I can't really say about Macs because so far, I only have experience with Windows and a little with Ubuntu. However, if it's anything like Windows, the longer you go, the more fragmented your file system will be. It'll take ages to move a lot of files from one place to another and your drive will churn a lot. Last time I got around to really defragmenting my primary Windows drive, it was insane. Took ages. Someone else (Who knows something about Macs) might correct me but if there is a defrag utility for Macs, it sure can't hurt to run it. Just set it to run when you go to bed or something because it'll probably take a long time.
AFAIK, there is NO defragmentation utility in Mac OS X. According to Apple, there is no need to defragment hard drives in OS X, because it supposedly does that automatically (or rather it prevents fragmentation in the first place using some optimization techniques). If you need to defragment, you'll need to get (most likely BUY) 3rd party tool...but for some reason, manually defragmenting in Mac OS is not as "safe" as in Windows. In fact, I believe Apple recommends backing up the drive, reformatting it, and restoring back. BTW.. some believe that OS X doesn't do a good job at preventing fragmentation. If you have lots of large files (say movies), and your hard drive is not as big, then it will likely benefit from defragmentation.
Apple is "full of crap" on this point. I do software development on my Macs, which means files are "coming and going" all the time, and I can assure you that OS X drives do fragment -- some times badly. I can vouch for TechToolPro. I've been using it to defrag my Macs' hard drives for years with out a problem. TechTool also will perform some other hardware tests at your discretion. I have my TechTool set to monitor all the hard drives for problems. You can also use DiskWarrior or DriveGenius, but these are "disk drive only" tools only and operate at a lower level than TechToolPro. You probably don't want (or need) to edit individual sectors on your disk ;-) I defrag my disks every month or so, or whenever I notice a slow down in disk intensive tasks. Edited by - badkarma on 4/14/2009 8:28:54 PM
TTP 5 is $98 on their website. I've got a white 13" Macbook that I bought in 2007 and have used it almost every day since then and it's never been defragged and I've never used Onyx or anything like that....how much of an improvement in speed and such do you think I'd have by buying/running TTP? The info is much appreciated.
Most people needn't bother with defragmenting. Other than boot speed there usually - not always, but usually - won't be enough improvement to worry about. If you must then SuperDuper! is a much cheaper solution that provides other benefits. Copy the notebook hard drive to an external disk, then copy it back. SuperDuper! can also be told to copy the Mac hard disk to an external drive daily for backups. Personally I haven't had a problem with fragmentation - a situation where it was worth stopping other work to defragment - in over 20 years.
Good! And your point is .... ?That's hard to answer without knowing what you use your Mac for. If you just surf the web or read email than you won't see any improvement. If you use applications that read/write a lot of small files (e.g. compliers and linkers) then you will see a small but noticeable speed improvement. If speed is an issue than the best bang for the buck is to max out the memory in the machine. Given a choice of TTP or more memory I'd pick more memory. FWIW, TechToolPro does more than just defrag -- it will also test all the Mac hardware, turn journaling on/off, etc. You can use jrv's method and copy the files back and forth from drive to drive. Not a method I use, but it would work. SuperDuper is $30 bucks. Another disk copy option is 'Carbon Copy Cloner', which is 'donation ware' -- you donate what you think its worth.
I'm a Techie at day job and night job, video production and editing etc and I was all PC and stayed away from mac religiously for most of my life, about 24 years assuming they were just overpriced and overhyped. Then last year I decided to get a new intell mac "macbook pro" so that I could run final cut studio on it and run my adobe studio on it as well with bootcamp and windows on it. I am HOOKED. I use my macbook to DJ with serato and edit video all over the place and mac performs FLAWLESSLY...never crashes during a gig...outstanding performace while editing. and when I use windows on it...it performes better then any PC i;ve ever used and rarley crashes. I talked craped cause I didn't know. If you use it. Not just at a mac store but day in and day out for graphic intensive stuff you will never go back...Truth "You should've never trusted hollywood..."
No offense to anyone, but the "Mac vs. PC" debate interests me not at all. Everyone gets to make their choice on computer hardware/software and spend their money as they see fit. The only requirement I have is that people take responsibility for THEIR decisions. You make a choice, you own that choice. I use Macs on the desktops and Linux/FreeBSD on the file/database servers. Again, no offense, but I don't give a "flying monkey's butt" what anyone else uses -- or what anyone else thinks is "better". Whatever "better" means. I also defrag the Mac drives occasionally. I've never had a problem defragging the drives so I see no reason to stop defragging the Mac drives. People wanting a debate on "better" should google "emacs is better than vi" or "vi is better than emacs". There you will find an endless debate on something that matters not. Enough said. Happy computing. Edited by - badkarma on 4/25/2009 3:40:00 AM
The basic SuperDuper, which can back up and restore a mac as was described, is free. The full blown SD costs, but basic SD does what the vast majority of mac users need, for free. Dr. P
