Disk Optimization
- Thread starter bobw
- Start date
perfessor101
Registered
You missed the point. There is absolutely no reason not to defragment the boot drive.karavite said:
blue&whiteman
PowerPC Fanatic
I have been running the same panther install since Nov. 03 and have never defraged. I use my machine 4-6 hours a day every single day and use a lot of very large files. the only maintenance I ever do is repair permissions. my machine is on 24/7 so it runs all the scripts it needs while I sleep.
I have never ever experienced any problems or slow downs of any kind. my machine is 100% rock solid.
you need to start thinking in the unix mindset and get out of that classic os state of mind for maintenance.
I have never ever experienced any problems or slow downs of any kind. my machine is 100% rock solid.
you need to start thinking in the unix mindset and get out of that classic os state of mind for maintenance.
blue&whiteman
PowerPC Fanatic
bobw said:
I never use sleep. the machine is ON 24/7
karavite
Registered
perfessor101 said:
With that comment, I was writing to the 20 people who said not to defragment the boot drive. I don't keep any FCP video or render files on my boot drive, it is running fine, and my original question/post was always referring to my file drive, but I will keep this in mind.
Ay carumba, did anyone except eldiablo see that I originally asked about this because the FCP manual itself says in plain language that using FCP where it writes loads of large render files will certainly fragment a drive - bootable or not - and that I am only referring to defragmenting my video file drive that does NOT NOT NOT have OSX installed on it? Perhaps we all need to get into the take a moment and read more than the last 2 posts mindset? As for defragmenting bootable drives, I have no opinion or need. You guys fight it out.
blue&whiteman
PowerPC Fanatic
end defrag rant.. 
my last post was intended for prof. 101 btw. not you.
my last post was intended for prof. 101 btw. not you.
bobw said:
When I make a backup CD of such files (before opimizing, that is) - how do they get recorded onto the actual CD - as fragments (collected from all over the volume) or does each of these fragmented files get written onto a CD "in one continuous piece" so to speak? I use Toast for backups, and usually select a Mac OS Extended/PC Hybrid CD format for burning.
Thanks in advance for anyone's advice on this..
dk
blue&whiteman
PowerPC Fanatic
fryke said:
I hear what you're saying but it will take 8-10 hours to get all your apps reinstalled and setup everything. this is with me anyway.. anytime I do an install I go very slow and check everything twice to be sure all will be well. because of this anal install style though I get 1-2 years at least (sometimes 3) out of an install before I feel its time to do it over again. I bought and installed panther the day it came out in stores and am still running that same install. just under a year at this point and its tip top. as I said though i'm a very anal user and treat my system as if its my tool to win an organization competition.
karavite
Registered
fryke said:
Interesting - would the same would occur with a non OS disk that just holds video files? Would simply backing up the files on another disk, reformatting the drive and copying back the files achieve the same result? Gosh, fryke, you may have actually saved me a ton of time as well as some money?
Blue and white man - sorry if I was a dork with you, I felt like nobody was listening to my specific issue. It's hard to know who is talking to who in these multiple conversation threads!
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
Yep, in fact, it would work better on a non-system drive. I think, also, we need to make a distinction between "defragmenting" and "optimizing."
Copying files off of a drive and then back onto the drive all at once defragments a drive. All files will be written in contiguous blocks, eliminating file fragmentation.
Optimizing, on the other hand, is a fancy term for where the files are placed on the disk. With Norton Utilities and other disk optimizing programs, system files were placed at the beginning of the disk and documents and data files were placed at the end, leaving your empty space in a big chunk in the middle. While this also had the effect of defragmenting the drive, it went a step further and actually defined where the files were stored on the disk. With the old Classic Norton Utilities, you could select different profiles from a menu, say, one for your boot drive and a different profile for your data drive depending on what kind of use you wanted them optimized for.
But yes, in short, copying files off of a data drive, formatting the drive, then copying them back will have similar results to what disk defragmentation utilities do.
Copying files off of a drive and then back onto the drive all at once defragments a drive. All files will be written in contiguous blocks, eliminating file fragmentation.
Optimizing, on the other hand, is a fancy term for where the files are placed on the disk. With Norton Utilities and other disk optimizing programs, system files were placed at the beginning of the disk and documents and data files were placed at the end, leaving your empty space in a big chunk in the middle. While this also had the effect of defragmenting the drive, it went a step further and actually defined where the files were stored on the disk. With the old Classic Norton Utilities, you could select different profiles from a menu, say, one for your boot drive and a different profile for your data drive depending on what kind of use you wanted them optimized for.
But yes, in short, copying files off of a data drive, formatting the drive, then copying them back will have similar results to what disk defragmentation utilities do.