Does the HDX defragment it’s HD?

I have no information that it does this ... 

I think fragmentation will be very limited as the usage is writing CDs to the hard disk with limited delete of CDs.

I've always understood defragmenting  (now called optimise drives)  is required only for Microsoft,   its not needed (but can be done) on Apple/Mac & its the same for the various NAS OS's

My understanding is that almost all operating systems need to defrag the discs somehow - possibly automatically or in the background.  Certainly the reason that MS discs need defragging is not unique to MS.

Disks that need defragging is due to constant writes and deletes of files, a HDX is pretty much write to disk and there it stays so apart from perhaps some occasional temp files, caches etc there aint a lot going on on that disk.

Mike-B posted:

I've always understood defragmenting  (now called optimise drives)  is required only for Microsoft,   its not needed (but can be done) on Apple/Mac & its the same for the various NAS OS's

Just dun a bit o' learnin' on why Microsoft do & why Mac don't do defragging.   Mac's to it themselves,  per www.macworld .......   "Macs don't generally need to be defragged. This is simply because the macOS file system was designed differently to Microsoft's, and it automatically defragments files on its own. The process is otherwise known as Hot File Adaptive Clustering (HFC)." 

Microsoft (Windows-10) now has a feature to "Optimise Drives" which is the new word for defragment.  This can be user set to auto schedule daily or weekly

........   Gayi correctly summarizes the OP's question,  its not needed for HDX & NAS drives.

The HDX uses a modified Microsoft Windows XP OS,  However, as others have stated, without multiple and repetitive writes, erases and rewrites, defragmentation shouldn't be necessary.

So what speeds up file access?  The RAM? Or the resolution of the track? Or if it’s on the MUSIC folder compared to the DOWNLOADS folder?

  You need an HDX expert to chip in on this,  that counts me out.       But file access speed is all about processor power  (CPU)   more memory (RAM) will help only if its max'd out & I don't think there is anything you can do about that.        Resolution of the track, (I assume you mean bit depth & sample rate) or what folder you store the files should have nothing to do with it;  or at least it does not have effect with a NAS

Maybe explain some more what the problem is - do you mean selecting time of an individual track or the whole album & what is the delay period differences you are concerned with.  

How much space does your HDX have left,  do you have a NAS you can copy it all over to,  is it possible to clear out the HDX & start over,  is it time to think about moving on ?

Another forum member commented within the last couple of days that his Core with SSD drive inside must much faster responding to commands to play tracks etc than his Unitiserve had been  (and Unitiserve and the relevant part of HDX are much the same I believe.)

best

David