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iDefrag?

MacBH928

MacBH928

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 17, 2008
9,164
4,193
hello,

i was wondering if any one got any idea about idefrag , i recently found my macbook is giving me unsatisfying performance after around a year and a half of purchase so i thought i would do a defrag for the hard disk

i understand that the mac system does not need defrag but i have been dealing with huge files, i download a lot of videos and delete them.

i defrag price looks a bit high at around $35 for an app i will use once or twice a year

any one with experience using this app, does it really help? is it worth it? are there any alternatives

if its going to keep my mac in tip tiop shape i will buy, i am afraid that it will not really help
 
I like the graphical and statistical analysis features of idefrag to determine the state of my drives, though I've never used it to defrag any of my drives. A couple of times I used the defrag ("File Optimization") feature of Tech Tools Pro - both times resulting in my system running slower than before defragging (took a day or so for my system to normalized itself). Once it rendered my Windows XP virtual machince useless (wouldn't boot up). I found that the quickest and most effective way to defrag my internal drive is to make (or update) a clone of it, boot from that clone, and then reformat the internal and reclone it from the external copy. Depending on the it's condition prior, defragging this way always resulted in my system (or certain programs in my system) to run at least as good, if not better, than prior to recloning.

kingmohd84 said:
hello,

i was wondering if any one got any idea about idefrag , i recently found my macbook is giving me unsatisfying performance after around a year and a half of purchase so i thought i would do a defrag for the hard disk

i understand that the mac system does not need defrag but i have been dealing with huge files, i download a lot of videos and delete them.

i defrag price looks a bit high at around $35 for an app i will use once or twice a year

any one with experience using this app, does it really help? is it worth it? are there any alternatives

if its going to keep my mac in tip tiop shape i will buy, i am afraid that it will not really help
Click to expand...
 
iDefrag is a very good product -- I recommend it.

It WILL properly clean up your drive and I predict that afterwards you WILL experience a speed increase.
 
Defragging on the mac has its place. While many folks who come from the windows platform believes that you must defrag all the time, I believe you only need to do it when the occasion requires it.

For instance, if you edit audio or video that requires the data to be contiguous, then ensuring this is a situation that calls for defragging. Also if you are trying to partition the drive with bootcamp, but there's not enough contiguous free space, then you need to compact the drive with idefrag.

I don't see a need for normal usage to run idefrag, in fact apple in its KB article states that you can actually degrade performance when the defragging program messes with the hotband area where OSX keeps frequently used data.

OSX being a modern OS and HFS+ being a quasi modern file system, the need to manually run a defrag is not needed for most users.
 
having defrag slowing my computer is a very unexpected thing

so if defragging is h
looked down upon in tne mac world , wat can i do to optimize my system,s performance other than repair per,issions and running terminal scripts
 
If your drive is nearly full that will hurt performance. In that case consider cleaning out unnecessary files (also run cache cleaning scripts such as are found in Onyx). Also consider a new, larger drive. If your Mac is a notebook, consider a 7200 RPM drive if you don't already have one. If you have done all of this, it might be time to keep large and archival files on an external drive or NAS.

Max out RAM if you haven't already done so.
 
interesting points
i have 30 gb left out of 160 gb hard drive would you say that is nearly full?

the other thing is my ram is 2 gb i thought that was plentyfor everyday tasks. if i update to 4 gb , will the overall performance of the system be improved on everyday tasks like firefox , itunes , and cd burning software?
 
I wouldn't say its nearly full but it is getting there. I suspect that with that level of free space, idefrag would have to work hard at defragging, i.e., more free space = faster performance of idefrag
 
kingmohd84 said:
interesting points
i have 30 gb left out of 160 gb hard drive would you say that is nearly full?

...
Click to expand...
You don't need to defrag, but you do need to archive the stuff that you have on your hard drive to an external drive. You should maintain at least 10% of your hard drive as free space so that your virtual memory will operate properly. You are still OK on that account, but not for long.
 
so shall i increase the RAM or just move my files to an external hard drive?
which will be better , because RAM is kind of expensive at 4 gb not to mention the performance gain might be minimal
 
If it is cheaper for you to move to an external drive, try that first. I have 2GB memory but lots of free disk space so I never have a problem but if virtual memory is also low, that might be a problem for you.
 
kingmohd84 said:
so shall i increase the RAM or just move my files to an external hard drive?
which will be better , because RAM is kind of expensive at 4 gb not to mention the performance gain might be minimal
Click to expand...
bobr1952 is correct. You have ample RAM. It is your virtual memory that may be feeling the squeeze from your limited free space on your hard drive. As I told you in my first post, you need to free-up space on your hard drive.
 
thanx every one , i will be moving my stored files to an external hard drive

but lets say i install a windows partition shall i keep a lot of space for virtua, memory too?

last time i kept 15gb for the whole partition
 
I've defragged (with iDefrag, which I bought) several times since I've had my 2006 iMac. The first time was after two years...it took two nights! The drive was clearly heavily fragmented. But there was no notable speed increase. I did it because I noticed a slow-down as well. Since then I've defragged once more, still no better. I just thought it was Leopard bogging my system down.

Then I installed Snow Leopard (not clean install) and it was still lagging. Because it was still slow, I bought 'Clean my Mac' and that did the trick for me. I highly recommend that program.

Next to that, you can also run some maintenance scripts you can find in the program Onyx (free). Some things to check/maintain on a regular basis (once a month or so):

- Check file permissions
- Clear the cache files

If people have some more suggestions, please add them. Let me know if it helped.
 
Parsec said:
Then I installed Snow Leopard (not clean install) and it was still lagging. Because it was still slow, I bought 'Clean my Mac' and that did the trick for me. I highly recommend that program.
Click to expand...
Do a search on how many people ran into issues with clean my mac. IT seems that at times it cleans too much stuff rendering the mac inoperable. I'd avoid utilities that promise to remove (or "clean") parts of OSX. Everything is there for a reason and while it can make sense to eliminate old log files, and such, OSX already does this.
 
iDefrag - 2 answers

There are two main ways you can defrag with the iDefrag program. First, the quick on line defrag, which you do with your Mac running normally. I have done various benchmark tests before and after and found no consistent improvement with this method. However, if you use their supplied utility and create a boot disk to do a full off line defrag and compact, I have found measurable improvements, particularly in loading very large image files (100 to 400 MB TIFF's), which after they are modified, may have the file split over various sectors of the HD. I have also found that it reduces crashes on Entourage, presumably because the horrible huge database file is all in one piece. Roll on Outlook 2011.

I occasionally use Clean my Mac and have had no problems but there are a number of folks who have. I also have the free Onyx, which I think is just as effective as the paid-for Snow Leopard cache cleaner, which Apple recommends, as a general maintenance program.

Wilson
 
wilsonlaidlaw said:
There are two main ways you can defrag with the iDefrag program. First, the quick on line defrag, which you do with your Mac running normally. I have done various benchmark tests before and after and found no consistent improvement with this method. ...

Wilson
Click to expand...
Defragging a Windows computer produces an immediate and obvious benefit. If you have to search for a measurable benefit to a task, then prudence dictates that you not do it. You remind me of lottery players who talk about the two or three times that they won, but never mention the 500 times that they lost.

Apple recommends that you do not defrag. I have never measured a benefit above noise level to defragging. Your benchmarks would seem to confirm my experience. Don't defrag.
 
kingmohd84 said:
having defrag slowing my computer is a very unexpected thing

so if defragging is h
looked down upon in tne mac world , wat can i do to optimize my system,s performance other than repair per,issions and running terminal scripts
Click to expand...

One hopes that "repair permissions" does absolutely nothing. Mostly you get what you hope for.

How will simply runnig a scrip help. It kind of depends what the script does

Really I thought the reason you and most others bought a Mac was so you don't have to mess with this kind of stuff. So don't fix things until you can identify a problem.

If you like messing with the OS the best OS by far is Solaris. It is huge and complex and has thousands of things you can adjust, set and configure. And it's free, no cost.
 
maflynn said:
Do a search on how many people ran into issues with clean my mac. IT seems that at times it cleans too much stuff rendering the mac inoperable. I'd avoid utilities that promise to remove (or "clean") parts of OSX. Everything is there for a reason and while it can make sense to eliminate old log files, and such, OSX already does this.
Click to expand...

The problem with CleanMyMac is the users who mess with the universal binaries and the language files, especially the binaries. For the most part you can remove most language files, but you have to keep English. I’ve read that Czech is used by one program. I keep those and Spanish and French.
 
Yesterday I did run Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign all together
and my computer went slow, really really slow....

is this a RAM issue, system performance, or the software is bloatware?

I will check onyx, maybe I will defrag, I am not sure
 
kingmohd84 said:
Yesterday I did run Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign all together
and my computer went slow, really really slow....

is this a RAM issue, system performance, or the software is bloatware?

I will check onyx, maybe I will defrag, I am not sure
Click to expand...
Adobe products are extreme resource hogs. If you're frequently running all those apps simultaneously, it's likely you need more RAM. Check Activity Monitor to see your paging activity.
 
kingmohd84 said:
Yesterday I did run Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign all together
and my computer went slow, really really slow....

is this a RAM issue, system performance, or the software is bloatware?

I will check onyx, maybe I will defrag, I am not sure
Click to expand...

Look at "Activity Monitor" it will tell you where is the bottle neck in performance. Likely you need more RAM. There is no need to guess when you can measure.

Once all those programs are loaded and running the disk is not used much and fragmentation can't matter
 
MisterMe said:
Defragging a Windows computer produces an immediate and obvious benefit. If you have to search for a measurable benefit to a task, then prudence dictates that you not do it. You remind me of lottery players who talk about the two or three times that they won, but never mention the 500 times that they lost.

Apple recommends that you do not defrag. I have never measured a benefit above noise level to defragging. Your benchmarks would seem to confirm my experience. Don't defrag.
Click to expand...

I think most of us would agree that Mac OSX is derived from UNIX with a fancy front end on it. Before I retired and sold up, my companies ran Unix based systems on Bull hardware for our servers and central accounting. It was part of the recommended weekly routine for our IT guys to run a defrag and compact on the Bull servers, usually at 6AM each Monday morning - I know, I had to pay their overtime. If this was (and presumably still is) a good idea on these UNIX systems, why would defragging and compacting not be a good idea on Mac OSX systems. If a file is all in one place instead of distributed over a hard disc, its fetch time must be faster, simple because of physically not having to move the read head from place to place on the disc.

Wilson
 
i am still confused about the defrag issue and dont see how it will not help,
but what do i know?

any way , further update i ran onyx and it told me i need to repair the disk , i used the OS install disc and did repai the disk successfully ,
the funy thing is after i got to my hard drive i found in the trash 2 video files that i deleted weeks ago , and nothing deleted prior to that or after it appeared

wtf?
 
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