I can't imagine why it would make any particular difference one way or the other for any application. Vegas certainly doesn't care. Just out of curiousity, why was it important not to do that with Avid?
I was afraid you may ask me that,Chienworks. To be absolutely frank, Technically I don't really know, but Avid are adamant not to defrag. It has something to do with the type of file used I guess. I was told that it confuses the system because it is looking for a file which has been moved to a different location.....does that make sense???
I suppose if Avid builds it's own directory of where file sectors are stored on the disk for some sort of indexed retrieval, that might explain it. I think it would also be an incredibly stupid move on their part. It's far better to let the operating system handle this function.
When the AVID first came out, in the early '90s they distributed DiscExpress with it to defrag the disks.
When they first upgraded the system to AVR27 (at the time breath-taking in it's 5:1 compression ratio), they also striped two hard drives into an array to carry the compression.
Don't forget that AVID works in MJPEG and this is a "costly" in terms of processor speed process. And at that time, the AVID ran on the fastest machine around, the `100MHz MacIntosh. That's 100Mhz, not 1 gig.
At the time of the introduction of the striped drives, AVID said don't defrag anymore. I assume somewhere since, it has become axiomatic.