Disk Defragmentation

y0itsj0hn · Jan 4, 2009

Anyone have experience with SpeedTools Utilities or other software? My iMac has slowed down signifcantlllyyyy and want to give defraging it a shot, hopefully it helps

soulreaver99 · Jan 4, 2009

I use iDefrag and it works great. Haven't really tried anything else. You can also run Onyx and run the tools to optimize your system. That should help out slightly or moderately as well.

McBie · Jan 4, 2009

+1 for iDefrag

Coriolis Systems :: Products :: iDefrag

Great tool.

Cheers
McBie

MacinMax · Jan 4, 2009

I use iDefrag too.

bobtomay · Jan 4, 2009

Onyx or MainMenu would be the first step toward optimization on OS X.

Defragging is not as important on OS X as it was in Windows although it may help in some situations. It's primarily more useful if your drive is getting close to being full or you are one that moves around large files, or install and remove a lot of large files from the system. You can download the demo and run it, It will give you a report. I have checked my system now for 2 years and have yet to see a file fragmentation more than 0.2% and still have not seen even 0.1% fragmentation of the space being used. Everyone should note, that the speed of accessing your drive will slow down some as it fills up. This is only normal, as it takes the heads longer to move to the location of files you may be looking for.

cwa107 · Jan 4, 2009

Agreed with Bob. Disk Defragmentation is not necessary, unless you routinely keep your drive at or near capacity:

About disk optimization with Mac OS X

hookbill · Jan 4, 2009

Newbie

I actually came to talk about something else when this thread caught my eye. My understanding was that defrag was not necessary with Mac.

I tried OnyX and to be honest it was a bit too much. If it allowed you to keep cookies, then I can see using it but it cleans everything.

I like the system tools. They seem to work just fine, and the guys at Mac Customer Service advised me to run about once every three months.

Thanks for the info on when you would need to do it. With 1 TB hard drive, I doubt I'll ever get that full.

cwa107 · Jan 4, 2009

hookbill said:
I actually came to talk about something else when this thread caught my eye. My understanding was that defrag was not necessary with Mac.

It's really not.

I tried OnyX and to be honest it was a bit too much. If it allowed you to keep cookies, then I can see using it but it cleans everything.

You can run selected tasks on Onyx, it doesn't force you to do every task available.

I like the system tools. They seem to work just fine, and the guys at Mac Customer Service advised me to run about once every three months.

Are you referring to the cron jobs? If so, there's a bit more to Mac maintenance than just those.

Thanks for the info on when you would need to do it. With 1 TB hard drive, I doubt I'll ever get that full.

Saying that you doubt you'll ever run out of hard disk space is like saying that you have too much money

bobtomay · Jan 4, 2009

Onyx will allow you to keep cookies.

Go to the Cleaning tab - then to Internet - I keep Bookmark icons, Form Values and Cookies unchecked and typically only clean them out about once every couple of months.

hookbill · Jan 4, 2009

bobtomay said:
Onyx will allow you to keep cookies.

Go to the Cleaning tab - then to Internet - I keep Bookmark icons, Form Values and Cookies unchecked and typically only clean them out about once every couple of months.

OK, thanks. I'll take a look at it.

hookbill · Jan 4, 2009

I took a look. To be more specific was I was talking about was the ability to select certain cookies not to be deleted. Windows has programs like that.

By default those 3 boxes are unchecked but I could have sworn it deleted everything when I ran it.

Ankurnmhs · Jan 6, 2009

Does iDefrag make Time Machine Back up again?

I recently moved a lot of stuff from my laptop to an external drive. I have been using Time Machine since the first day of leopard.

My question is that if I use iDefrag on my laptop drive, will that make Time Machine backup every thing from the laptop again?

I have been very cautious about the Time Machine backups, as i like to keep it being able to not fill up quickly, and therefore I can go further back in time, (Provided the flux capacitor is working.) If a couple of you could verify that in fact it does not make Time Machine backup again, that would be great! Thank you.

cwa107 · Jan 6, 2009

Ankurnmhs said:
I recently moved a lot of stuff from my laptop to an external drive. I have been using Time Machine since the first day of leopard.

My question is that if I use iDefrag on my laptop drive, will that make Time Machine backup every thing from the laptop again?

I have been very cautious about the Time Machine backups, as i like to keep it being able to not fill up quickly, and therefore I can go further back in time, (Provided the flux capacitor is working.) If a couple of you could verify that in fact it does not make Time Machine backup again, that would be great! Thank you.

There's no need for iDefrag if you aren't running your disk within 80% of capacity. How full is it?

About disk optimization with Mac OS X

psychodork · Jan 6, 2009

iDefrag has helped me out a lot =). It actually helped me fix some disk issues.

cwa107 · Jan 6, 2009

psychodork said:
iDefrag has helped me out a lot =). It actually helped me fix some disk issues.

I think you might misunderstand what iDefrag does - it will not correct disk problems. It merely puts blocks of data in sequential order so that the heads don't have to travel back and forth across the disk. Although this is important in the Windows world, OS X takes care of it automatically providing that you have adequate capacity on your disk.

rawmetal · May 24, 2009

is there any free defrag software for mac?

thx