Defragmentation on Mac OS X

[ventuss]

Files, particularly large ones, on HDDs usually become fragmented over time if frequently written; periodic defragmentation is required to maintain optimum performance.

How do you work on defragmentation on Mac OS X?

 

[Intell]

You don't. The HFS+ filesystem takes care of it automatically.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

You don't. The HFS+ filesystem takes care of it automatically.

OP said large files; HFS+ will only defrag files less than 20MB (not large IMHO) plus a host of other conditions

If you OP really feels need to defray than try something like iDefrag - offers other options as well such as compacting free space

Note with todays multi-TB drives can take a very, very long time to fully defragment a disk and to do it properly disk needs to be off-line. Only really worthwhile if there are many large files that are very fragmented and are constantly being read.

 

[Bear]

I wonder how defragmenting a Fusion Drive would affect the performance of it as defraging a Fusion drive could potentially move hot files off the SSD portion.

 

[Intell]

OP said large files; HFS+ will only defrag files less than 20MB (not large IMHO) plus a host of other conditions

If you OP really feels need to defray than try something like iDefrag - offers other options as well such as compacting free space

Note with todays multi-TB drives can take a very, very long time to fully defragment a disk and to do it properly disk needs to be off-line. Only really worthwhile if there are many large files that are very fragmented and are constantly being read.

Post Lion HFS+ will defragment files up to 500GB when idel.

 

[GGJstudios]

Files, particularly large ones, on HDDs usually become fragmented over time if frequently written; periodic defragmentation is required to maintain optimum performance.

How do you work on defragmentation on Mac OS X?

With very few exceptions, you don't need to defrag on Mac OS X, except possibly when partitioning a drive. About disk optimization with Mac OS X

You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X.

If you're having performance issues, this may help:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X​