Mac Convert Question - Disk Utilities

[Carpediem68]

Hi Gang,

I did it. I used to want a mac back in college (20 years ago) when it had a built in handle and would say "hello" to you when you turned it on. But.. alas.. I was broke. Then I became a lawyer. An industry dominated by M$. I finally got a look at Windows Vista and decided "Thats it .. I'm done". I found myself that afternoon in the Applestore putting a sizeable dent in my bank account for a macbook pro 17" and I love it. I love it more than is rational. Anyway, I'm now set up with Parallels (for 2 programs I MUST use once in awhile), M$ office on mac and a few other programs. I'm still learning but love the mac. Love the reliability, the stability, and the "fun" of it. I've already got the family chistmas dvd done and iDVD blows away anything I ever used on the PC. I do, however, have a few questions ....

Disk utilities

I don't see many utilities in Tiger ... i.e. defrag, etc.. What do you guys use? Do you need it? If so, what do you recomend?

Thanks,
David

 

[portent]

Hi Gang,

I did it. I used to want a mac back in college (20 years ago) when it had a built in handle and would say "hello" to you when you turned it on. But.. alas.. I was broke. Then I became a lawyer. An industry dominated by M$. I finally got a look at Windows Vista and decided "Thats it .. I'm done". I found myself that afternoon in the Applestore putting a sizeable dent in my bank account for a macbook pro 17" and I love it. I love it more than is rational. Anyway, I'm now set up with Parallels (for 2 programs I MUST use once in awhile), M$ office on mac and a few other programs. I'm still learning but love the mac. Love the reliability, the stability, and the "fun" of it. I've already got the family chistmas dvd done and iDVD blows away anything I ever used on the PC. I do, however, have a few questions ....

Disk utilities

I don't see many utilities in Tiger ... i.e. defrag, etc.. What do you guys use? Do you need it? If so, what do you recomend?

Thanks,
David

About Disk Optimization With Mac OS X (Source: Apple)

 

[Josephkyles]

A Macs Hard drive doesn't fragment. So there is no need for defragmenting software

 

[Carpediem68]

Thanks .. very informative. So if it aint broke .. I shouldn't fix it. I'm just SO used to things breaking on my old windows machines.

 

[grapes911]

With OS X, you don't have to do anything unless something is wrong or broken (expect for repairing permissions). If you do try to optimize it or fix it, you're probably just hurting you machine.

You should repair permissions once a month or so and every time you install software.
How to repair permissions:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Repairing_Permissions

 

[72930]

Disk utility includes repairing permissions...this is a general fix-all for minor problems which do sometimes occur. OSX is not faultless, it just seems like that after using a crashing program with an OS built in...I've heard Windows been called 'a boot virus that works on macs'

 

[djdawson]

While you may not need a defragmenter (though they do exist for the Mac), you may very well need other disk utilities for things like directory repair or file recovery. I'm a huge fan of DiskWarrior. The latest version provides a bootable CD that will boot on all the latest Macs, and it's quite a bit faster than the previous version. It will correct directory problems other utilities won't, and it's saved my bacon a few times. I highly recommend it.

For data recovery there a few apps out there (you know, when you delete a file then change your mind and want it back). If you think you need this I'd read some of the reviews - I haven't used any of them in a few years so I'm out of date on that technology.

One other tool that is very good is called SpinRite, but it's a PC-only utility. It's a bootable disk (or floppy) that does very low level physical disk block recovery from data errors on your drive. The reason I bring it up even though it's a PC app is that it works fine on Mac disks if you can manage to remove the hard drive and put it in a PC. If you're having hard drive errors it's the best tool out there short of sending the drive to a professional data recovery service. I've used it a few times on old drives and it's made them reliable enough to at least get the data off. I also run every new drive through it as a test just to make sure it's not DOA.

Hope this helps. Enjoy your Mac!!!

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

I'm a huge fan of DiskWarrior. The latest version provides a bootable CD that will boot on all the latest Macs, and it's quite a bit faster than the previous version. It will correct directory problems other utilities won't, and it's saved my bacon a few times. I highly recommend it.

Me2 ! DW is da bomb when it comes to directory/file structure/b-tree repairs.....it has saved me many many times, by making seemingly lost/unreadable data readable again, as well as speeding up overall file access times

Get it NOW, or be sorry later 4 sure!

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

A Macs Hard drive doesn't fragment. So there is no need for defragmenting software

uuuummmmm.......wrong answer

Mac HD's DO fragment, just not nearly as frequently or as badly as windblows does. And also, OS X auto-defrags most smaller files on it's own, which helps prevent major fragmentation from occurring in most cases.

If you edit large, complex files frequently, cutting, pasting, adding & deleting lots of things, you WILL end up with some fragmentation........