Defragment internal drive on MacBook

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Well, he may have 20+ years of experience with Macs but I have to disagree with him about using a defrag utility once a month

I concur. Not that I'm any kind of expert, but I do check the fragmentation on my 2007 Mac Mini once a month with TechTool Pro. The degree of fragmentation after one month is very minimal. I actually run the TTP Optimizer about every three months, when it does show appreciable fragmentation. I know it's still not necessary, but it keeps the computer busy while I'm sleeping. ;)
 
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In your case - you should never defragment a SSD. You are shortening it's lifespan by doing so.

Because you are using a SSD, you can quit reading about defragging OS X and start doing some research on defragging a SSD drive - it's a no no.


(Will add that I do defrag my personal OS X HDD machine - that author is still wrong in suggesting the general OS X user should pick up the practice of defragging their drive once a month - what a waste of time - that one item right there indicates that author is a Windows user that has not spent much time at all actually using Macs, nor in the Mac communities. Defragging a HDD "might" be of benefit because it reads sequentially - not random as a SSD.)

Thanks all for the further comments - I'm just trying to learn a new OS to me & new hardware (although I don't defrag my iPad 2 - ;)) - SO, no worry about the SSD on the MBP; now, I'll be purchasing a 'fusion' drive which is a combo 128 SSD + 1 TB HD - I suspect that since that drive exchanges files between the solid state and moving components that what is managing that exchange may also minimize fragmentation - don't know? Need to do some more reading on that drive? Dave
 

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I was just about to ask abut the Fusion drive since I may be buying a new Mac soon. My suspicion is that there would be no real benefit to attempting to defragment that kind of drive.
 
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I was just about to ask abut the Fusion drive since I may be buying a new Mac soon. My suspicion is that there would be no real benefit to attempting to defray that kind of drive.

Well, from my understanding, responses already given here, and further searching, a SSD drive (whether as a computer drive, USB flash drive, SD card, etc.) does not need to be defragmented ever! In fact, defragmenting such a drive may reduce its lifespan although whether this will be w/i the lifespan of its use would be debatable?

SO, no defrag on a MBP w/ a SSD drive - question answered!

NOW, how about the question on a Fusion drive which I'll also be buying in the next few weeks - my initial 'gut' feeling is to forget about defragmentation, but maybe an Apple hardware engineer would need to respond to this one? Not sure - but would appreciate any comments - thanks. Dave
 

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You probably will need an engineer related to the Fusion drive. I don't think I'd try it. The SSD and HDD is seen as a single volume - I would assume it is seen as a single volume by the defrag tools - once again the answer would be no - you never defrag SSD storage.

That's literally the reason for the fusion drive - it does it's own moving of the most often used files to the SSD for faster boot times, application launch times, etc.
The whole reason for doing a defrag is made pointless.
 

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I was just about to ask abut the Fusion drive since I may be buying a new Mac soon.

I'm not convinced yet about the fusion drive. I've read Pro and Con with the Con leaning ahead. Granted it's a new (for Apple) technology, but to my way of thinking, the jury is still out on it. Maybe when the iMac is refreshed again (2014?) I'll take another look at them. But for now, if I were to order a new iMac 27" I believe I would go with the standard HDD and opt for the better graphics card.
 
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You probably will need an engineer related to the Fusion drive. I don't think I'd try it. The SSD and HDD is seen as a single volume - I would assume it is seen as a single volume by the defrag tools - once again the answer would be no - you never defrag SSD storage.

That's literally the reason for the fusion drive - it does it's own moving of the most often used files to the SSD for faster boot times, application launch times, etc.
The whole reason for doing a defrag is made pointless.

So, from my rough understanding of fusion (I really haven't dug too much into it)... The technology basically rotates hot extents onto the ssd portion of the volume, and cold extents onto the rotational portion.

Which means that Bob and I have the same understanding of the fundamental architecture of the drive. All of which means that...

In this type of scenario, you would see very little (if any) benefit from defragmenting the drive. You'd also see more unnecessary write operations on the ssd. In general, I really don't bother with defragmentation on a HFS+ volume anyway. Unless you're heavily utilizing the drive there really isn't any real gain.
 

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