way to defrag mac disk to make room for a windows partition

listening...had this same issue about a month ago before my macbook pro was stolen.

There are several utilities on the market to perform this task. DiskWarrior and Tech Tool Pro are the top two.

jerryrock said:

There are several utilities on the market to perform this task. DiskWarrior and Tech Tool Pro are the top two.

Click to expand...

DiskWarrior doesn't defrag the entire disk, only the something-or-other-that-I-forgot-the-name-of. Basically, it defrags the index of files on the disk.

You can buy a boot CD from Coriolis Systems, if I'm not mistaken. That'll cost you, though. Your best bet really is to get an external hard drive. You have Leopard, which means you have Time Machine, so there's no real excuse to NOT start backing up your data anyway. Remember, it's never too early or too late to start backing up.

What you should do is either use Time Machine to create a backup, then reformat and restore, or use SuperDuper! to create a bootable backup that you can use to run iDefrag or TTP or Disk Genius on your main drive. (Backing up and restoring always places all the files in one chunk at the beginning of the disk, btw.)

NOTE: I'm actually not familiar with TTP; I just assumed it does defragmentation. I don't know much about Disk Genius' defragmentation either; I just know it can.

m1ss1ontomars said:

DiskWarrior doesn't defrag the entire disk, only the something-or-other-that-I-forgot-the-name-of.
NOTE: I'm actually not familiar with TTP; I just assumed it does defragmentation. I don't know much about Disk Genius' defragmentation either; I just know it can.

Click to expand...

You are very critical of programs you have no knowledge of!
"something-or-other-that-I-forgot-the-name-of"
"I'm actually not familiar with TTP"
"I don't know much...."

I think your last statement sums it up pretty well. DiskWarrior is probably the best solution for the OP because it does repair directory structure which should be done before any other type of disk repair.

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/details4.html

If you still have a need to totally defragment your volume, then TechTool Pro is the utility to use.

http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=83

I use both of these programs on my Macs to keep them running smoothly.

jerryrock said:

You are very critical of programs you have no knowledge of!
"something-or-other-that-I-forgot-the-name-of"
"I'm actually not familiar with TTP"
"I don't know much...."

I think your last statement sums it up pretty well. DiskWarrior is probably the best solution for the OP because it does repair directory structure which should be done before any other type of disk repair.

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/details4.html

If you still have a need to totally defragment your volume, then TechTool Pro is the utility to use.

http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=83

I use both of these programs on my Macs to keep them running smoothly.

Click to expand...

Actually, I knew exactly what I was talking about; I've just forgotten a lot because I haven't done tech support for quite some time. DiskWarrior doesn't defragment your disk, which is the point I was trying to make. The problem here is NOT that the disk has errors, it's that the disk is fragmented.

I used DiskWarrior exclusively for hard drive repair when I did tech support (this was a while before DiskWarrior 4 came out), so actually, I'm only being "critical" of a program I know the most about. Also, I never said it was a bad program; I simply pointed out that DiskWarrior is not what will solve the OP's original problem. Here's a graphic I made a long while back which will clear things up for everyone:

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=71513&d=1175572995

It's too bad apple couldn't make an easy to use, free, defrag utility similar to one found in windows . Does anyone know of any free utilities to defrag? It shouldn't be this difficult.

try OnyX

macRUSHnick said:

try OnyX

Click to expand...

there aren't any options (as far as i'm aware) to defrag using onyx

ryan9939 said:

there aren't any options (as far as i'm aware) to defrag using onyx

Click to expand...

there is no need to use any options, just do "auto" mode and OnyX will defrag your disk in three steps, using following scripts: daily, weekly, monthly - that's all

macRUSHnick said:

there is no need to use any options, just do "auto" mode and OnyX will defrag your disk in three steps, using following scripts: daily, weekly, monthly - that's all

Click to expand...

Onyx will run those cron jobs as you have specified, but it does not have any sort of disk defrag in it....file defrag maybe....but not disk defrag....

If bootcamp is complaining about not having enough contiguous free space, onyx is not going to fix that.

Try iDefag

Here's a search from MRoogle