• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

is it harmful to Defrag your Cache everyday

E

Eddiebhoy

Lurker
I have a app called defrag cache , when I open it scans through all cache that's left and it says before you begin to defrag cache it may take 3 mins are you sure , and I defrag cache and once its done you have to wait till next day if you wanted to do it again , and also when it comes to havingmore than one cleaning app for i.e , I have ccleaner , master clean the one with the paintbrush for the apps icon. and also I have allinone toolbox and du speed booster is it ok to run these each day? , your help and advice would be deeply appreciated , ty
 
Hello there! Welcome to the forums! :D

Honestly, I don't use any of those apps, and its likely they aren't doing much for you.

I'm curious as to why you tried them--- What device do you have? Is it suffering from a lot of lag or other issues?
 
I am using a android phone , it is a Chinese android phone called : Kingsing-K5 , its the exact same as a Samsung galaxy s4. Since I have been using the apps I mentioned my phone has been faster and also I use android network signal booster and I do admit I get a better signal strength , I just wanted to know does it harm your phone when you defrag the cache. The defrag cache app> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mdvs.apps , the allinone toolbox one> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=imoblife.toolbox.full , ccleaner >
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.piriform.ccleaner , and the other cleaner that's rated by a lot of people who use cleaning android apps> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cleanmaster.mguard , du speed booster > https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dianxinos.optimizer.duplay , I am surpised you have not heard of the cleaning app , as in the one called clean master - free optimizer as its very highly rated.
 
What I think these apps do it to identify apps with the largest caches that can be safely deleted without any impact on the app itself. I don't think it will harm your phone by doing this regularly, but I'm not sure your speed boost isn't temporary until the app caches get rebuilt. If you feel it is doing you some good, then by all means, go for it, but I'd recommend sticking to only one app to do this. Running multiple utilities to do the same thing can easily cause problems, whether you run them daily or monthly.

While your phone may look like the S4, I doubt it's the same in terms of firmware or hardware internals. These clone phones are notorious for overstating their spec's and having buggy firmware.
 
Well, basically because 'cleaning apps' aren't needed. Plus if defrag cache is saying it's defragging your memory, they've played you for a fool. Not only does defragging flash memory not give you any boost in speed, it will accelerate the speed it breaks down.
 
the only reason I thought it would be ok to use a few different cleaning apps as on my p.c I use ccleaner , cleanup that also cleans temp internet files n cookies , also I go into internet options and clean temp files and cookies and a registry cleaner and I use them each day on my p.c and it does no harm on my pc. And when I think about it you don't get the one app that does everything as in for i.e , what one app may find the other wont and I thought to have a couple of apps that relate to each other as in cleaning and finding certan thi ngs and yet there is other things the other apps don't find yet the other does , would u agree or?
 
Android uses the Linux ext4 filesystem. It never needs defragging. Defragging is basically a Windows problem. Android ain't Windows.

I haven't bothered to clear caches in years. Has little or no effect on speed. Only worthwhile if you're running out of space.
 
I use CleanMaster for junk files, memory booster. I clean about once a week, the phone, not my apartment!!!
 
I never worry about junk files. I've never found any that took up a significant amount of space.

There is no such thing as a 'memory booster'. Bogus crap.
 
Just for argument's sake, I installed CleanMaster to see what it did and see how it evaluated my phone.

Nice interface, questionable utility.

Here's what the cleaning aspect does. It snoops through the applications and then lists the caches as freeable space. It also looks for orphaned apk's and apps that haven't been used lately and recommends removing them ... which it also lists in the aggregate number of MB's that can be cleaned. While it makes it more convenient than doing this through the applications manager in Android, it doesn't do anything special. It certainly doesn't speed anything up. If you are low on space, then it might help in the short term, but consider this ... those caches were created by the user from using the apps. Unless you are going to change the way you use your device, then they are going to be re-populated very quickly leaving you with a low space situation again. It's like bailing out a leaky boat ... it might keep you afloat but you have to keep doing until you fix problem.

As for the memory boost, it's a glorified task killer. It lists those apps that are in memory but not running. This is a placebo. If pushing the button makes you feel better, then go ahead and push, but it will only free the ram for other apps to be cached, which android does all by itself.

Didn't try the antivirus.
 
Since you mention "signal booster" I thought I'd explain what they do: they just force the phone to periodically rescan (same as toggling airplane mode on and off). This may result in it switching cells if it finds a stronger one, giving a temporary increase in signal level at the cost of increased battery drain from rescanning.

I'm afraid I don't bother with those either.
 
Android doesn't need to be defragged, that's really a Windows NTFS File System Problem, Android uses EXT4 and does not have the need to be defragged :-)
 
Several people mention that ext4 doesn't need defragging (which is mostly true) but miss the "elephant in the room" that is solid state storage.

Solid state storage devices never need regular defragging for performance reasons no matter what the file system, although the occasional free-space consolidation may be beneficial with some file systems, particularly FAT and to a lesser extent NTFS. Defragging also has significant impact on the life of solid state "disks" so should be avoided if at all possible.

Bottom line is to never defragment an Android device, it's a lose-lose situation: it's not needed for EXT4 (or any file system on SSD for that matter) so you gain nothing yet it's use will shorten the life of the device. Makes no sense at all.
 
I will come out in favor of Clean Master - with limitations.

If you have used your phone quite a while, with lots of app installs and uninstalls, you can have an annoying build up of wasted /data space. The uninstaller isn't perfect. For most people it's perfect, but use it enough and you will hit the occasional bug.

So, it can be useful to use Clean Master just for that. If you don't really need that done, running just that part is harmless.

When I was running out of space, no room to install more, I'd clear all of my cache and often get back two or three hundred MB (but only for a few days ok) so I could try out some more installs.

At the end of the day, Android is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.

The need to clean all caches isn't common, but it doesn't hurt, and can help in some limited scenarios. Most use scenarios, it's meaningless.

Your mileage may vary. :)
 
The only time I clean cache is really when I wish to do a backup. That is more to save space on the backup drive. Also it helps speed up the backup process not having to copy a bunch of files that are unimportant.

As mentioned Defragging is a Windows Thing. Neither Apple or Linux need defragging. Windows does as it has horrible disk management. I'm not talking about the app disk management just the way windows stores its files.
 
Eddiebhoy said:
I am using a android phone , it is a Chinese android phone called : Kingsing-K5 , its the exact same as a Samsung galaxy s4. Since I have been using the apps I mentioned my phone has been faster and also I use android network signal booster and I do admit I get a better signal strength , I just wanted to know does it harm your phone when you defrag the cache. The defrag cache app> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mdvs.apps , the allinone toolbox one> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=imoblife.toolbox.full , ccleaner >
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.piriform.ccleaner , and the other cleaner that's rated by a lot of people who use cleaning android apps> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cleanmaster.mguard , du speed booster > https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dianxinos.optimizer.duplay , I am surpised you have not heard of the cleaning app , as in the one called clean master - free optimizer as its very highly rated.
Click to expand...

BTW, that phone is not the same as a Galaxy S4, the KingSing K5 is a MediaTek device with Galaxy S4 wallpapers:
K5
 
Eddiebhoy said:
I have a app called defrag cache , when I open it scans through all cache that's left and it says before you begin to defrag cache it may take 3 mins are you sure , and I defrag cache and once its done you have to wait till next day if you wanted to do it again , and also when it comes to havingmore than one cleaning app for i.e , I have ccleaner , master clean the one with the paintbrush for the apps icon. and also I have allinone toolbox and du speed booster is it ok to run these each day? , your help and advice would be deeply appreciated , ty
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly sure what that application is doing but flash storage doesn't gain a performance benefit from being defragmented.

All it does it reduce the life of the flash storage ,you should NEVER defragment flash storage devices.

Clearing cache, maybe.. Defrag? Nope.
 
I've heard of Clean Master OK, it often appears in ads in games. Likely does more harm than good, especially if it mentions "defragging"... That's something you only have to do on PCs with mechanical spinning hard drives.

About the KingSing, don't know about it being the same as an S4. It's a Chinese knock-off, and many of those can often be quite dreadful.
 
Clean Master is a handy app for sure. Not a necessity but undeniably handy for quickly freeing space and making sure you delete everything when removing an app. Another thing people don't know is that once flash memory gets up to around 75% full, write speeds suffer dramatically. It is the nature of the beast. I have researched about it and then experienced it. When I was at around 85% used memory on my phone's internal memory, I was only getting around 6mb/s write speed on it and my sd card. Freed it up to 60% and averaged around 16mb/s write speeds. All within the same 60 seconds.

Like mentioned... signal boosters literally just put your phone in and out of airplane mode to allow your phone to connect to another closer tower, if possible.

Defragging flash memory, on the other hand, just wears your hardware out faster. The reason it is beneficial on hard drives is because they have much longer access times while flash memory is very, very low because there are no moving parts.
 
mikedt said:
I've heard of Clean Master OK, it often appears in ads in games. Likely does more harm than good, especially if it mentions "defragging"... That's something you only have to do on PCs with mechanical spinning hard drives.

About the KingSing, don't know about it being the same as an S4. It's a Chinese knock-off, and many of those can often be quite dreadful.
Click to expand...

Fortunately, the Clean Master screen is really straightforward.

So just use the cache /data cleaner, avoid the other buttons, like the defrag, like the ram or task killer, and it's good.

You can clear cache on any app, one at a time, from the Apps setting in Android (which I know you know, I'm saying it for our newer readers). So Clean Master doing all of them is no big deal. In fact, HTC has had that built into their stock settings for years. It's pretty handy.

And some of the better custom roms popular with rooters actually do the /data clean on bootup. So done properly, that's also safe.

I agree with the observation that things slow down when you get low on storage. I don't know about the percentage one way or the other. I just know when it gets low, I've often noticed my phone slow down too.

But - most apps run with a cache assist, so clearing caches to speed things up won't really help. As soon as you go use each app, they automatically rebuild the cache.

So if you want space back, back up some apps to your SD card or storage (you can do it for free with ES File Explorer) and then uninstall them. Then if you need one in a jiffy and just for once in a while, restore it, use it, uninstall it.

The reason that cache cleaning is built in is simple - think of the browser on your pc. Every so often, it can get wonky, and it straightens up when you clear the cache.

And that's the thing about cache assistance. It's really cool, the app saves common actions so next time, it just repeats what it remembered.

But it's an imperfect science.

A single bit error in a counter or index will make that app behave as goofy as all get out.

And a bad bit happening in a cache is not a case of if - it's a case of when.

That's just the nature of the beast. And so apps using cache assist need a way for the user to clear it. That's why it's built in to Android and your web browser.

I know that sometimes a Google something will goof up (I don't know, Gmail, Play Store) and then the expert fix is to clear cache on Google something else (Framework, Services).

I can't remember all that. :D

So when I get an app crashing or something, rather than hunting down the expert fix, I'll usually just clear all of them. I figure if one is tangled up, why clean it and wait to see if another is. Clean all of them.

That will slow your apps down until they rebuild theirs memories.

But running slow and right for a little while is better than running fast and wrong.

Ideally, it's better to just clear the one problem in the right place when it occurs.

I'm not the ideal type, so my advice is not good for everyone. :)
 
The thing to remember about cache is that it is basically an Immediate Available Resource. Think of it much like the cash in your pocket. And much like the cash in your pocket its a temporary resource. Like cash you store in your pocket the system and your apps stores its cache in a special pocket. This pocket allows the system or app to quickly grab resources needed to present to you the desired information in a quick manner.

Clearing it out sometimes is a benefit but not really so much that its extremely noticeable. As stated cleaning it out is only a temporary benefit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom