defragmenting without shutting down...

[aplasticspork]

im not sure if this should go in hardware or software, so im putting it in general and it can be moved if necessary. here goes...i have file vault turned on, so when i shut down my computer it always asks if i want to recover disk space from my home folder. im importing a lot of music, and after only 14 GB out of 32 my hard disk space has gone down from 120 GB available to 60. this means (after doing some simple math) that im going to run out of disk space before it finishes, obviously this hasnt all been filled with music, and when i shut down next it'll recover the disk space. the problem is that since its importing in no particular order, i'll have to start the process over again if i shut down. so i was wondering if theres a way to recover the disk space without shutting down. if so great, if not im going to have to start over (again, ) doing about a thousand at a time and restarting in between. thanks in advance
--andrzej

 

[slooksterPSV]

I'd just turn off File Vault if I have everything burned to a CD, AFAIK I'm not sure there is anything you can do, but then again I'm only working with Jaguar and it doesn't have File Vault

 

[aplasticspork]

i thought of turning off filevault, but it requires you to log out and back in, which would stop the importing process and make my life difficult as mentioned above.
Edit: wouldnt there be a script or some such thing that it runs when you shut down that defragments it, or is it something completely different?

--andrzej

 

[slooksterPSV]

OS X automatically defragments files when its fragmentation is above like 25 MB it automatically defrags it. I dunno I asked someone about it and thats what they told me. There is no real way to deframent it.

 

[aplasticspork]

i heard that it was 20 MB, but i wondering why its having so much trouble with a bunch of MP3 files, that kinda sucks if theres no way to do it though, heres to investing another week on this . i think i need a dual G5

 

[slooksterPSV]

If something isn't running right, have you tried repairing permissions and repairing the disk? The disk you repair by putting in the OS X CD and running disk utility off from it. Some programs out there may actually have a defragmenter with it. Check DiskWarrior out and see what that one does.