Defragmentation of solid state memory

1. A data storage device comprising:

a solid state data storage medium;

multiple data blocks stored in non-contiguous physical locations on the data storage medium; and

a controller adapted to:

receive a defragmentation request that includes an instruction to physically relocate at least a portion of the multiple data blocks to contiguous physical locations on the data storage medium;

associate the non-contiguous physical locations of the multiple data blocks to contiguous logical block addresses;

maintain the non-contiguous physical locations of the multiple data blocks on the data storage medium; and

send a notification to a device that the defragmentation request was completed even though data specified to be relocated to contiguous physical locations by the defragmentation request was not relocated to contiguous physical locations.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the defragmentation request comprises a request to read one of the set of data blocks from one of the logical block addresses and write the one of the set of data blocks to another logical block address.

3. The device of claim 1 , wherein the defragmentation request comprises a defragmentation notification.

4. The device of claim 1 , wherein the notification indicates the multiple data blocks have been re-located to contiguous physical locations on the data storage medium even though the multiple data blocks remain non-contiguously stored on the data storage medium.

5. The device of claim 1 , wherein the solid state memory comprises non-volatile flash memory.

6. The device of claim 5 , further comprising one of a magnetic disc storage medium and an optical disc storage medium.

7. A device comprising:

a controller adapted to:

receive a defragmentation instruction indicating data stored on a data storage medium is to be relocated to a different physical location of the data storage medium;

execute a defragmentation operation that is different than the defragment instruction and is executed instead of the defragmentation instruction, the defragmentation operation including:

mapping non-contiguous physical block addresses of the data to contiguous logical block addresses;

maintaining the non-contiguous physical block addresses of the data on the data storage medium; and

generating a notification indicating the data has been physically re-located to the different physical location on the data storage medium even though the data has not been physically relocated on the data storage medium.

8. The device of claim 7 , further comprising the controller adapted to:

determine if the defragmentation instruction is intended to locate physical data blocks contiguously on a data storage medium; and

execute the defragmentation operation when the defragmentation instruction is intended to locate physical data blocks contiguously on a data storage medium.

9. The device of claim 8 , wherein:

the defragmentation request comprises a defragmentation notification; and

the controller executes the defragmentation operation responsive to the defragmentation notification.

10. The device of claim 8 , further comprising:

the data storage device including:

the data storage medium; and

the controller further adapted to receive a defragmentation request that includes an instruction to relocate one or more of the related data blocks.

11. The device of claim 7 , wherein the data storage medium comprises non-volatile solid state memory.

12. A method comprising:

detecting a first defragmentation operation for a data storage device, the defragmentation operation comprising requests to relocate data into contiguous physical locations on a data storage medium; and

performing a modified defragmentation operation instead of the first defragmentation operation, the modified defragmentation operation performed on the data storage device when the first defragmentation operation is detected, the modified defragmentation operation comprising:

mapping physical locations of the data to contiguous logical block addresses;

maintaining any non-contiguous physical locations of the data on the data storage medium; and

generating a notification indicating the data has been physically relocated even though the data has not been physically relocated.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the requests include read and write instructions to relocate one or more physically non-contiguous data blocks such that they are located at physically contiguous locations.

14. The method of claim 12 , further comprising:

executing the defragmentation operation on the data storage device, the defragmentation operation comprising a defragmentation notification;

wherein detecting a defragmentation operation comprises receiving the defragmentation notification.

15. The method of claim 12 , wherein the data storage medium comprises non-volatile solid state memory.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein the data storage device comprises one of a magnetic disc storage medium and an optical disc storage medium.

17. The method of claim 12 , wherein:

the data storage device comprises a map indicating a relationship between physical block addresses of the data blocks on the data storage medium and logical block addresses; and

mapping the physical block addresses of the data blocks to contiguous logical block addresses including modifying the map such that the physical block addresses of the data blocks are mapped to contiguous logical block addresses.