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Desktop 'Show item info' incorrect???
- Thread starter bsheridan
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Cromulent
macrumors 604
ElectricSheep
macrumors 6502
I'm just going to throw this out there, but I notice that your Leopard HD is running at 99.6% filled. This is very unwise, and can lead to filesystem corruption if the volume is also sufficiently fragmented.
Basically when I got my macbook I formatted it into 2 partitions, 1 for leopard, 1 for tiger. I have never actually used the leopard OS, Tiger has everything I need atm.(I got Leopard for £7 so didn't lose any money there). The HD is full because thats my itunes library on it, but now I'm running out of space.
I was inclined to stay away from leopard because my first install messed up my mac (my fault with over excitement and lack of precautions) and also Ievery time I tried to repair permissions I kept getting problems with printer drivers (though this has been fixed now) I'm running 10.5.1 on Leopard HD and 10.4.11 on Tiger HD. So if I were to use leopard I cant upgrade due to space limitations, and I don't know any other way to fix this other than erasing and reformatting.(don't have ext HD)
What do you mean when you say sufficiently fragmented? Is that many partitions?
I'll give that PRAM idea a go too.
thanks guys.
ElectricSheep
macrumors 6502
Fragmentation doesn't refer to partitioning. Fragmentation occurs when there isn't enough contiguous space on a disk to store a file in one single block; the file has to be split into two or more fragments. How heavily fragmented the files on the disk are depend on a number of factors: defragmenting tools, how long the disk has been in active use, how often files are added and removed to the disk, and how much free space is available. After a while, a disk can look a lot like a block of swiss cheese: a lot of little 'free-space' holes scattered all over the place.
Problems arise because HFS+ has to keep track of every file's fragments. It does this using records called extents. There is enough room in the main catalog file (which keeps track of every file on a volume) to record eight extents. Any more than that have to be recorded in an Extents Overflow File. If a disk is heavily fragmented, then the Extents Overflow file is going to be pretty big.
The danger occurs when there isn't enough free contiguous space to expand the Extents Overflow File. If this should happen, the filesystem can corrupt itself.
Now, the current generation of HFS+ does features adaptive hot-file clustering, which defragments files matching a certain criteria on the fly. It doesn't cover all files, though, and there will be some fragmentation. The danger of running out of free space to expand the Extents Overflow File is reduced, but not entirely gone. The closer you get to 100% capacity, the more likely you are to corrupt the filesystem in this manner.
Problems arise because HFS+ has to keep track of every file's fragments. It does this using records called extents. There is enough room in the main catalog file (which keeps track of every file on a volume) to record eight extents. Any more than that have to be recorded in an Extents Overflow File. If a disk is heavily fragmented, then the Extents Overflow file is going to be pretty big.
The danger occurs when there isn't enough free contiguous space to expand the Extents Overflow File. If this should happen, the filesystem can corrupt itself.
Now, the current generation of HFS+ does features adaptive hot-file clustering, which defragments files matching a certain criteria on the fly. It doesn't cover all files, though, and there will be some fragmentation. The danger of running out of free space to expand the Extents Overflow File is reduced, but not entirely gone. The closer you get to 100% capacity, the more likely you are to corrupt the filesystem in this manner.
It's not as dire as you make out. Extent preallocation will typically allow for a very high amount of fragmentation as is done on new volumes and when formatting/partitioning since 10.2