does music files have anything to do with slow macs?

[dorqiekat]

I have about 850 music files on my PB and just the standard ram, I think 256? Anyway, my friend has a ibook, and she has a lot more music files than I do.. and her laptop is slowing down, lagging some. And she said that it was because of the music files. Is this right? Does large music files have anything to do with lag? I have about 45GB of available space, and my music takes about less than 4GB. Could opening iTunes with all those mp3's lag your computer if you only have 256 ram? Or is there some other technical reasons for it?

Thanks!

 

[yellow]

There's simply too many variables here to answer your question other then, the mere presense of many "music files" will not slow down your computer. However, if she doesn't have a lot of disk space left, that would certainly slow her down.

Other limiting factors for her is what apps is she running, what version of the OS, how much RAM, how large a disk, running via power or battery, etc, etc,..

For you, my first suggestion would be to get more RAM. It won't make your computer "faster", but it will keep it running fast for longer. With more RAM, more applications are able to keep running without the OS having to start using the hard drive as swap, which is where speed becomes an issue, as the whole OS is suddenly limited to the speed of the hard drive.

 

[wwooden]

need more info

Like Yellow said, we need more information about the situation. What is your processor speed vs. your friends? If it's an old G3 iBook and you have a G4 PowerBook, then the difference is noticable. Also, like Yellow said, as your harddrive starts to get full, things will slow down. It doesn't matter if it is music files, any files on your harddrive will cause this if it is reaching it's capacity. One thing you can do is defrag your harddrive. This will clean up everything and make it all one big "block" of information on there. This can be done with any disk utility program (i.e, Norton's, Tech Tools, etc., but not Disk Utility that came with your computer). lastly, Definitly add more ram, it can't do anything but help your computer run smoother and faster.

 

[Veldek]

One thing you can do is defrag your harddrive. This will clean up everything and make it all one big "block" of information on there. This can be done with any disk utility program (i.e, Norton's, Tech Tools, etc., but not Disk Utility that came with your computer).

This is the first time I hear anyone say you should defrag the harddisk in your Mac. Even worse I normally hear people say you should NOT do this. I’m interested in some opinions about this.

 

[NusuniAdmin]

Im going to do a quick followup on what some people have said:

Mac os x gets p/o'ed when you have less than about 3-5 gigs available. So if you have so many music files that there is only like 3-5 gigs left then delete something. Ive actually ran benchmarks about this with my 60 gig ibm drive and when it had 4.7 gigs left it ran over 5% slower than when i had 10 gigs. It also became incredibly unstable and such. Some people deny this but I am pretty sure there is a thing about this on apple support site.

As many other people have said get more RAM! This is especially true on apple's slow @$$ laptop hd speeds, when it needs to use virtual memory it CAN and WILL run terribly.

But yes most definitly if you have a crap load of songs that itunes needs to load in @ app start then it will use more RAM which will in turn use all the physical RAM and need to use *gulp* VM.

 

[NusuniAdmin]

This is the first time I hear anyone say you should defrag the harddisk in your Mac. Even worse I normally hear people say you should NOT do this. I’m interested in some opinions about this.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

somewhere on there it says if you use small files all the time you really dont need to worry about defragging as os x handles all that junk. If you are handling 100 meg photoshop file or playing tons of games and such then yes, if you notice a slowdown you should run a defragger. BUT FOR GODS SAKE DONT USE NORTON SPEED DISK ON OS X!!!!!!

btw: i love ur avatar submission!

 

[Veldek]

btw: i love ur avatar submission!

Hey, thanks. I’m no Photoshop pro at all, but it was fun do it. I wanted to submit at least one Avatar and this was my first idea. Nice to hear that it became quite good.

And thanks for the info!

 

[jimsowden]

Does music files

I think you should see the english teacher also.

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

Just for clarification OS X automatically defrags files that are 20 Megs or less at 3:00 every morning and does a larger files once a week and does even larger files once a month.

If you have a computer that sleeps during this time you should type these commands into terminal:

"sudo periodic daily".....press enter
"sudo periodic weekly".... press enter
"sudo periodic monthly" ...press enter

(type the parts in the quotes but without the " ")

The weekly and monthly could take a long time. Usually 10 Minutes each for me.

 

[yellow]

Ive actually ran benchmarks about this with my 60 gig ibm drive and when it had 4.7 gigs left it ran over 5% slower than when i had 10 gigs.

This is absolutely true. There are indicators that even filling a hard drive more then 50% full will negatively impact it's speed in file retrival. I am NOT suggesting not filling your drive beyond 50% however. But keeping at least 3 GB free is CRITICAL to the health of your OS.

 

[yellow]

"sudo periodic daily".....press enter
"sudo periodic weekly".... press enter
"sudo periodic monthly" ...press enter

Or run all three contiguously:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

 

[wwooden]

question.....

Does the script that you guys are telling him to do work as well as some of the optional programs that I mentioned? I mean, how does it completely defrag the harddrive when it is ON the harddrive? That's why I like those other ones, you can start up from the CD if anything goes wrong and work out the problems from there........ and I like seeing the visual diagram of my harddrive .

 

[dorqiekat]

Thanks for all the help! I've been planning on getting more RAM, it's a slow process since I only had money for the PB it self. I haven't even gotten a bag yet, which is bad when I go home for the weekends. This I'll be doing first. =)

I think you should see the english teacher also.

You must be bored. Sorry.

 

[~Shard~]

Just for clarification OS X automatically defrags files that are 20 Megs or less at 3:00 every morning and does a larger files once a week and does even larger files once a month.

If you have a computer that sleeps during this time you should type these commands into terminal:

"sudo periodic daily".....press enter
"sudo periodic weekly".... press enter
"sudo periodic monthly" ...press enter

(type the parts in the quotes but without the " ")

The weekly and monthly could take a long time. Usually 10 Minutes each for me.

I was pretty certain that OSX did it's own defragging automatically, but didn't know the details, so thanks. As I usually never have my machine on overnight, these commands will come in quite useful!

 

[~Shard~]

Or run all three contiguously:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

And do you ever have to worry about typing in these commands again afterwards, on a regular basis, or does the command take care of things for you automatically ever day, week, month, etc. and program the defrag to run like this indefinitely at these intervals?

 

[yellow]

And do you ever have to worry about typing in these commands again afterwards, on a regular basis, or does the command take care of things for you automatically ever day, week, month, etc. and program the defrag to run like this indefinitely at these intervals?

No, that will only run each script (/etc/daily, /etc/weekly, & /etc/monthly) one time. To make it run automatically, change the entries in your cron to a more reasonable time when you know that your computer will be on. You can use Cronnix to change the times if editing /etc/crontab is daunting.

 

[~Shard~]

No, that will only run each script (/etc/daily, /etc/weekly, & /etc/monthly) one time. To make it run automatically, change the entries in your cron to a more reasonable time when you know that your computer will be on. You can use Cronnix to change the times if editing /etc/crontab is daunting.

Cool, thanks for the info!