Defragmentation, Norton system tools for Mac?

[golgoth4prez]

Are there any programs that clear out a mac for what I used to use in windows, like the temp folder, unused programs, caches, cookies, etc.

For some reason my mac has been acting a lot slower with the color pinwheel of lag coming in more and more, I only got it in October and i rarely have more than four programs open at a time.

 

[Tallest Skil]

You don't need them. Norton IS a virus. Go to Disk Utility and repair your permissions, and then verify your disk if you're paranoid.

 

[golgoth4prez]

I wasnt going to buy Norton, I am wondering if there is a program similar to it for Macs.

I will take a look at the utilities.

 

[MisterMe]

... I used to use in windows, ...

The Mac is not Windows. That stuff is not necessary here. You Mac will be perfectly happy with five, six, or seven apps running at once. If you type top in the Terminal, then you will see that you have numerous headless tasks running in addition to the GUI-based apps that you launched yourself.

As for unused apps, the only thing that they use is hard drive space. So long as you have at least 10% of your hard drive capacity available as free space, then you are golden. There is no need to delete anything. You have ample time to learn your new system before that need to develops.

 

[cmaier]

I wasnt going to buy Norton, I am wondering if there is a program similar to it for Macs.

I will take a look at the utilities.

By "similar," do you mean a program that uses all your system resources, slows everything down, and is impossible to uninstall?

 

[Ashka]

Are there any programs that clear out a mac for what I used to use in windows, like the temp folder, unused programs, caches, cookies, etc.

YASU (Yet another system utility) will clean up the odd cache & log file, run permission repair and the cron jobs.
Wont hurt and may help but please , don't let Nortons anywhere near your Mac.. preferably not even in the same room.
http://jimmitchelldesign.com/projects/yasu/
S.

 

[richard.mac]

… temp folder

not in OS X. but you can give your Downloads folder a cleanin' not that it will help, unless you have run out of disk space (see below).

unused programs

have a look, which ones dont you use? Trash them. then if you want search for the application name in Finder search with system files enabled and Trash the prefs/support files. they are usually pretty small in size.

caches

they make your computer faster. you will only really need to clear them when there is an application issue and not speed issues. Onyx can clean your caches and browsers can clean their own caches.

cookies …

"Reset Safari" in Safari and "Clear Private Data" in Firefox.

your Mac will become slow when you run out of RAM and the OS starts to page out to the slower hard drive. have a look in Activity Monitor to see what could be using your memory.

also running low on disk space can slow down your Mac as it can prevent paging.

defragmenting is usually unnecessary as it is done automatically for small files. but if you are moving or deleting huge files you can use iDefrag to push all the data towards the start of the hard drive spindle for faster access times.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

If you really want to defrag, you can use iDefrag.

 

[AgencyDigital]

Are there any programs that clear out a mac for what I used to use in windows, like the temp folder, unused programs, caches, cookies, etc.

For some reason my mac has been acting a lot slower with the color pinwheel of lag coming in more and more, I only got it in October and i rarely have more than four programs open at a time.

I use Tech Tools Pro. I find it to be very effective & very thorough. To defrag your boot drive you have to boot off the original CD.

As for all the other stuff, Cocktail is a fantastic program. You can set up it's schedule, as well as it's intensity.

 

[Diaresi]

I'll add that, no matter what filesystem you use, if you are using close to using the entire disk fragmentation will always happen.

Simplest* way to sort things out: backup Home directory (NOT Library folder), backup anything else. Format and reinstall.


*Yes, I do think that's the simplest. Nothing like a good clean OS

 

[zhell]

Activity Monitor is a good thing to keep open for some time.

Click the "CPU" column to sort by CPU cycles used.

Then, next time you see the beach ball, go to Activity Monitor and see what's on top.

If you want to do the same in terminal, use "top -u" to sort by CPU usage.

Also, you may want to check your login items (system prefs->accounts, then tab login items) and remove those you don't need.

Re-installing after half a year is a habit you should get rid of as soon as possible, unless you just install about everything you can click on on the web.

 

[Carrot007]

I'll add that, no matter what filesystem you use, if you are using close to using the entire disk fragmentation will always happen.

Simplest* way to sort things out: backup Home directory (NOT Library folder), backup anything else. Format and reinstall.


*Yes, I do think that's the simplest. Nothing like a good clean OS

Wow at last, someone who thinks like I do!

The other side is easy to see though, some people are scared of doing an OS install for whatever reason. They see it as "Something Big" as so make up lot's of reasons to not do it. Whereas to me an OS install is such a simple task that I say, why not. It's far easier than removing all the stuff I no longer use and performing maintenance tasks.

And in case anyone feels like it I find the easiest way to backup my stuff is open a terminal on /Users and do a "sudo tar -cvjf backup.tbz2 <Your Home Folder>" and then just copy the resultant file somewhere safe.