Defrag in OS X?

Originally posted by TwistedMojo
How do I defrag my hard disk? Is there a way other than initialization? Im running OS X.2 (jaguar).
Click to expand...

Oh no! Not THIS discussion again! *lol*

OS X....unix based....efficient filing system...doesn't need it.....

um....right guys? :D
 
Personally, I think if you do a lot of disk shuffling, optimizing is a good idea. But for the average Joe, it's probably overkill. Oh well. If you want...

Drive 10 and TechTool Pro 3 both optimize. Both are sold by Micromat
 
Agreed with the efficient filing system to a certain extent. If you are using the Mac for music or video applications and move data all over the place alot, some form of defrag would be good.

For me, I use the good old copy, erase method. I have had bad things happening to my drives with defragmentation software. Nothing beats cleaning up the platters the good old formatting way. This is why I love Mac. Tell a PC dude to got format his hard disk and most likely he will give you the finger. :D
 
UFS disks don't need to be defragmented. HFS+ disks may need it, depending on what you run, how much RAM you have, and how much free disk space you have.
The safest defragging tools is still good old PlusOptimizer from Alsoft, which comes on the DiskWarrior CD. The reason it's the best? It can handle power surges, power loss or crashes during optimization. If any of these things happen while you are defragging with TechTool Pro, Drive 10, or Norton Speed Disk, you will suffer severe disk damage.
 
Somebody told me there was some sort of file size limit to UFS formatted drives (like 4 GB). Is this true or was that person just blowing hot air?
 
Yeah, pretty much any file system will have a maximum file size. 4GB sounds reasonable enough...
 
At least with iMovie it does not make a difference. I routinely import several hours of video into the mac. iMovie will automatically (and seamlessly) breakup the movie into 1.9GB files (a little over 9 minutes). it is kind of annoying to have a lot of little clips, on the other hand it also makes it easy to find specific scenes....
 
The only app I would trust for defragmentation is Plus Optimizer which comes with Disk Warrior from Alsoft.
 
What about starting up in OS 9 and rebuilding the desktop from there? Will that do anything? I've tried it and I haven't noticed much difference.
 
fyi... Rebuilding the Desktop in OS 9 simply makes sure that Documents are properly linked to their corresponding applications, and that they have icons which jive with the applications they're linked to. It has nothing to do with disk structure.
 
FYI> The advanced tab in the classic pref pane has a rebuild desktop feature (at least in 10.2). You do not need to boot into OS 9 to rebuild the desktop.
 
If you are running HFS+ then you can defrag all you like. If you are running UFS, there is no need to do it as the filesystem is not setup the same way that ntfs, hfs+, fat32 are. In a nutshell, it may buy you some speed, it may not, the choice is yours.

As for file size limits. I have never heard that ufs has 4gb limit on filesizes. I could be wrong but I have been around Freebsd for about 6 years now and haven't caught wind of that one.
 
Well my system bombed, and I am awaiting the arival of my new drive, what disk format is better? I have used the HFS+ previously, but if the unix structure is better and more effeicent i will go with that. I do mostly video, flash, and image manipulation on my system, although that stuff is on a HFS drive. Can I mix formats like that?
 
Issue from the terminal "df -k", take alook (in general) at the "/" filesystem this will tell you not only what size your root filesystem is but that Darwin can see and deal with almost anysize filesystem.

I have a small but 50+ GB filesystem for root, crackers I know, and I've used 30Gb of it, how you supposed to back that up?.

What should happen from a UNIX point of view, is and "fsck -Y" from either sudo or the root account

However its been whispered that MacOSX does something else with the dam disk so fsck (it works for all other UNICES) is not totaly functional.

I also see large chunks of my disk dissappearing when I make movies or use iDVD and then junk the stuff when recorded off to media. I am unable to recover this lost disk space.
 
Issue from the terminal "df -k", take alook (in general) at the "/" filesystem this will tell you not only what size your root filesystem is but that Darwin can see and deal with almost anysize filesystem.

I have a small but 50+ GB filesystem for root, crackers I know, and I've used 30Gb of it, how you supposed to back that up?.

What should happen from a UNIX point of view, is and "fsck -Y" from either sudo or the root account

However its been whispered that MacOSX does something else with the dam disk so fsck (it works for all other UNICES) is not totaly functional.

I also see large chunks of my disk dissappearing when I make movies or use iDVD and then junk the stuff when recorded off to media. I am unable to recover this lost disk space.
 
I do not suggest using UFS for several reasons.

UFS doesn't support HFS+ attributes and instead stores them in a separate file. This means UFS ends up being painfully slow unless you're only using UNIX apps.

UFS doesn't support FileIDs so your aliases will break like symlinks.

There aren't many 3rd party utilities for UFS in case something goes wrong. Yes, you shoudl always backup, but you've been warned.
 
cool, thanks for the advice, i found a older thread that had other members describing their problems with th format. Better knowing now than later.
 
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