FAT32 ext harddrive. does OS X defrag FAT?

eric


Retired Staff
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Messages
8,704
Reaction score
447
Points
83
Location
twin cities, mn, usa
just a thought.

i've got a couple external hard drives i use for mp3s and backups and such. one will often be connected to a notebook running xp pro, so i can use the defrag on that machine to take care of the one ext drive.

the other is mainly for backups on my macbook, but occasionally comes to work or is connected to my wife's HP.

i also am not planning on running parallels or bootcamp on the macbook, ever. and definitely not to simply have access to windows' disk management/defrag util.

so my questions:
does OS X work it's magic on non-HFS partitions?
if not, is there a universal utility that does defrag FAT?
 
OP
eric

eric


Retired Staff
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Messages
8,704
Reaction score
447
Points
83
Location
twin cities, mn, usa
good find RTP. interesting stuff.

now to search for a utility that i can use on OS X!
 
OP
eric

eric


Retired Staff
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Messages
8,704
Reaction score
447
Points
83
Location
twin cities, mn, usa
so no one has any ideas for an app or process?

i googled and checked macosxhints and searched versiontracker and came up with nada.

i guess i could just try to always leave one of the partitions empty and use the sledgehammer method, swap data from one partition to another and reformat the empty partition - if that would even really be necessary, the move may do it by itself.
 
Joined
Dec 23, 2006
Messages
342
Reaction score
5
Points
18
Location
Lehigh Valley, Pa
Your Mac's Specs
2.53 GHz MBP, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD
If you want to pay for it then Techtool Pro might do what you want.
 
Joined
Apr 29, 2006
Messages
4,576
Reaction score
378
Points
83
Location
St. Somewhere
Your Mac's Specs
Mac Studio, M1 Max, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD
Yup, I was just going to suggest that - TechTool Pro will do this. Alternately of course, you could use HFS+ on the drive and load MacDrive or something like that on your PC, so that it could read it. This strikes me as a superior technical solution, although faced with the prospect of buying one of two commercial products (TechTool vs. MacDrive) TechTool Pro is the more generally useful of them...
 
OP
eric

eric


Retired Staff
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Messages
8,704
Reaction score
447
Points
83
Location
twin cities, mn, usa
well, thanks guys, i'll have to check into that.

i'm not sure my work would like me loading something like macdrive, but techtool sounds like it might work. :)

appreciate it!
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top