Maintenance

Couldn't find a place for this question but figured as I've just switched to Macs and I don't yet know what I'm doing fully here would be a good start.

I've read on here that you should do weekly maintenance on your Mac to keep it in tip top condition.

What should I do?

I used fragment my hard drive on my PC but that was it. Do you have to do that on a Mac, and what else is there too?

Many thanks.

Oh...in case it helps I have a 20.5" iMac with no upgrades.

I'm curious as to where you got that information from. For one thing it's not true, and the closes thing to maintenance that I've ever done on my machines was repair disk permissions, and that was after 6 months of keeping the machine on 24/7.

From the Sticky Thread: Mac-Forums Switchers FAQ and Information

Q: I used to do "clean up" on my Windows machine all the time to keep performance up. Do I have to do that on a Mac?

A: Some may say no, but if you do notice performace degredation you can try cleaning your caches with a utility like OnyX or MainMenu.

Click to expand...

No defragging required on your Mac except in some cases where users have almost full hard drives with a habit of installing and removing very large files.

Don't recommend weekly anything. Just found it's not really necessary. And I ran my defragger, Spybot, AdAware, and A-V full scans every Saturday morning on my Win boxes, along with looking for orphaned registry entries, etc.

Now I keep Onyx around. Once every 2-4 weeks I'll fire it up and do some house cleaning. Starting out with it, just go to the Maintenance tab and check off everything in the Maintenance and Cleaning sections. That's it. When you learn more about your Mac and your way around Onyx, then you can take a look at some of it's other features.

Of course, I have this nasty habit of installing and uninstalling a couple hundred apps a year. You know what that would do to a Win box. Had to reinstall the OS there every 6 months even with XP. I've gone as long as 2 years now with OS X without a reinstall and without any noticeable slow down. (After that 2 year stretch without a single defrag, my drive was less than 0.5% fragmented. Try doing that on a win machine.)

Great. Thanks everyone for the info!

I can't find where I read it CrimsonRequiem but there was a post on here somewhere saying your Mac will last longer, as long as you do weekly maintenance. I think I'll go with the majority vote- you lot!!!!

Thanks again

The myth about having to do Daily, Weekly and Monthly maintenance scripts just won't die!

It never was really necessary and, since Tiger, it has absolutely not been necessary. The operating system takes care of it, as it should.

Relax, get out of your Win habits, I know it's hard, just enjoy using your Mac!

Rick and I were thinking alike but he types faster than I do. Reading his post reminded me that Macworld online addressed the issue of Mac maintenance and identified five myths including the need to manually run those scripts. Five Mac maintenance myths | Mac | Editors' Notes | Macworld

Thanks. It's gonna be hard, but I'm sure if I try really hard I can break those Win habits eventually!!!

Hey......actually I can feel them disappearing as I type!!

Yep....I think I'm cured.

Seriously, thanks guys, that's great....and thanks for the link too!!

RickPrather said:

The myth about having to do Daily, Weekly and Monthly maintenance scripts just won't die!

It never was really necessary and, since Tiger, it has absolutely not been necessary. The operating system takes care of it, as it should.

Click to expand...

Can't be a myth if Apple is the one who placed those scripts in the system in the first place. They do run at certain times very early in the morning. Apple must have placed them there for some reason.

Here is some info on them and how to execute them if needed.

xstep said:

Can't be a myth if Apple is the one who placed those scripts in the system in the first place.

Click to expand...

I didn't say they don't run it's just that they haven't needed to be run manually since Tiger.

Even if you sleep your Mac they will be run at the next best opportunity.

You can check that by looking at your logs or running MountainMike's nice little widget "Maintiget"

I have not manually run the scripts for over a year and they all have been run regularly.

Rick, thanks for the clearer explanation.