Hey folks. I know it's not required to defray a Mac (usually). But I'm anal. Are there any defrag softwares for the Mac which can do this and is compatible with Lion? 
Last edited:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Lion-compatible Defrag
- Thread starter raymondu999
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
iDefrag, but again, it is not necessary. I tried iDefrag on several of my HDDs which have lots and lots of data written on them during the years, and iDefrag told me, that they are fragmented less than 1%, but if you are that anal about that, have a go at it.
Sorry, didn't know that. Just out of curiosity - why do you want to do this, as it is unnecessary?
Anyway, I don't know of any other defrag application, especially for Lion (not my OS).
www.pure-mac.com may be able to help?
Well, it has only been a week since Lion was been out. I don't degrag but I do partition my 750Gb drive. 125Gb for software, OS and the little things, and 625Gb for part of my photo library - the rest is on an external. Total of about 500Gb full. This works for me and I have not noticed any slowing down over time - I am still on SL and will wait a while to upgrade to Lion.
Yes it is, I just defragged my mac with iDefrag 2 days ago.
From the Coriolis' blog:
"Many people are asking whether or not our products work with Lion. As of today, the current versions of both iDefrag (2.0.5) and iPartition (3.3.1) are compatible with Lion, with the following caveats:
iDefrag’s “Reboot and defragment” mode does not function with Lion (yet… we are working on this). As a result, to run an off-line defragmentation algorithm you will need to boot from a different partition or disk, or from a bootable DVD, which you can create by choosing the “Create Boot Disk…” option from the “iDefrag” menu."
Yes that's what I meant. iDefrag's "full" features with its bootable environment isn't Lion-compatible yet.
Hey folks. I know it's not required to defray a Mac (usually). But I'm anal. Are there any defrag softwares for the Mac which can do this and is compatible with Lion?
OSX defrays itself on the fly
I've heard that being said to anyone and everyone but I'm honestly not convinced; maybe it does; but very slowly and very discreetly and rarely. If not; why would iDefrag still show my drive as being very fragmented and not compacted? Bear in mind I have 200GB worth of free space in my hard drive so that shouldn't be an issue.
Well apple has several articles on it in their help site with explanations, I'll trust that over software whose existence depends on a need to defrag.
I have several 1TB and 500GB HDDs and they often have been filled to the rim (20GB free) before being freed again, and that is when I tested with iDefrag and got those results I posted earlier. But as you are inclined to defrag, just test it to see for yourself.
If not; why would iDefrag still show my drive as being very fragmented and not compacted?
It depends on how you measure fragmentation. No so long ago when I was a windows user I had a few defrag programs and each measured the amount of fragmented space totally different, in some cases the was 3% fragments while another program measured 15% at times. Also, keep in mind that if iDefrag did not measure in a way to see big numbers then they would have nothing to sell.
It depends on how you measure fragmentation. No so long ago when I was a windows user I had a few defrag programs and each measured the amount of fragmented space totally different, in some cases the was 3% fragments while another program measured 15% at times. Also, keep in mind that if iDefrag did not measure in a way to see big numbers then they would have nothing to sell.
You heard? This comes from the top--Apple. In fact, Apple explained that user defragging utilities can actually decrease your performance because the defrag utility developers don't have access to the logical map of MacOS X hard drives.
The money that you waste on a defragging utility would be much better spent sending food and water to the drought victims in Somalia.
The full defrag option in which the program would auto start next boot is not running yet but you can still create boot disc using iDefrag's options to boot from disc and do full defrag.
from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375
"When a file is opened on an HFS+ volume, the following conditions are tested:
* If the file is less than 20 MB in size
* If the file is not already busy
* If the file is not read-only
* If the file has more than eight extents
* If the system has been up for at least three minutes
If all of the above conditions are satisfied, the file is relocated -- it is defragmented on-the-fly.
For most of us the vast majority of our documents are less than 20 MB, but a videographer or film editor should defrag. This is common practice among Final Cut Pro users. An easy way is restoring to an ext. HDD, and restore back, thus defragging without buying any app. After this, check with iDefrag and it should be 0% fragmented.
"When a file is opened on an HFS+ volume, the following conditions are tested:
* If the file is less than 20 MB in size
* If the file is not already busy
* If the file is not read-only
* If the file has more than eight extents
* If the system has been up for at least three minutes
If all of the above conditions are satisfied, the file is relocated -- it is defragmented on-the-fly.
For most of us the vast majority of our documents are less than 20 MB, but a videographer or film editor should defrag. This is common practice among Final Cut Pro users. An easy way is restoring to an ext. HDD, and restore back, thus defragging without buying any app. After this, check with iDefrag and it should be 0% fragmented.
I'm trying to defrag my HD so I can install Bootcamp. Can you let me know how you created your Boot Disk using iDefrag? Did you download a template? I tried creating a bootable DVD by download a template as suggested, but I couldn't boot off of it. Any pointers would be highly appreciated! Thanks!
Btw, I am using Lion also.
Yeah, I used that to create my boot disk, but it didn't work. My DVD wasn't bootable, so I'm wondering how reden managed to create his bootable DVD using iDefrag...
This has to do with the Mac OS journaling system. A short answer is that defragging isn't necessary because the computer doesn't need to search every inch of storage to know where a certain file is at.
The ONLY reason you would ever need to defrag on a Mac is if you have been using it for a long time and you want to install Windows via Bootcamp. Windows needs continuous blocks of memory to be installed and you may get an error when trying to install it if it can't find all those free blocks.
