Disk maintenance question

[Glenna Rose]

In the "dark days," I defragged my hard drive on a regular basis as I
was doing a lot more copying on and off of files doing business for
the public.

Periodically, I ask this, likely more for my peace of mind than
anything else. Do I need to do anything more to organize the space on
my hard drive than the operating system (OS 10.5.8 at this point) does
on its own? This machine is a MacBook and I usually leave it turned
on overnight but do put it in sleep mode.

I just cleaned off nearly 30 gb of podcasts so there is a huge amount
of "empty spots" right now. Does the operating system do everything
automatically or do I need to do something?

Glenna

[Steven W Riggins]

If the files are 40mb or smaller, it defrags them, if not, it lets them go where they go.

Over time, it works out. YOu will notice a *slight* gain if you defrag, but then you're right back to where you were before in a month.

Now if you want *speed* these new SSD drives (not the slow ones that Apple sells, the fast Intel and Samsung) are the way to go with newer hardware, but pricey at $600 for 256gb

To give you an indication of how fast these drives are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ycu7hxGyqE

My next Mac will have a super fast SSD in it. Once they break the 320 or 512gb barrier.