What defragger do you use?

[rezba]

Ed, I vote fo PlusOptimizer, may be because DiskWarrior saved my disks so much time that I get the habit to use Alsoft degrag software. And I don't like Norton, as I don't like MS. They tend to get a monopoly.

But I don't really defrag often since I'm under OS 10. Once in 10 months on 1 machine up to 6 running under X.

I used to backup my system partition with CarbonCopyCloner. It gives me a clean new system partition, all defragged.

Others partitions don't really need it. The video one is initialized quite often, others run really well without any other maintenance than classical unix one.

 

[fryke]

How long does a defragmentation of your drive take? How long does a reinstallation of OS X take? I tend to use reinstallation of OS X (with a backed up home-directory, of course) instead of any defrag-apps. Thus I voted for 'I'm Herve' and 'none'.

 

[xoot]

Any 'i'm xoot' options?

I wish that there was a command-line defragger. I can only use the command-line ones because I don't think that defraggers should have a GUI. They should be done in single-user mode, black screen, ahhhhh...

 

[rezba]

I don' t really know how much time for the both operations. What's sure is that, when I plan to do this, I plan to spend half an hour at the task. But I really don't do it very often.

I wish I could defrag by the terminal, too. I won't be able do defrag my OS partition, 'cause it's hosting the terminal itself. But I would find nice to be able to defrag the others patitions by this simple way.

any unix guru to get involved in ?

 

[edX]

fryke - defragmentation of my 10 gb internal drive normally takes about 2-3 hrs. my 40 gb fw takes about 6-7 hrs. my 80 gb fw takes 10-12 hrs. however the only one that really needs it regularly (like about once a month or less) is the internal. the other 2 seem to need it about every 3-4 months or less. But defragging is something it takes about 5 mins. to boot to os 9 and set up and then i go to sleep. it runs, i wake up and click ok and it was all painless. reinstalling takes at least a couple of hours of updating and constant monitering with lots of reboots. talk about a pain!! if anybody thinks their time is worth so little they can just reformat and reinstall every so often, be my guest. the mind numbingness of the tedious 'watch and wait' is alone worth paying for a defragger to avoid.

plus, just out of curiosity, where would i transfer the nearly 70 gb worth of files on the 80 gb drive to while i reformatted it. oh, and talk about time - try tranferring just the 10 gb drive to another - it takes a lot longer than i care to give up. or i could spend hours backing everything up on cds just for the reformat.

for me, repairing and defragging are just logical options.

oh, and i'm still wondering who voted they use a UFS tool. I can only imagine it is someone who thinks fsck cures everything

 

[chemistry_geek]

Ed,

How reliable is your 80GB FireWire HD? Isaw one listed somewhere for les than $200 and am thinking about getting one.

Niles

 

[uoba]

Nuthin' beats a good ol' system reinstall (clean mind you), to cleanse the trusty G4. Especially when, OSX can install itself cleanly in a matter of an hour or so.

 

[Fahrvergnuugen]

Originally posted by uoba
Nuthin' beats a good ol' system reinstall (clean mind you), to cleanse the trusty G4. Especially when, OSX can install itself cleanly in a matter of an hour or so.

an hour!?

yikes!

alright, maybe it does take an hour, I really don't remember. i thought it took like 15 minutes last time i installed 10.1. hmmm....

 

[dseltzer]

Nuthin' beats a good ol' system reinstall (clean mind you), to cleanse the trusty G4. Especially when, OSX can install itself cleanly in a matter of an hour or so.

Yep, a clean install is usually cleansing, but it's also a pain in the patoot after one has spent way more than an hour getting everything set up. Sure wish there were an easier way!

BTW, I think the install time varies by machine and hard drive, but about a half hour seems more in the right range.

 

[edX]

i think i said this before but i forget (getting older you know )

it's all relative time. for me the 10 or less mins of setting up the defragging and then letting it run while i sleep is less time out of my usable time than sitting down and babysitting a reinstall with all the upgrades for an hour or more. not to mention having to reinstall apps. plus how are you going to back up 40+ gb of stuff on an external without space on another drive? the cost of a good utility is a lot less than the cost of another drive.

i certainly can see why some people would be in the position to use reformatting as an optimization tool, but i also know that for me it isn't worth it.

thanks to everyone who has replied to this thread.

 

[lethe]

i thought i would point out that drive 10 now has optimization. presumable it uses the same code from techtool pro. i think i will buy it now....

Ed, i wonder what your opinion is about what is the best disk repair utility. i have hosed a big firewire backup drive, and i can t get techtool to recognize the drive. in fact OS9 doesn t want to see it anywhere. so i m gonna get an OSX tool, and i won t get Norton, since this board has talked me out of it.

 

[edX]

while i haven't tried drive 10 since optimization has been added, my choice for saving a firewire drive would be diskwarrior! disk warrior runs in os 9 and will recognise the drive if you hot plug it in after diskwarrior is already running.

www.alsoft.com

be sure you have repaired your main system disk. it can sometimes be the real fault in recognition problems.