i, on the other hand, always go with defragging. the amount of time and effort involved in copying files, or reinstalling them, not to mention the time involved in reformatting the disk, reinstalling the system, reupdating the system, etc. is not worth it to me. it is a job you must babysit from beggining to end. on the other hand, you can put 9.2.2 onto that maxtor and boot from it. then run a good defragmenting program like plus optimizer from
www.alsoft.com or techtool pro from
www.micromat.com . i understand the newest version of drive 10 has defragmenting as well but i haven't tried it yet so i don't know how well it works. It's a good idea to run a diagnostic program and repair anything that is wrong before hand. oh, and you can run your defragging app while you sleep and click ok when you wake up in the morning. no real time lost to you.
for more details of comparison between optimizing apps, here is a repost of my previous report of defraggers:
below is my run down on the three i have used. i prefer and recommend the plus optimizer/diskwarrior combo but i would add that both are very simple interfaces. techtool pro is by far the most imformative and comprehensive tool, but i had at least one instance lately where only diskwarrior saved my disk.
1. techtool pro - also a good diagnostic and repair tool, includes a virus checker. is perhaps the best value of all. defrag is done seperately from optimization and will at times only defrag if certain conditions are not met. claims to be completely safe in preventing loss of data in case of interruption. drawback - slowest of the three.
2. optimizer plus - can be bought alone or with diskwarrior - i recommend getting the combo. diskwarrior saved my drive when all others failed recently. op is also interuption safe and does partials in case of obstacles. it is slightly faster than TTP. there is an osx version in the works but not out yet. it will be a paid upgrade as far as i know.
3. speed disk - part of Norton utilities which also diagnoses and repairs. fastest of them all. can lose all your data if interrupted. defrags and optimizes in one sweep but will not circumvent obstacles. least recommended but the one most people have because they advertise and promote the most .
the latest version of all these work with osx but must be run from another disk using 9.
