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mgargan1

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 22, 2003
1,218
0
Reston, VA
Hey, I never owned at Mac, and I know that on PC's it's nice to defrag your harddrive about every month... am i supposed to do this on my 17" powerbook, and if i am... how do i do it?
 
You could get Norton Utilities and it's pretty self explanatory from there on. That's what I use, though I haven't used it on the powerbook yet.

Chuck.
 
i wouldn't worry about it. i got diskwarrior, myself, which comes with plusOptimizer [www.alsoft.com], and i would recommend against using norton on your mac--they aren't as good as the PC version. i think your best bet is not to worry about it.
 
personally, i've heard all the evidence as to why not to defrag, but i still do it whenever i think of it... i don't do my internal HD except for major upgrades (it gets very little writing otherwise) but my app and doc HDs seem to speed up when defrag'd. Plus i'm a little anal and love to see that messy image turn into orderly little blocks :)

pnw
 
defrag your drive!

Get latest version of Drive 10 and leave it few hours defragging, trust me, your mac will be a lot faster!
Drive 10 is really great for defragging.
 
Here's the bottom line...

The best solution currently available is Norton Systemworks 2.0. You are better off using this to defragment once per month. Boot off the CD when using. It is the only way to defragment your computer. Don't even bother installing it. Always just run from the CD.

There was a comment regarding it being better on the PC then on the MAC. This is fictional. Winblows (yes - not a typo) file structure is junk to begin with. You can defragment or attempt to repair but there are too many errors in the code of Winblows to begin with. it does work efficiently on Microsoft, but not even close in comparison. Norton has always worked better on Macs. Drive 10 from Micromat is a great product and we are all currently waiting on the OS X version of TechTool Pro. When this comes out, I believe in May, it will probably be easier and more efficient than Systemworks.
 
I that since X came out there are no free optimizers, no demos, or trial programs.

They want me to buy _____ program for atleast $40. Bah! With all the 3ed party people they can't make a single one free, or open source it? :rolleyes:
 
you know, i was just thinking, i have never even heard of a defragger for any linux OS. has anyone else? i really don't think thes file systems need it.
 
Re: Here's the bottom line...

Originally posted by keithcobbett
There was a comment regarding it being better on the PC then on the MAC. This is fictional. Winblows (yes - not a typo) file structure is junk to begin with. You can defragment or attempt to repair but there are too many errors in the code of Winblows to begin with. it does work efficiently on Microsoft, but not even close in comparison. Norton has always worked better on Macs.
norton for osx fscks up the disk structure (haha, how clever of me) and gives you kernel panics; i've seen it happen. hfs+ is a little more resistant to fragmenting than the windows filesystem, but i've heard that defragging does make a difference. fragmentation problems are due to the filesystem, usually not the os. the linux ext2 fs uses some kind of magic (i think it defrags as it writes) to keep the disk clean all the time. hopefully the rumors of a new osx filesystem are true and we will have the same luxury. you could reformat your drive in UFS and put an end to fragmentation, but then you couldn't run carbon apps and you would not have all of the metadata goodies.
 
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