ceaning and optimizing

E

Elliotjnewman

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My Macs performance doesnt seem to be what it used to be, I have a G4 duel 1.25 with 512 mb ram running panther. I have about 70 gigs hd and have used 30 or 40 gigs. the computer sometimes stalls during a process like openinging an application, and makes a wuite loud crunching sound ... hmmm is this normal??? How do I do a cleanup to make sure there are no files and bits and bobs floating around my system? I gather that Macs automatically defrag the HD?

Thanks, Elliot.
 
First thing I would do is repair permissions, after which I would boot from the OS X install CD and repair the drive with Disk Utility (under the Installer menu when the "Select your language" window pops up).
 
Yeah the MacOS X HFS+ system, like most *nix systems, automatically defragments files over 10 megs (or 3 megs or something small-ish).

As for the crunching sound, no that's not normal at all, unless it's just your hard disk reading and writing like mad which is normal but not all that loud...

When you repair permissions check the "SMART" status of your drive at the bottom of the window for Disk Utility. If it says nothing about SMART status that's ok but if it says something ominous, get it checked out by tech support.
 
michaelsanford said:
Yeah the MacOS X HFS+ system, like most *nix systems, automatically defragments files over 10 megs (or 3 megs or something small-ish).
Click to expand...
That is only files that are less than 20 MB and have 8 or more extents (ie. are badly fragmented). This optimization also requires the file to be on the boot volume and journaling must be turned on. The file is defragmented by the simple expedient of rewriting it to another area of the disk. The end result is to slightly reduce file fragmentation at the expense of increased disk fragmentation.
 
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