Any equivalent programs to defrag?

[Stretch]

Hi guys,

My Powerbook G4 has been feeling a wee-bit sluggish lately. Are there any apps out there (or already on OS X that I may not be aware of) that can help me streamline things - i.e. clean up the HDD, find and delte old forgotten files, and basically just give my system a good, thorough overhaul and checkup?

Thx.

 

[AutumnSkyline]

There is a program called iDefrag, but I saw a horror story right on here where someone ruined their whole drive with it. OS X has a built in utility that it does by itself, where it will go and defrag when left to sit, it cannot be sleeping, otherwise it wont do it.

There are programs like Ice Clean that I didn't really enjoy using, I trashed it fairly quickly and now I just repair my disk permissions and go through my library once and a while to get rid of folders I don't need. I bought AppZapper as an unistaller, very very very cool, and useful. I also go through my music, documents, and things like that every once and a while to try and trash everything I don't need.

Have you put in the maximum amount of RAM for you Powerbook? This could help with Apps feeling a little less sluggish. When I installed my 1 GB ( I had two 512 MB, so I have 1.5 GB) everything seemed normal, but I have yet to notice a slowdown in the long run.

EDIT: What I used to do with Windows: back up, and re-install baby . You could always try it that way AS A LAST RESORT

 

[janey]

OS X has a built in utility that it does by itself, where it will go and defrag when left to sit, it cannot be sleeping, otherwise it wont do it.

No.

The filesystem itself is designed to minimise fragmentation, and there is no defrag utility. However, the OS and filesystem are designed so that if an opened file meets certain criteria and may benefit from defragging as a result (e.g. small file, read/write, idle,...), it will be relocated, effectively defragmenting it. There's also something called adaptive hot file clustering on boot volumes that moves the "hottest" (or most frequently accessed) small files to a special part of the hard drive, hence defragmenting those files and also moving them to a location where it will be more easily accessed at the same time.

Hence there is no need for defragmenting a drive, there is no utility that does this while the computer is idle, nor is there much benefit to doing so with a 3rd party utility.

 

[apfhex]

Hence there is no need for defragmenting a drive, there is no utility that does this while the computer is idle, nor is there much benefit to doing so with a 3rd party utility.

Yeah, it's unlikely you'll notice any performance difference should you use one of the few degrading utilities out there.

i.e. clean up the HDD, find and delte old forgotten files, and basically just give my system a good, thorough overhaul and checkup?

That's pretty vague. OS X does run regular maintenance/cleanup scripts on its own. There's not really much for you to do. You could always sort through your ~/Library/Prefrences or /Application Support folders and delete defunct items, but that won't effect the performance.

The simplest way by far to give your system a really thorough overhaul is to just reinstall OS X. If you prepare your backups well and make sure you have everything you need beforehand, the process can go pretty quick.

 

[Stretch]

Hi guys. Thanks for your helpful feedback.

I went to my local apple store yesterday, to see if they would have any utilities that might fit the bill. I found the following applications:

1. Drive Genius - Introduced at Macworld 2005. Seems to have gotten some great reviews from publications. This utility is an all-in-one defrag, optimizer and repair program, whose only drawback seems to be that it doesn't offer a backup program.

http://prosoftengineering.com/products/drive_genius_info.php

2. Checkit system performance suite - very similar to Drive Genius, but with a bit more emphasis on data backup and recovery tools.

http://www.allume.com/mac/checkit/index.html

Both programs retail@ the apple store for $100.00.

The simplest way by far to give your system a really thorough overhaul is to just reinstall OS X. If you prepare your backups well and make sure you have everything you need beforehand, the process can go pretty quick.

EDIT: What I used to do with Windows: back up, and re-install baby . You could always try it that way AS A LAST RESORT

I hear ya, guys. Having always had one foot in the windows world, i'm pretty familiar with clean xp installs, but was wondering if there was a step by step somewhere for Macintosh systems running OS X?

On a side note, I just looked at my registration date. It's been two years since i've even visited this site. It's rather funny, b/c my Powerbook G4 (1.5 ghz, 1gb) either had absolutely no problems whatsoever, or one or two problems that were absolutely, completely unsolvable. One example of the latter was trying to print wirelessly from my Powerbook to my HP Laserjet 3030 over my home network. Would not work, period. Five calls to tech support failed to solve the problem (although those guys up in Sasketchewan, and yes, I probably spelled that wrong, were always nice). Worse, every time I would try to print I would get an error on the windows side, forcing me reinstall my laserjet and print drivers.

I was even starting to fool around with Unix and CUPS in panther to see if I could get it working. Lately I upgraded to Tiger, and lo and behold, it worked! No fussing or mussing. Tiger detected the printer, and got me printing wirelessly from my mac for the first time in three years.