imac

Hello,
I have had an iMac for nearly a year now after many years as a PC user my question is do I have to 'spring clean' my mac as I did my PC (defrag, get rid of rubbish that used to collect and slow everything down) and if I do how do I do this? Needless to say my mac is behaving perfectly at the moment but I want to keep up to things.
Regards
Colin J

You can try a program called "Onyx" (free):

Titanium's Software • Download

Just run all the preselected maintenance tasks (one button).

- Nick

Ceej said:

Hello,
I have had an iMac for nearly a year now after many years as a PC user my question is do I have to 'spring clean' my mac as I did my PC (defrag, get rid of rubbish that used to collect and slow everything down) and if I do how do I do this? Needless to say my mac is behaving perfectly at the moment but I want to keep up to things.
Regards
Colin J

Click to expand...

Hi Colin,

You could use the Mac's own Disk Utility for this in the Applications folder, use it once very 3 months or so, or if some apps aren't quite performing right.

Choose your hard drive, usually called Macintosh HD and click "Repair Disk Permissions" and let it run. If you've never run it before it may take some time and don't worry about the detail it brings up because it's nearly always standard, mundane stuff that it fixes.

With regards to caches and that kind of thing then you canc lean these out using the Safari preferences.

A free app called Onyx is highly recommended as a maintenance tool by members here. Once it's set up and done a S.M.A.R.T. test on the disk use the 'Automated' tab.

We don't recommend that you buy or download any so called 'Cleaner' apps..these can prove to be a nightmare for your system.

HTH

whoops pigoo3 beat me to it

You don't REALLY have to do this, but we are all compulsive types who like to keep things super-tidy.

For the most part, the Mac takes care of its own maintenance if you make backups regularly and leave an ample amount of HD space free. I've known LOADS of clients (mostly light users) who go up to TEN YEARS without doing any maintenance whatsoever and they have no issues -- of course they don't tax the machine much either

Hello, Thank you for all the very useful (and quick replies) I have downloaded onyx so thanks for that..... although chas_m is correct in his assessment that I am a light user and so my system will probably be fine for years, but heigh ** I guess I'm a belt and braces man at heart. Thanks again for the help I really do appreciate it this forum is brilliant.
Colin J

I have a schedule I follow once a month on my MacMini and MacBook Pro. I would extend it longer, but I do work with large files that I move on and off the drives. Especially FinalCut Pro projects.

I Verify Disk and Permissions and fix as needed in Disk Utility
I run Onyx to clean up temp files.

that is it. It is simple and has worked very well for me. I have had, after removing FCP projects when the film is done, to hit the OPT-R when rebooting to fix the disk, but it works flawlessly.