questions about sleep, and system scripts

from reading this site ive read there is no need to defrag because the mac will do this in the night, is this true?

and will i need to set the mac up to do this, or will it do it automaticly?

if it does it automaticly, it will obiousley run the scripts if my comp is on, but what about if my comp is in sleep mode(which i leave it over night) with a password on?????

thanks

It needs to be up and running. You can use a program like Coctail to run them whenever you need if you don't leave your Mac on 24/7.

Get it here.

dstyrk said:

It needs to be up and running. You can use a program like Coctail to run them whenever you need if you don't leave your Mac on 24/7.

Get it here.

Click to expand...

but isnt sleep classed as running 24/7

mr..nemo said:

but isnt sleep classed as running 24/7

Click to expand...

No. While your HD may technically be "on", in very general terms, the point of putting your computer to sleep is to keep your HD from running and using power.

is it better to leave the mac on or off?

Mac OS X, like most UNIX style OSes, is more or less designed to be up and running at all times. There really is no need to turn the computer off or put it to sleep. Unless it is a laptop or you don't plan on using the computer for a long period of time, it is best to just leave it on and running.

that sounds like a good soloution to me, but its anoying sleeping threw the noise. as the comp is next to my bed

Defrag does not happen at night. It happens all the time:

"Everytime an application opens a file for reading, HFS+ checks if the file is fragmented and is less than 20MB in size. If so, it copies the file's contents to a continuous region on the disk and frees up the previously allocated blocks."

Just make sure you have lots (20%) of free space.

For the periodic tasks on my iBook I use Anacron. Works Great.