01-27-2009, 09:42 AM

As you know, us old Windows users were used to running defrag, chkdsk, disk cleanup, etc....

Now with Macs, the machines are programed to run at various intervals to "optimize" the machines. This includes defragging and general cleaning as needed to remove clutter that slows the machines down.

The way to do this manually is from the Terminal and type in:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

and let it run until it states the process is complete. Depending on how long it has been since your machine ran one of these processes, it may take 10 minutes, but it is necessary to prevent the inevitable "my machine is slow, what do I do" frustration and questions.

My machine sleeps all night, so rarely does this process get a chance to run automatically because the machines come preset for this process to run around 3am to 5am each night. If your machine is asleep, it won't run.

I ran the script above last night and when it was done, the machine was definitely zippier, even though it was already pretty fast.

Yes, there are other programs you can use like Onyx, but before using them, at least run the above and also use Disk Utility to repair things.

Another way to tell whether this helps is take a snap shot of your machine with nothing additional running on it (i.e. right after it boots all the way up) form the System Monitor application. After running the above script in Terminal, check the System Monitor again and see if additional RAM (green on the circle) is available, hard drive space by looking at the hard drive info for your internal drive, etc.... You should see some improvement.

Lastly, ensure you check startup programs because these are taking up RAM when loaded and if you don't need them, then you can disable their startup upon booting up.

Just some thoughts...

01-27-2009, 02:12 PM

Can anyone validate this?