Disk Defrag

K

KingSalamander

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Comp Specs: Power Mac G4 1 GHz 1.5gig of ram

I do alot of video stuff with my G4 tower. I noticed one of my drives is rendering very slow even though there is more than 10 gigs of space. Final Cut said that the external didn't have enough memory. Why is that? I tried to run a free de frag program that came with the drive. It showed alot of errors but wasn't able to fix them with fragment "fork". I checked the drive on disk utility but it verified the disk permissions.

Is it worth buyiung a De Frag software? I have about four externals with different video projects. Is a disk shredder the same as fragmentation?


Martin
 
Disk fragmentation IS a big problem with video work. Unfortunately, I really can't recommend any defragmenting programs. None of them have proven themselves to be reliable. The one time I tried iDefrag, it hosed my entire volume, and I lost two or three days recovering and restoring everything. I've heard similar reports about TechTool.

I frequently (every month or two) do what I call a "defrag approximation". This simply means manually dumping all the data from the source volume onto a backup volume, reinitializing the source volume, and manually copying everything back. A bit of a hassle, but I really wouldn't trust any defragmenting program with my data unless I had done a complete backup anyway.

This method isn't totally suitable for a boot volume, which is why I keep all my video work on separate drives/partitions. For a boot volume, using Carbon Copy Cloner ought to work, although I've never personally used it for the purpose of eliminating fragmentation. (I don't find that I need to defrag my boot partition very often, since I use other partitions for most of my disk-heavy work.)

Shredders are used to securely delete data. It doesn't really have anything to do with fragmentation. OS X actually has this ability built in, with its "Secure Erase" feature in Disk Utility and also "Secure Empty Trash".
 
I do something very similar to what Mikuro suggested. I'm not suggesting you go out and spend a bunch on new drives, but that is what I have done. I have 3 external 250 gb for video and one of them is pretty much relgated to being a backup while I regularly reinitialize one of the other two. However, given that most of these utilities (Tech Tool and others) cost about $100 and new drives aren't much more, I'd say the extra drive is the better buy! Of course the best utility known to the Mac is Carbon Copy Cloner and it is absolutely free! :)
 
Martin,

My reading of your post indicates that your problem has nothing to do with fragmentation. You seem to think that 10 GB is a lot of HD space. For Microsoft Office, it is adequate. You are running Final Cut Pro [or is it Express?]. At any rate, you are running an application that requires massive capacity for its temporary files and virtual memory. Your 10 GB for free space provides not a lot of breathing room for video editing.
 
I think I'll download a free ware de frag program and carbobn copy. I think I'll back up my project, and erase the drive. When you erase the drive through disk utility is that enough to clean up any fragment errors.
 
That is a total waste of time. If you want to do something constructive, run fsck in single-user mode. Even this is not going to fix your fundamental problem of needing more HD capacity.
 
I have to go with MisterMe on this...10GB of free-space is way too little for video work. In fact, depending on the size of your hard drive, it is probably too little for normal usage of the computer. OS X likes to have around 15% to 20% of free space (greater is better) on the boot drive for optimal performance. So unless your drive is 50GB / 60GB or smaller, then 10GB free won't do at all.

You'll need to free-up space or possibly look into adding another internal (or replacing it with a larger one). TigerDirect has a 250GB Seagate for $69.99 right now.
 
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