Refurbished Macs any recommendations UK

IWT


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If you move anything to an external, and delete the original, just remember to make a different backup -you don't want to lose anything.

Absolutely! Move what you like, but remember that will become your one and only source of that data. So clone or otherwise Backup all of your External Hard Drives which you use for this purpose.

Ian
 
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Note that what is important isn't just how much free hard drive space you have, but rather how much free CONTIGUOUS space you have. The Mac's system uses chunks of contiguous hard drive space to work with. Read the links that I gave you.


It's nice, if and when all data arrives in a nice CONTIGUOUS space and nicely organized, yet Mac users are so often told that they never need to defragment their data. I would say that is only partly true and depends on circumstances.

Some articles that explain this show how to help and understand or maybe fix the problem:
Tech 101: Should You ‘Defrag’ Your Mac’s HDD?
Defragmentation is the process of reading files, then rewriting them so that single files are written on the spinning platter in such a way that the drive head doesn’t need to move back and forth. A file that may have been splattered all over the platter is placed in a contiguous band, so loading apps and files speeds up.

OS X El Capitan

Why Macs usually don’t need defragging
There’s a reason why Macs typically don’t need defragging — the Mac OS X file system is designed differently than Microsoft’s, and it automatically defragments files. Since OS X 10.3 “Panther”, the file system has used something called Hot File Adaptive Clustering (HFC) to perform that process.
https://blog.macsales.com/34027-tech-101-why-you-may-never-need-to-defrag-a-mac-hdd

PS: Don't ever even consider defragging a Mac's hard drive without having at least one current and confirmed working back up.





- Patrick
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chscag

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Patrick:

For years I used the handy iDefrag program to defrag my internal hard drives and it worked well. Although the Mac file system is more resistant to fragmentation than the PC file systems, Mac hard drives do fragment over time especially as drive space begins to diminish.

However, nowadays with PCIe and SSD drives, defragmentation is not recommended. I'm not sure what harm can come about if you attempt to defrag those drives, but even the developer of iDefrag warned against using his program on them. As a matter of fact, iDefrag and iPartition are no longer being developed.
 
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I gave iDefrag a go and ran a full defrag of my HD. It took about 6 hours to complete. It does seem a bit more responsive now and also boots up in around 30 seconds, which is a bit quicker than it did beforehand. I think it was worth the small cost involved.
 
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Some articles that explain this show how to help and understand or maybe fix the problem:

I gave a citation to my own Web site earlier in this very thread, where I explain this problem in great detail and give several citations to other authority.

OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
Item #5 and Note #1
 
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I gave a citation to my own Web site earlier in this very thread, where I explain this problem in great detail and give several citations to other authority.

OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
Item #5 and Note #1


And maybe some should bookmark those article sites Randy and use them as standard fix or maintenance articles.

And a simple clone backup, then erase and restore can often get all data back into a decent organized de-fractured structure and quicker than any defrag software can do a similar thing.






- Patrick
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And a simple clone backup, then erase and restore can often get all data back into a decent organized de-fractured structure and quicker than any defrag software can do a similar thing.

My site covers that too. Cloning and restoring will indeed defragment your hard drive. However, it won't optimize your drive, and the Mac OS likes certain files in certain places. In some cases simply cloning and restoring will actually slow your computer down.
 
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And for anyone reading this and not going to Randy's site to read the article, there is a clear warning there:
WARNING: You should never, ever, defragment a solid state hard drive (SSD) (Most recent Macbook's use SSD's for their speed and light weight. Several other Mac models, including recent desktop models, occasionally have SSD's for their speed.) or a hybrid drive (hybrid drives are sort of a combination of an SSD and a rotating disk hard drive).
Should You Defrag an SSD?
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/blog/2009/04/real-world-fragmentation.php
SSD's themselves need no periodic maintenance. There is built-in software in recent versions of OS X called TRIM that keeps them running at peak performance:
Trim (computing) - Wikipedia
The most common reason for not defragging an SSD is that it generates a lot of read/write actions to the SSD, and the life of SSDs is measured in the number of read/writes. So defragging will shorten the life of the SSD. Also, defragging an SSD will not result in major improvement in speed because defragging is a way to lessen the latency delay on a spinning drive while the heads move and then wait for the proper sector to come under the head to be read/written to. In an SSD, the latency is exactly the same on every block and since nothing is moving, the latency is very, vary small in any event.

So, don't defrag an SSD, ever.
 
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So, don't defrag an SSD, ever.


The extra warning never hurts Jake.





- Patrick
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In some cases simply cloning and restoring will actually slow your computer down.


I guess anything is possible but I have never had that happen and the results have always been positive and speedier.





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I guess anything is possible but I have never had that happen and the results have always been positive and speedier.

I guess all that I can say to that is that anything worth doing (and cloning your hard drive and then re-cloning back takes some time and effort) is worth doing right.
 
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I guess all that I can say to that is that anything worth doing (and cloning your hard drive and then re-cloning back takes some time and effort) is worth doing right.


Man, does that ever sound like my mother's advice she used to give!!! ;D





- Patrick
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Returning to the original post, can I give a hearty recommendation for MacBank. My old iMac 24" finally died on my return from a Christmas break and I needed something urgently which was compatible with all my existing hard drives etc. I ordered a 27" from MacBank late on New Years Day and it was delivered early morning on Jan 3rd. It was packed extremely well (even more substantial than Apple packing), it looks immaculate and it's hard to believe it's a 2011 model. I was able to order without keyboard or mouse so that kept the cost down. Restoring from my TM backup was a doddle. I didn't even have to tell the new iMac anything to do with my network... it just worked. By the end of the day I was up and running as if nothing had happened. I'm a very happy bunny!
 
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it just worked. By the end of the day I was up and running as if nothing had happened. I'm a very happy bunny!


Thanks for posting your experience Sawday, and that's the way things are supposed to work but don't get posted often enough when they do.

And welcome to the world of using a 2011 27" iMac and I certainly enjoy using my mid-2011 model.





- Patrick
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@Sawday
Thank you very much for the recommendation. I will certainly have a look see!
 

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