Should I defrag before installing Boot Camp?

slapple said:

I've had my 15" MacBook Pro (running Lion) for about a year now, and I finally want to get Boot Camp installed so I can also run Windows 7.

I'm reading the Boot Camp manual, and I see that it will create a new partition that will be used for installing Windows.

So I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to defrag my hard drive before I install Boot Camp and create the new partition? If so, what's the best way to defrag in Mac OS X?

Click to expand...

Mac OS X doesn't need to be defragged. I believe it is because of the Journaling file system.

You might want to repair permissions however. Just open disk utility to do that.

slapple said:

I've had my 15" MacBook Pro (running Lion) for about a year now, and I finally want to get Boot Camp installed so I can also run Windows 7.

I'm reading the Boot Camp manual, and I see that it will create a new partition that will be used for installing Windows.

So I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to defrag my hard drive before I install Boot Camp and create the new partition? If so, what's the best way to defrag in Mac OS X?

Click to expand...

There have been issues with fragmentation in Mac OS X. If Bootcamp Utility does not throw up an error when resizing your hard drive then you do not need to defragment. In rare cases (which I have had to deal with myself) your files will become too fragmented and Bootcamp Utility will not resize the partition. To solve this you can either need to use a 3rd party de-fragmentation solution or reinstall Mac OS X to "refresh" the drive.


Examples of this problem are here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/834360/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1278879/

Dont worry about any of this if the Bootcamp Utility works. It means you have no problems.

Yes, you may need to defragment before installing BootCamp.

You will hear others say "you don't need to defrag with OS X".
This is NOT TRUE. Those who tell you that are misinformed, because they misunderstand what the OS actually does. OS X will re-concactenate -some- fragmented files, but not ALL of them. Over time, the drive will become increasingly fragmented.

Unfortunately, there are no "free" defraggers for OS X that I know of (see "free workaround" below).

Programs like "iDefrag" and "Drive Genius" can defrag for you.
Important: You have to "boot externally" to do a full defrag.

Cheapo Workaround:
There's another way to defrag a Mac drive without using a defragger:
1. Create a fully-bootable cloned backup on another drive (using something like CarbonCopyCloner)
2. Boot from the cloned backup
3. Re-initialize the internal drive
4. "Re-clone" your cloned backup -back to- your internal drive.
5. The files will be copied over contiguously
6. When done, all your free space will be "at the end" of the internal drive