Drive Genius 3 defrag boot disk (Restart issues)

[C.Bledsoejr]

So here's the deal. I have a PC graphics card in my Mac Pro, an ATI 6870. For those that dont know, when you reboot your Mac, you can't see the grey screen or anything pre-login screen. For those familiar with this, you'll know what I'm talking about.

This becomes and issue for stuff like Drive Genius. I've never used it but I have a legal copy of it and wanted to defrag my OSX boot drive. It requires a restart to complete the operation. I click restart, it restarts... It's black, and then it returns me to my login screen. My guess is there is another screen that comes up during the reboot process (That I can't see) that has an option I need to choose but I don't want to blindly press things.

Does anyone know what this is so I can possibly blind navigate? I can't find any screenshots or pictures of any sort, and everytime I reboot to defrag it simply returns me to my desktop after a few minutes with the same fragmentation. It's probably a simple "Are you sure you want to perform this defrag operation" with a timer, but I just want to make sure. Any help would be appreciated! Thank you.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

It needs to be run from a bootable disc to properly defrag the system drive. Normally it would bring up a screen asking which drive you'd like to boot from (the system drive or the Drive Genius CD) and you would select the Drive Genius CD to run the defrag from it. When you don't select a drive it eventually boots from the system drive as usual. You can try going to the System Preference and to Startup Disk. There you can select the Drive Genius boot disc and restart and the system will startup from the CD. When you're done defragging you will want to eject the CD (hold the Spacebar at startup) so the system doesn't once again startup from the CD.

Defragging shouldn't be needed unless you work with lots of large (2-4GB or larger) single files as the OS does a pretty good job of keeping system files and such from becoming fragmented especially with the size of computer hard drives these days.

 

[C.Bledsoejr]

It needs to be run from a bootable disc to properly defrag the system drive. Normally it would bring up a screen asking which drive you'd like to boot from (the system drive or the Drive Genius CD) and you would select the Drive Genius CD to run the defrag from it. When you don't select a drive it eventually boots from the system drive as usual. You can try going to the System Preference and to Startup Disk. There you can select the Drive Genius boot disc and restart and the system will startup from the CD. When you're done defragging you will want to eject the CD (hold the Spacebar at startup) so the system doesn't once again startup from the CD.

Defragging shouldn't be needed unless you work with lots of large (2-4GB or larger) single files as the OS does a pretty good job of keeping system files and such from becoming fragmented especially with the size of computer hard drives these days.

Thanks, that was helpful. I actually thought that in version 3, you didn't need a CD to defrag anymore? I could be wrong, I thought that the application would prompt you to put in the disk before you restart if that was the case. Although I could try the CD route and see if that works. I still may not be able to see it due to my graphics card.

I've defragged my drives under OSX in the past because I do work with audio and video. Sometimes the disc can't stream audio fast enough when the drive is fragmented (We're talking about thousands of small files being played one after the other). But I never really needed to defrag my OS drive as I usually don't store audio files on the system drive, just applications etc. The reason why it's fragmented is actually because of Backblaze, my backup service, which somehow creates thousands of small files to keep track of backups. Customer service recommended I defrag if it becomes an issue but shouldn't (Which is probably true). And they can't be cleared or regenerated like a log file or cache, which is what I thought it was.

 

[Maxpilot]

Thanks, that was helpful. I actually thought that in version 3, you didn't need a CD to defrag anymore? I could be wrong, I thought that the application would prompt you to put in the disk before you restart if that was the case. Although I could try the CD route and see if that works. I still may not be able to see it due to my graphics card.

I've defragged my drives under OSX in the past because I do work with audio and video. Sometimes the disc can't stream audio fast enough when the drive is fragmented (We're talking about thousands of small files being played one after the other). But I never really needed to defrag my OS drive as I usually don't store audio files on the system drive, just applications etc. The reason why it's fragmented is actually because of Backblaze, my backup service, which somehow creates thousands of small files to keep track of backups. Customer service recommended I defrag if it becomes an issue but shouldn't (Which is probably true). And they can't be cleared or regenerated like a log file or cache, which is what I thought it was.

The latest release you do not need a bootable disk. When you select your drive to defrag, it will ask you to reboot and once it reboots, there is nothing else to do until it is done... maybe several hours later depending on how big your drive is.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Then the drive you're trying to defragment isn't the system drive, it's another drive? That shouldn't require you to restart. It should simply unmount the drive, defragment it and remount it when it's complete.

 

[C.Bledsoejr]

I'm definitely defragging my system drive. The other ones dismounted and worked perfectly. But when I do the system drive, like I said, it reboots, it stays black for not even 5 minutes and returns me to the login screen. No defragging done since it's at the same percentage and the map looks the same. Like Maxpilot said, I thought it would reboot and just be done. But it's not. And since my graphics card is a PC card, I can't see anything outside the OS

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

I'd run it from the boot disc. The idea of defragmenting a system drive while it's mounted and in-use is a dangerous one even if they claim it's OK. As always whenever defragmenting, make sure you have a recent backup copy incase something goes wrong.