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- Dec 28, 2009
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- Your Mac's Specs
- Macbook Unibody 2.26 Dual, 2GB RAM, 250 GB HDD
Must one defragment the Mac hard disk?
Must one defragment the Mac hard disk?
Ok I got Mac Janitor, but when you run tasks, it does not specify what it is doing, or give you options. Basically, is it defragmenting?
No, it does not defrag. Under ordinary circumstances there is no need to defrag OS X. OS X takes care of this function all on it's own, behind the scenes, without any input from you or the running of 3rd party apps.
And the same is true of most maintenance tasks. Feeling the need to perform constant maintenance is one of those bad habits many of us bring with us from the Windows world. It simply isn't necessary on OS X.
I suppose I fit into that cohort. And I've had my MB for a while now. To be honest, I can't say I fully believe you, despite being much more experienced with Mac's. I am regularly looking for little ways I can fasten the screws, ever so gently, for a long smooth ride with personalized yet formal tuning.
Must one defragment the Mac hard disk?
No, but I do it once in awhile anyway. TechTool Pro runs a "scan" and shows a graph of how fragmented your disk(s) is(are). Usually, it doesn't show much, so I skip the actual optimization. But, after several months, there are fragments that appear to be significant, so I go ahead and clean them up.
That's another natural compulsion. The idea that the logical structures inside their computer get "dirty" and need to be "cleaned." What looks "neat and clean" to human eyes is not necessarily what's fastest for a computer.
After using a Mac since the 1990s I finally broke myself of the defragmentation habit.
And see all these green dots under these guys posts? Just believe them as they will not lead you astray.
To be fair, OS9 and older were just as bad as Windows when it came to fragmenting and did need it done every so often. The early versions of OSX could live without it for the most part.