optimizing so slow
- Thread starter yuki
- Start date
shrill
Registered
Well, you are talking about rearranging several thousand files (my boot partition has 122,395 files taking up 7.3 GB on it). It's bound to take some time.
I don't know how long it's supposed to take, but in my experience, an average Windows box takes at least a couple hours to defrag. It probably takes a similar amount of time for a G4.
- shrill -
I don't know how long it's supposed to take, but in my experience, an average Windows box takes at least a couple hours to defrag. It probably takes a similar amount of time for a G4.
- shrill -
simX
Unofficial Mac Genius
In my one experience with TechTool, what you experienced is normal, and you should've just left it.
If you feel you want the need for speed, use Speed Disk with Norton Utilities.. it's always worked for me, but supposedly it uses a more dangerous method that could potentially lose some of your data should the power go out. TechTool uses a much slower but safer method.
If you feel you want the need for speed, use Speed Disk with Norton Utilities.. it's always worked for me, but supposedly it uses a more dangerous method that could potentially lose some of your data should the power go out. TechTool uses a much slower but safer method.
Does OS X even need to be defragged?
HD seek times are so low nowadays that defragging usually doesn't even result in a speed gain. And if it was really necessary, don't you think Apple would have included a rudimentary defragging utility in OS X? Even Unix systems don't come with defragging apps, so my thoughts are that they are a waste of time.
HD seek times are so low nowadays that defragging usually doesn't even result in a speed gain. And if it was really necessary, don't you think Apple would have included a rudimentary defragging utility in OS X? Even Unix systems don't come with defragging apps, so my thoughts are that they are a waste of time.
edX
mac shaman
1st about speed - techtool pro can take a long time. it takes over 20 hrs to defrag my 80 gb firewire drive with about 65 gb of files.If you want a defragger that is faster and in my opinion works better, try Plus optimizer from www.alsoft.com. The best bet is to buy the combo deal with Diskwarrior as defragging a drive that needs repair is not a very smart thing to do. That is the advantage of TTP - it is an all in one program. It is very good and has its uses as well. But PO is safe like TTP and only slightly slower than norton. It should handle that 40 gb hd in 2-4 hrs, maybe longer the first time you do it. Defragging is a task best done at night while you sleep anyway.
2nd - is it necessary? yes. in 20 years Apple has never included any type of defragging tool. why would they suddenly start with osx? where is the logic in thinking they would?
OSX IS NOT UNIX. It is an apple os and it behaves like they always have. I don't know why people come to mac osx and think it is unix. It uses unix, it is not the same though. I guarantee that you will see huge speed and stability increases when you defrag an HFS+ drive after having ignored it for awhile. Thos funny noises (that my stepdad likes cause he knows the computer is doing something
) will practically disappear when a properly done defrag takes place. and it isn't just your system disc that should be defragged if you change the contents of other drives at all.
But hey, what do i know, i have only been using mac os's for close to 20 years and don't know squat about unix. but from what i can tell, the addition of darwin has only added more things that require maintainence, not gotten rid of any.
2nd - is it necessary? yes. in 20 years Apple has never included any type of defragging tool. why would they suddenly start with osx? where is the logic in thinking they would?
OSX IS NOT UNIX. It is an apple os and it behaves like they always have. I don't know why people come to mac osx and think it is unix. It uses unix, it is not the same though. I guarantee that you will see huge speed and stability increases when you defrag an HFS+ drive after having ignored it for awhile. Thos funny noises (that my stepdad likes cause he knows the computer is doing something
) will practically disappear when a properly done defrag takes place. and it isn't just your system disc that should be defragged if you change the contents of other drives at all. But hey, what do i know, i have only been using mac os's for close to 20 years and don't know squat about unix. but from what i can tell, the addition of darwin has only added more things that require maintainence, not gotten rid of any.
shrill
Registered
Well, OS X is Unix; darwin is a part of X, and darwin is a Unix.
Hard disk defragging was most important back in the days when hard disk interleave was important - 15+ years ago.
Modern systems aren't going to gain much benefit from the process, except in a few small cases. The benefit comes from anything that you use frequently enough to have to wait for, some programs, huge data files.
Optimizing is useful sometimes, but most people shouldn't worry about it. Spending several hours to gain fraction of a second loading Word or Netscape doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.
Hard disk defragging was most important back in the days when hard disk interleave was important - 15+ years ago.
Modern systems aren't going to gain much benefit from the process, except in a few small cases. The benefit comes from anything that you use frequently enough to have to wait for, some programs, huge data files.
Optimizing is useful sometimes, but most people shouldn't worry about it. Spending several hours to gain fraction of a second loading Word or Netscape doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.
edX
mac shaman
gee, i bet there is a whole thread on this somewhere. however, your statement is not true. just because something contains something within it, doesn't mean you can call it that.
You have a liver contained in you. Does that make you a liver? and if it does, can you fully function and carry out all your organistic tasks as a liver? of course not.
second, "most people" using this site are not your normal "most people". 90% of people here are power users at least. With that much activity going on, defragging is a big asset. there are more than fractions of a second speed involved. There is added stability of your apps, extending the life of your HD and not having to listen to your computer work (or try to work i should say).
but please ignore me. the hardrive makers and technicians love people who don't defrag. of course software companies hate them because they start blaming the company for their own ignorance. I have seen bugs and other annoyances dissappear with an overnite defrag. and it doesn't take hours of your time, just the computer's time. sleep thru the whole thing and know everything will be better when you wake up.
or maybe you just like regularly reformatting and reinstalling your system, its updates, and all your apps and their updates. wow, now that sounds like a great way to spend some quality time with your computer.
shrill
Registered
Ed, you seem to have a bone to pick with me. I'm afraid we disagree on many points. Please allow me to respond.
Perhaps there is a context issue here. The UNIX world considers Mac OS X a "distribution" not unlike FreeBSD or Redhat Linux. The Mac community sees OS X as a Mac. It is both Unix and Mac at the same time. That's what makes it such a great system.
Western Digital's "value" 40GB hard disk has an expected operating life of 5 years. 5 years ago, a Really Big hard disk was 6 GB. Now it's 120 GB. 5 years from now it might be 1 or 2 TB. How long are you planning to keep your hard disk?
I think the only companies who gain any benefit from defrag programs are those that sell them.
I have been a pc tech, a software engineer, and have worked for a hardware company. I don't care one way or the other if people defrag or not, except for one thing, and this is a good illustration of it.
Defragmentation has been sold as the easy to fix any problem with your computer. It really looks like the computer is doing good stuff, and it takes a long time. It just isn't that effective - it never was. If you want to spend your time defragging, fine, just don't perpetuate the myth that it's a fix-all.
Define "huge". OS X is a *very* stable operating system, and it requires *very* fast hardware to run it.
I disagree that Most People (power users or not) are going to gain any real benefit from a defrag operation. It might make them "feel" better, but it's not doing much for the computer.
Besides, after a few weeks of creating and deleting those 10GB iMovies, you have to start all over again.
- shrill -
Your liver analogy is inaccurate. You might say that mach is more like the skeleton of Mac OS X; mach holds it up. Does just a skeleton make a human? Nope, but a kernel by itself doesn't make an operating system either. Without the mach foundations, OS X would be a blob of goo. Without a skeleton, so would you
Perhaps there is a context issue here. The UNIX world considers Mac OS X a "distribution" not unlike FreeBSD or Redhat Linux. The Mac community sees OS X as a Mac. It is both Unix and Mac at the same time. That's what makes it such a great system.
Implying that they are all media content creators, musicians, programmers? What is your definition of a power user?
An application does not become unstable because it is fragmented. It becomes unstable because it was written with poor quality control. Any application reading data from a file has no knowledge of where the data is physically located on the disk, nor how the data is stored on the disk. That is not the function of an application, it is the function of the operating system. Operating systems fragment hard drives on purpose. If there were an 'instability' it would affect the entire computer system, not just one application.
Do you suppose the added stress of moving all of the data on your disk around is going to add up to less than the amount of stress involved in normal use?
Western Digital's "value" 40GB hard disk has an expected operating life of 5 years. 5 years ago, a Really Big hard disk was 6 GB. Now it's 120 GB. 5 years from now it might be 1 or 2 TB. How long are you planning to keep your hard disk?
I think the only companies who gain any benefit from defrag programs are those that sell them.
I have been a pc tech, a software engineer, and have worked for a hardware company. I don't care one way or the other if people defrag or not, except for one thing, and this is a good illustration of it.
Defragmentation has been sold as the easy to fix any problem with your computer. It really looks like the computer is doing good stuff, and it takes a long time. It just isn't that effective - it never was. If you want to spend your time defragging, fine, just don't perpetuate the myth that it's a fix-all.
Define "huge". OS X is a *very* stable operating system, and it requires *very* fast hardware to run it.
I disagree that Most People (power users or not) are going to gain any real benefit from a defrag operation. It might make them "feel" better, but it's not doing much for the computer.
Besides, after a few weeks of creating and deleting those 10GB iMovies, you have to start all over again.
- shrill -
edX
mac shaman
shrill - i have nothing against you personally. I would pick this bone with whoever threw it out
I accept your analogy of unix as skeleton. i think it fits well. However i think your analogy only continues to support my point. In the end, it is the sum of the parts that matter. and since osx is used to run a mac, one must keep in mind the mac side of the equation as well. hence the name Mac OS X and not Mac Unix.
as for stability, i will also accept the premise you make although i am somewhat unsure it is true. however the stability, or rather compatibility and effieciency or the hardware using those apps is effected by fragmenting. perhaps the unix side of osx isn't, but the mac side is. And it can effect just one or two apps - those whose files are fragmented. Fragmentation does not occur universally or by methodical design. It has a somewhat random occurence. the system will fill empty spots nearer to the beginning of the drive before it fills the end. this can leave your system searching all over the place to find all the info it needs. this causes unnecesssary bouncing of your rean arm which can actually hit your drive and damage it in the process. That noise we call "thrashing" is not from two apps rubbing together. It is your HD being overworked and abused because you haven't bothered to reorganize it. It can eventually take down your drive. If we were to call this process by what it really is - reorganization for optimization, then the analogy to a real file system makes sense. It is easier to find the files that begin with A in the top drawer of a file cabinet than to have to look thru every drawer for it.
Here is the ironic part - i bet your real desk top is very neat and organized with all your pens and papers, etc. just where you know how to quickly find them. Mine is a mess. But you let your computer's info get all scattered while i make a regular effort to let it clean itself up. and by regular i mean every month or two. Defragmenting isn't something required every day or week.
as for defragmenting as some sort of cure all, i never said anything like that and am really at fault if my wording implied that. in fact earlier in this thread i said - "The best bet is to buy the combo deal with Diskwarrior as defragging a drive that needs repair is not a very smart thing to do." However i have had problems in the past that normal repairs did not fix and defragmenting did. I speak from experience, not from theory.
and as for power users - simply anyone who uses their computer a lot. especially people who are on the net all day. Browsers are some of the worst offenders of fragmenting with their cacheing. and they are the number one thing that loses speed because of it. any apps that constantly store and replace files are going to be guilty of this. It obviously includes your examples as well as. OSX itself does a tremendous amount of file swapping that seems to fragment the drive much faster than previous mac os's. This has been discussed in other threads. So in summary, a power user is probably anyone who uses their computer for more than an hour or two each day. My GF is not a power user and i haven't had to bother defragging her computer in the 8 mos she has had it and it still zips like the day shoe bought it.
i get great speed out of osx when i keep it properly maintained. Would you say that my 400 mhz G3 imac is "*very* fast hardware"? i wouldn't. And yet i seem to consistently get the kinds of speed that people with faster machines complain about not getting. the best 'proof' of this i have had is measuring load and rendoring times of web pages during browser comparisions.
I accept your analogy of unix as skeleton. i think it fits well. However i think your analogy only continues to support my point. In the end, it is the sum of the parts that matter. and since osx is used to run a mac, one must keep in mind the mac side of the equation as well. hence the name Mac OS X and not Mac Unix.
as for stability, i will also accept the premise you make although i am somewhat unsure it is true. however the stability, or rather compatibility and effieciency or the hardware using those apps is effected by fragmenting. perhaps the unix side of osx isn't, but the mac side is. And it can effect just one or two apps - those whose files are fragmented. Fragmentation does not occur universally or by methodical design. It has a somewhat random occurence. the system will fill empty spots nearer to the beginning of the drive before it fills the end. this can leave your system searching all over the place to find all the info it needs. this causes unnecesssary bouncing of your rean arm which can actually hit your drive and damage it in the process. That noise we call "thrashing" is not from two apps rubbing together.
It is your HD being overworked and abused because you haven't bothered to reorganize it. It can eventually take down your drive. If we were to call this process by what it really is - reorganization for optimization, then the analogy to a real file system makes sense. It is easier to find the files that begin with A in the top drawer of a file cabinet than to have to look thru every drawer for it.Here is the ironic part - i bet your real desk top is very neat and organized with all your pens and papers, etc. just where you know how to quickly find them. Mine is a mess. But you let your computer's info get all scattered while i make a regular effort to let it clean itself up. and by regular i mean every month or two. Defragmenting isn't something required every day or week.
as for defragmenting as some sort of cure all, i never said anything like that and am really at fault if my wording implied that. in fact earlier in this thread i said - "The best bet is to buy the combo deal with Diskwarrior as defragging a drive that needs repair is not a very smart thing to do." However i have had problems in the past that normal repairs did not fix and defragmenting did. I speak from experience, not from theory.
and as for power users - simply anyone who uses their computer a lot. especially people who are on the net all day. Browsers are some of the worst offenders of fragmenting with their cacheing. and they are the number one thing that loses speed because of it. any apps that constantly store and replace files are going to be guilty of this. It obviously includes your examples as well as. OSX itself does a tremendous amount of file swapping that seems to fragment the drive much faster than previous mac os's. This has been discussed in other threads. So in summary, a power user is probably anyone who uses their computer for more than an hour or two each day. My GF is not a power user and i haven't had to bother defragging her computer in the 8 mos she has had it and it still zips like the day shoe bought it.
huge = perceptually noticable
i get great speed out of osx when i keep it properly maintained. Would you say that my 400 mhz G3 imac is "*very* fast hardware"? i wouldn't. And yet i seem to consistently get the kinds of speed that people with faster machines complain about not getting. the best 'proof' of this i have had is measuring load and rendoring times of web pages during browser comparisions.
if what you are saying is that after a while you must simply reformat then this is exactly what i am arguing against. reformatting is a 'nix/pc answer to a mac problem. what a waste of time and energy!! If you are saying that defragging must be done regularly to be of any practicality, then i am in complete agreement with you. That is the whole point in having a defrag app. It is because constant work causes fragmentation that reorganizing needs to be done periodically. obviously, how often is a matter of personal differences. Like i have siad elsewhere, i 'tune' my computer by ear. When i can start to hear it and funny noises pop up every now and then, i know it is time to do maintainence.
edX
mac shaman
oh, one other point - system updates are the biggest cause of needing to defragment your drive and keep the system itself organized. Because the system works best when located continuously at the beggining of the drive. Updates are always bigger than the previous versions and hence don't fit in the same space that the old version did. so some files are fragmented and scattered all over your drive. having part of your system towards the end of yur drive is not a good thing.
shrill
Registered
Actually, my desk is a mess too. Side effect of letting my two kids near my computers...
Fast is a relative term. I remember the old days. I still use a my Quadra 610 (25MHz or so) fairly regularly. It's sufficiently fast to run my scanner, but too slow to do any image processing (which I do often). That's what my G3 is for.
400MHz might be slow compared to what is brand new, but it's still pretty darn fast. Computers only get slow when you mix new software with old hardware.
And by "you have to start all over again," I meant that you have to defrag again. The only time I format is if I repartition - on Macs, PCs, or whatever.
I'm not saying that a defrag is totally pointless, just mostly pointless
If you really want that extra µsec, then go for it.
- shrill -
Fast is a relative term. I remember the old days. I still use a my Quadra 610 (25MHz or so) fairly regularly. It's sufficiently fast to run my scanner, but too slow to do any image processing (which I do often). That's what my G3 is for.
400MHz might be slow compared to what is brand new, but it's still pretty darn fast. Computers only get slow when you mix new software with old hardware.
And by "you have to start all over again," I meant that you have to defrag again. The only time I format is if I repartition - on Macs, PCs, or whatever.
I'm not saying that a defrag is totally pointless, just mostly pointless
If you really want that extra µsec, then go for it.
- shrill -
nkuvu
Gone
Without getting too wrapped up in this discussion (and I use the term loosely
), let me relate some of my experiences.I defragment my HD at work every week. I can tell when it needs to be defragmented, because the entire system slows to a crawl. It's even gotten to the point where I can estimate the percent fragmentation with an accuracy of plus or minus 5%. The difference is not µsec levels. It's minutes. Not 3-4 minutes, even.
I run software tests at work, and they are all processor intensive. If I let the HD become very fragmented (15% or more), the tests take 30-40 minutes. The same test, with the same hardware, after defragmentation takes 15-20 minutes.
This is not an exaggeration -- I time the tests for use in reporting. I have to admit that this is on Windows, but as you said, shrill, the hardware should be sufficient that I shouldn't notice any difference. This is not the case at all.
Whether or not everyone using their computers will notice the same thing is not what I am trying to address. But I'm a firm believer in defragmentation, and I think your µsec estimate is off by several orders of magnitude.