear" either - the whole purpose is to improve throughput performance by improving how data is spread out across the disk, but it has become less and less of a significant factor (to the point that its almost anachronistic) these days. That doesn't mean "never do it" but it's not the "magical bullet" it was in the era of Windows 95 and 1GB hard drives.