Defrag

joe01 said:

I was wondering is there an defrag app for the mac ?

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Yes, iDefrag. Google it.

I thought it was my understanding that OS X managed files way better than windows that defragging is unnecessary?

http://forums.mactalk.com.au/20/32660-do-you-need-defrag-your-mac-hd-answer-revealed.html

I can't quote this exactly as the book is in the loft, but a very well known hardware bible says you should never defrag your hardrive.

You don't need to.

Don't waste your money.

Don't get iDefrag.

Drive Genius 2 and DiskWarrior are both excellent programs that will solve all of your problems.

You don't need to defrag on a Mac, but if you really must the cheapest and fastest way to do it is to get SuperDuper or CCC and clone your drive to an external drive. Then reformat your HD and clone back. This is free (as those apps are free), faster, and safer than trusting some derag program to organize every bit on your drive.

No need to defrag the volume.

This isn't NTFS mate.

Don't defrag your mac. I did with idefrag for my large movie files and screwed up my mac pro. Took me months to fix. Let OS X do the defragging.

bearcatrp said:

Don't defrag your mac. I did with idefrag for my large movie files and screwed up my mac pro. Took me months to fix. Let OS X do the defragging.

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How do you mean it screwed up your Mac Pro? As a bit of a former "windows user", I'm used to the idea (and core concept) of needing to defrag - does OSX really do it on its own in the background?

Thanks

cellocello said:

does OSX really do it on its own in the background?

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Yes, it does. Don't waste your money, don't waste your time.

Tallest Skil said:

Yes, it does. Don't waste your money, don't waste your time.

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Like, it's it idle time the system performs a defrag operation? Or is the filesystem is structured in such a way that fragmentation doesn't occur / isn't impactful?

I guess I'm more curious than anything (I never had any intention of buying a defrag package).

cellocello said:

Like, it's it idle time the system performs a defrag operation? Or is the filesystem is structured in such a way that fragmentation doesn't occur / isn't impactful?

I guess I'm more curious than anything (I never had any intention of buying a defrag package).

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OS X auto defrags files under 20mb seeing as thats about 99% of the files on your system, why bother ?

Like, it's it idle time the system performs a defrag operation? Or is the filesystem is structured in such a way that fragmentation doesn't occur / isn't impactful?

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It's both. Stuff like hot file clustering and defrag-on-read (for files under 20MB) helps to get rid of some fragmentation, but HFS+/OS X deals with fragmentation far better than NTFS/Windows NT does.