Defrag the OSX disk ? How ?

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Gone !
How do you do to defrag your OSX disk ?

I'm running OSX.1.4 (what a pain OSX doesn't integrate defrag utility !) and OS9.22 at some times, both are on same unpartitoned disk.
 
I had the same problem, so I went out and bought the "new OS X native" Norton SystemWorks. I have to say, and have previously in past, how incredibly disappointed I was with it. (I use the "d" word with great caution :))

You have to boot it into OS 9 with the CD, and then defrag with that. But IMHO, don't bother, waste of money! Wait until someone comes out with an OS X native one.
 
for some very complete discussions of defragging, do a site search for 'defrag'. In short plus optimizer from alsoft is the best but techtool pro works wonderfully as well.

and yes they must be booted from os 9, at this point they all do. so you can either wait for somebody to finally make one native while your mac-chine thrashes its way iinto sluggishness and possible destruction, or you can bite the bullet and buy one now and hope the update is either free or cheap.
 
Originally posted by Ed Spruiell
so you can either wait for somebody to finally make one native while your mac-chine thrashes its way iinto sluggishness and possible destruction, or you can bite the bullet and buy one now and hope the update is either free or cheap.
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Wow, that's a great description, Ed. :D But can fragmentation actually lead to filesystem corruption? :confused:
 
i don't know about filesystem corruption. I would imagine it can contribute to the potential crashes that might corrupt files, but that is just a guess. when talking about destruction, i am referring to the actual drive. That 'thrasing noise' you hear as the drive becomes fragmented is the read arm bouncing all around to find your info. rapid bouncing increases the chances of arm contact with the disk which increases the chances of media damage. and well, the file systems are often some of the info it is bouncing around looking for. Ever hear the difference between a newly defragmented drive and one that has been ignored? the former is practically silent during everything and the other sounds like fairies are inside with hammers and picks.
 
Ah, THAT'S what you meant. Hard drives are such weird things. Having those heads just fractions of millimeters above the disk surface, I would really expect the heads to go crashing into the surface a lot. But they don't. Technology is certainly amazing. . ..
 
you should check the symantec web site to be sure, but i think the last version of 6.x worked ok. at least as well as norton works which is a highly suspect and debateable thing.
 
Will Norton SystemWorks 2000 make an intelligent OSX defrag, ie. group all OSX-System files together ?

I made the search, found nothing that could answer this question.

And, will Techtool Pro make intelligent OSX defrag too please ?

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EDIT

Hey, I'm just coming back from the micromat.com webpage...

Does Drive10 defrag AND repair ? Equivalent of Disk Doctor + Speed Disk ? Is it (as) good (as other defraggers, esp. as good as TechTool defrag)?
 
I have never defragged a *nix-based machine of any kind, server or desktop, in years of using and maintaining them. I still don't see (or hear!) the need for a defragging tool, and I'm suspicious of the idea of setting one of these half-a$$ed tools loose on a drive that gets regular fscks and seems to be doing fine on its own.

Has anyone experienced an actual benefit from defragging their OS X machine?
 
Has anyone experienced an actual benefit from defragging their OS X machine?
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yes.

keep in mind that os x is also apple based. it uses HFS+ filesystem. while UFS doesn't need defragging, HFS+ does. and if you're running os x on UFS, you've got bigger problems than anything fragmentation would cause.

i guarentee you will see a performance boost after a good defrag. unless you only use your computer for an hour a day 2-3 days a week.

OSX is still a mac os, it isn't unix.
 
I defrag about once a month. I can't say I notice too big a difference but after a defrag my hard drives is less noisy.

I use Drive 10.x.x to defrag. I made a OS X bootable CD using bootcd (available on version tracker) then I included drive10 on the boot cd. Slow but gets the job done.
 
Slightly off topic... only just.

I zapped the PRAM when restarting into X, then the old rebuild desktop thing while I booted into OS 9, it did the OS X partition as well (although it took longer). After restarting back into X I did notice a marked improvement in responsiveness.

Must do a defrag as well soon.


eric
 
Drive 10 is good, but slow. And I don't know how intelligent the optimization is, but they do call it optimization and not just defrag. Yes, it repairs and defrags. So does techtool pro.

If you run UFS and/or you keep your drives at less than 50% capacity, you'll likely never see a significant performance improvement from a simple defrag. As for optimization speeding up performance - I have no idea how an app could predict the order in which OS X would need files with all its VM and object caching and whatnot.

And other than classic compatibility, I see no good reason not to run OS X on UFS. It was fine for me when I tried it.
 
Originally posted by theed
If you run UFS and/or you keep your drives at less than 50% capacity, you'll likely never see a significant performance improvement from a simple defrag.
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no doubt this is true. my gf's imac is a year and a half old. i've never had to run repairs on it or defrag it and it runs great. she has no additonal software that didn't come on it other than some browsers and an im app. she has a 40 gb drive with over 35 gb free space and gets freaked out whenever i leave a document out on the desktop - it's something that shouldn't be on her computer in her mind. in other words, i never even get a chance to mess it up.

on the other hand, my 10 gb drive has less than 85% free space right now. i need to move some files and apps to my externals. anyone who does much saving and deleting of files, loads a decent amount of 3rd party software on to their drive, etc, is going to notice the effects of a good defrag. of course i agree that simply doing it regularly is a better idea and the effects each time will be less noticable.


And other than classic compatibility, I see no good reason not to run OS X on UFS. It was fine for me when I tried it.
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i'll admit i have no 'nix background and have never even considered running it on UFS. but i have followed the reports of others in this forum over he last year and seen constant reports of difficulties encountered by doing so - the biggest being a drop in speed and responsiveness which is conversly one of the biggest advantages of defragging. i'll never forget the 50 plus debate that went on with georgelien about how slow osx was. eventually it came out he was running on UFS. he reformatted to HFS+ and promptly apologized to all of us for his point of view. :p

hi again, Theed ;)
 
I didn't do any speed testing on my UFS install. I can see how speed would be hindered. For the uninitiated, the way UFS works is that it expects, does not attempt to fight, and handles fragmentation very well. Well, it doesn't break. The speed loss is real, even in theory. It's slowed down by the idea of fragmentation even if there isn't any. That way it's not slowed down if it's run on a drive that's 95% full. It also doesn't run faster on an empty drive.

FAT and HFS are lots faster and generally more fragile than UFS, NTFS, etc. So the idea of defragging a UFS drive is kinda funny, because the drive doesn't care if it's fragmented. It'd be like trying to keep your raincoat dry.
 
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