which goes to prove that there's no reason to believe any of it. Everyone believes something different and contradicts each other. I'm all for defragging and wish they never took it out of osx.
They did not take defragging
out of MacOS X because they never put defragging into MacOS X--not as a user utility at any rate. MacOS X defrags itself. There are also third-party defragging utilities like
iDefrag. Unlike Microsoft and Windows, Apple never included a user-runnable defragging utility with MacOS X or with any version of MacOS or Macintosh System Software before that.
I notice that several posters use the term
optimize. In MS-DOS and Windows parlance, the term means that each software title is stored in contiguous clusters on the hard drive and that they are located on the drive so as to minimize access time. On the Mac,
optimize means nothing of the sort. It means that applications are prebound to their dependent system frameworks. Otherwise, applications must bind to their frameworks when they are launched the first time. Once bound, applications stay bound until new software is installed. This was an issue with early versions of MacOS X. Latter versions prebind during software installation. In the worse case, however, it was an issue only during the first launch of a new application.
This Mac user has used the Mac since System 6.0.3. This was a time when hard drives were optional. Applications commonly shipped on 800 K floppy disks with a fully operational System. I have used Mac utilities going back to
Symantec Utilities for Macintosh (since merged with
Norton Utilities for Macintosh),
Central Point, and
TechTools Pro. I have optimized my Mac in the MS-DOS sense. I have also benchmarked my Mac before and after optimization. The takeaway message is that I have never measured an improvement due to optimization above noise-level. Not in System 6.0.4. Not in MacOS X 10.6.4. Not in anything between.
BulletToothTony's assertion that he experienced a 17 second improvement is not prove of the efficacy of defragging. It is the exact opposite. Optimization of a Windows hard drive can yield improvements that are measurable in minutes.
You are not running Windows. Therefore, you don't look to Windows solutions. The most effective thing that you can do to keep your Mac humming is to maintain at least 10% of your hard drive capacity available are free space. This gives your Mac's UNIX virtual memory system the headroom that it needs. If you suspect that you have a problem, then running
fsck -fy from the commandline in
Single User Mode should identify and repair any problems that you may have.
These two simple measures will address 99.99% of the issues that you may have. There is no need to futz with your machine.
