Defragmenting?

[iKwak]

On a Mac (iBook), how do we

1) defragment the main harddrive?
2) make a backup of the entire harddrive or certain folders? Would like to burn the backup.
3) optimize?
4) Any other procedure you guys take on a monthly basis?

[Nermal]

1. Usually don't need to on a Mac.
2. Not sure, I'm terrible at backups :(
3 and 4. Periodically repair permissions in Disk Utility. Also, periodically run "sudo periodic daily weekly monthly" in the Terminal.

[wordmunger]

If you have .mac, you can use Backup (http://www.mac.com/1/iTour/tour_backup.html). Otherwise, try Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html), which is free!

[robbieduncan]

HFS+ (at least in 10.3, maybe in earlier versions of Mac OS) is kind of self-defragmenting. Whenever a file is opened a set of conditions are checked which are something like is the file fragmented and less than 20Mb and not a heap file. If these conditions are true then the file is moved to a new location on the disk that will result in it being defragmented. So you don't need to defrag.