Need OS X Defragging app suggestions
Joe & Dianne Mahan
OS X (10.2.6 in my case)?
And if so, what utility would you suggest?
TIA
--Joe
James L. Ryan
(in message <burrhead-79C7CF...@newsrelay.netins.net>):
> I guess my first question would be: Is defragging really necessary for
> OS X (10.2.6 in my case)?
My experience is that with OS-X defragmenting a hard disk is pretty much a
waste of time, providing at best a few fleeting moments of improved
performance. Even Adam Engst of TidBits and Macintosh book authoring fame now
agrees.
-- James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft
Sean McBride
James L. Ryan <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> > I guess my first question would be: Is defragging really necessary for
> > OS X (10.2.6 in my case)?
>
> My experience is that with OS-X defragmenting a hard disk is pretty much a
> waste of time, providing at best a few fleeting moments of improved
> performance. Even Adam Engst of TidBits and Macintosh book authoring fame now
> agrees.
It depends what you're doing. I defraged a disk (with PlusOptimizer in
OS 9) and FCP played back MUCH better... no more dropped frames.
Ajanta
> I guess my first question would be: Is defragging really necessary for
> OS X (10.2.6 in my case)? And if so, what utility would you suggest?
having a new computer and mostly unutilized HD, I haven't thought about
this yet, but I too would be interested in the answer. Free or cheap
are most desirable. Can't we do this with one of the Apple cd's that
come with the osx? What about "disk aid"?
Charles Martin
Joe & Dianne Mahan <burr...@wccta.net> wrote:
On a very occasional basis*, defragging can be useful but isn't
mandatory.
As for what to use, there is only one real choice -- PlusOptimiser. Pity
it's OS 9-based at the moment (it's safe to use on OS X volumes if you
can boot into 9, otherwise you'll have to wait till Alsoft brings out
the native one for OS X later this year).
--
Cheers,
_Chas_
http://www.apple.com/switch
non-spammers can write to chasm at mac (dot com)
clvrmnky
Fragmentation of blocks is something that most modern filesystems take
into consideration. Many filesystems already do a fair amount of
defragmenting, where "a fair amount" means "try to do utilize contiguous
blocks as much as possible, and plan to have large contiguous blocks
available when possible". Of course, a filesystem has other things to
do, and has to trade-off the desire for alocating contiguous blocks
(when it makes sense to do so) with other things.
I don't know if HFS+ does this, however.
The net result is that, on these filesystems, there is little or no
application-level process needed to maintain reasonable amounts of
contiguous free space and/or contiguous use of blocks.
From my (brief) survey of HFS+, it would seem that the maintainance of
free space by the user is unnecessary. In fact, it looks like HFS
volumes deliberately interleave file allocation blocks to reduce head
travel on todays larger capacity drives. It also seems to maintain free
space so it makes more efficient use of this space.
My feelings are that, until proven otherwise, defragging utils for HFS+
volumes are unnecessary, and any reports of improved performance
(however one measures this) are either minimal or apocryphal.
Reasonable arguments to the contrary welcome.
-- jdv
Sean McBride
clvrmnky <clvr...@coldmail.com.invalid> wrote:
> My feelings are that, until proven otherwise, defragging utils for HFS+
> volumes are unnecessary, and any reports of improved performance
> (however one measures this) are either minimal or apocryphal.
I work in video editing, and I assure you that defraging an HFS+ disk
can improve performance. I had 4 G4s that were all dropping frames in
FCP reproducibly x times per hour. After defragging (and no other
changes) less frames were dropped on all machines. I used Plusoptizer.
Of course this is a disk intensive operation, and I doubt defraging will
make, say, the finder any faster.