I think my PB is sluggish, and I think the fragmented hard drive is to blame. Does anyone know of a freeware that can solve this problem.
-Chomo

-Chomo
Chomolungma said:I'm running Panther on a TiBook 400 mhz, with 384MB RAM. It is only running Safari and iTunes 99% of the time. I should tell you that the hard drive is nearly full. Maybe it is time to get a new computer. Be that as it may, I'll try the terminal/command approach.
-Chomo
blue&whiteman said:even 10% free is pushing it. I have a 120gb and like to keep no less than 30gb free.
No, that's not what it's doing--I believe the post-install optimization involves linking libraries to applications, but in any case it isn't defragmentation.crees! said:If you notice when you finish installing any type of software/update you'll see the installer saying Optimizing Volume... from what I get that is your defragmentation taking place.
IJ Reilly said:That's massive overkill IMO. OSX does a pretty poor job of cleaning up after itself where VM is concerned, but you can always check to see how much disk space is devoted to VM by looking into the directory ..private/var/vm. If you've got more than a couple of gigabytes devoted to VM files, then it's time to log out, which deletes most of them, or reboot, which gets rid of the rest.
Makosuke said:No, that's not what it's doing--I believe the post-install optimization involves linking libraries to applications, but in any case it isn't defragmentation.
But, as others said, 10.3 does simple defragmentation automatically, so any speed issue is probably something else. If you must defrag, though, there's no freeware to do it.
cb911 said:OS X does defragging automatically? i've never heard about that... any links to back that up?![]()
Fragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to existing files, especially with resource forks. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files. This process is sometimes known as "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering."
Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus) avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space.
Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X Extended-formatted volumes. This allows a number of small allocations to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk.
There is little benefit to defragmenting.
Chomolungma said:I'm running Panther on a TiBook 400 mhz, with 384MB RAM. It is only running Safari and iTunes 99% of the time. I should tell you that the hard drive is nearly full. Maybe it is time to get a new computer. Be that as it may, I'll try the terminal/command approach.
-Chomo
HexMonkey said:Mac OS X pretty much does defragging automatically. I doubt that is the problem.
Flowbee said:I have a G3 Powerbook with a 6gb hard drive. Panther performance is very good until I get down to about 500mb remaining. Below that, Panther just crawls. (I'm planning to upgrade to a 40gb hard drive in the next couple of weeks.)
IJ Reilly said:That's massive overkill IMO. OSX does a pretty poor job of cleaning up after itself where VM is concerned, but you can always check to see how much disk space is devoted to VM by looking into the directory ..private/var/vm. If you've got more than a couple of gigabytes devoted to VM files, then it's time to log out, which deletes most of them, or reboot, which gets rid of the rest.
Keep some "head room" on your Mac OS X volume for best performance, fewer errors
A quick reminder that Mac OS X requires at least 10 percent of the volume it is contained on as free space in order to maintain the integrity of the file system. However, even with 10 percent free space, Mac OS X's use swap files - as well as extra data generated by third-party application caches, etc. - can quickly put you back into a position of possible directory/file damage.
Realistically, 20 percent of your Mac OS X startup volume should be kept clear in order to achieve best performance and avoid disk problems.