Journaling (and some other things)

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jmags

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1) My understanding is that journaling consolidates certain files if they are heavily fragmented when they are opened. Is this accurate, and does it do anything else? Also, are there drawbacks to enabling journaling?

2) When using Disk Warrior, is it doing anything if there is no text in red addressing major problems. Does Disk Warrior have defragging functions?

3) Do the Apple Disk Utilities have functionality that Disk Warrior lacks?

Okay, I think that's it for now. Thanks.
 
Answers:

1. - What you are describing is Apple's hot file clustering, not journaling. Hot file clustering moves commonly used files to areas of the hard disc that are physically faster to access. this only happens on the boot volume, so any files on other partitions are not affected. There is also a 20Mb file size limit on this function.

Journaling is a function of the file system that keeps a record of changes to the filesystem, so that in the event of a crash or data loss, the computer checks the journal log at startup, and can revert back to the last undamaged state.

2. Disk warrior is still building an 'optimized' (ie: defragmented) directory structure, even if it doesn't repair any damage. This should result in faster access to files, although not as fast as if it were also able to defragment the data of those files as well (which it doesn't currently do).

3. No, Apple's Disk utilities offer a good basic set of tools, but DisK Warrior offers a more comprehensive, advanced tool suite.
 
jmags said:
1) My understanding is that journaling consolidates certain files if they are heavily fragmented when they are opened. Is this accurate, and does it do anything else? Also, are there drawbacks to enabling journaling?

2) When using Disk Warrior, is it doing anything if there is no text in red addressing major problems. Does Disk Warrior have defragging functions?

3) Do the Apple Disk Utilities have functionality that Disk Warrior lacks?

Okay, I think that's it for now. Thanks.
Click to expand...
  1. Journaling enables Apple's hotfile clustering and file optimization functions. Both will reduce the most severe file fragmentation of small files at the expense of increased disk fragmentation. As far as I can tell journaling itself is about as close as you can get to something for nothing - even without Panther's hot file clustering and automatic file defragmentation. I have run several tests and they are consistent in showing little or no performance impact from journaling and the journal file itself is small enough to be considered below noise level on modern drives.
  2. DiskWarrior defragments only the directory, it does not defragment either the files or disk. TechTool Pro 4 defragments the directory, the files, and the disk.
  3. No. In fact Disk Utility and fsck are incapable of repairing many serious problems that either DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro can handle with aplomb.
 
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