Mac maintenance - what to do daily/weekly/monthly?

[mikka000]

Hi. I have a white unibody MacBook 2.26 GB 4GB (installed 2GB myself) 1067Mhz. I bought it late last year and I was wondering to keep it in good working order what should I do to it in terms of maintenance? Should I use disk utility? if so how often? and what else I can do to keep it clean (internally i mean) and running at its best?

Thanks in advance,

Michael.

 

[stridemat]

Have things going wrong? My mac is on 24 hours a day and is only ever turned off for update resets and I never run maintenance myself. OSX looks after most the maintenance that needs to be done.

 

[Kingcodez]

You don't need to do anything.
Mine is also on 24/7. Just once a week maby click on check for updates and install whatever. I think the computer does it for you anyways.

 

[stridemat]

You don't need to do anything.
Mine is also on 24/7. Just once a week maby click on check for updates and install whatever. I think the computer does it for you anyways.

Yes it does, maintenance is carried out through the night if you leave it on, or in the morning upon boot-up if you turn it off.

 

[AV8TOR]

Yes it does, maintenance is carried out through the night if you leave it on, or in the morning upon boot-up if you turn it off.

Is that also true when the computer is in sleep mode?

 

[SoCalRich]

Disk Defragmentation = increased speed...

I use the Drive Genus suite. I defragment my hard drive about once a week. I defiantly notice an increase in speed after I do it. I've been using it for years.

Great company, good product. http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php

 

[AdeFowler]

Are things going wrong? My mac is on 24 hours a day and is only ever turned off for update resets and I never run maintenance myself. OSX looks after most the maintenance that needs to be done.

My situation exactly. The only thing I do is make sure I've got everything backed up in case things go wrong!

 

[stridemat]

Is that also true when the computer is in sleep mode?

I think the scripts are 'queued' so they will run on next start-up.


Also backing up is always a good idea, just in case the unimaginable happens.

 

[Zipties]

I use the Drive Genus suite. I defragment my hard drive about once a week. I defiantly notice an increase in speed after I do it. I've been using it for years.

Great company, good product. http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php

+1 for Drive Genius for mechanical drives, but if you have an SSD drive don't do it.

 

[damnyooneek]

use it daily and update it when they are available. thats all you need to do.

 

[jbrettz]

you can go to apple and download ONYX a good mainteance software.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

Brett

 

[SoCalRich]

+1 for Drive Genius for mechanical drives, but if you have an SSD drive don't do it.

Oh really, Thanks, I hadn't heard about that. What is the problem with using that program on a SSD?

 

[LesQQmorePewPew]

according some of the forum residents here osx doesn't need maintenance. might want to ask them wat they mean by that b/c i have no idea as well

 

[kaiserben]

you can go to apple and download ONYX a good mainteance software.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

Brett

+1

 

[Zipties]

Oh really, Thanks, I hadn't heard about that. What is the problem with using that program on a SSD?

SSDs aren't designed for defrag process. The way they're designed, they don't need a defrag. You may, actually, make it slower by making it more fragmented by doing a defrag on an SSD. Plus, SSDs have a limited number of writes to any one memory location. Defrag does a lot of writes to the same memory locations so you will burn out the flash memory much quicker.

 

[SoCalRich]

SSDs aren't designed for defrag process. The way they're designed, they don't need a defrag. You may, actually, make it slower by making it more fragmented by doing a defrag on an SSD. Plus, SSDs have a limited number of writes to any one memory location. Defrag does a lot of writes to the same memory locations so you will burn out the flash memory much quicker.

I REALLY appreciate your heads up...

 

[Zipties]

I REALLY appreciate your heads up...

Of course. Love to help.

 

[mikka000]

great, thanks for your advice guys!
also, someone mentioned SSD before, what is that? is that for external drives?

 

[ayeying]

great, thanks for your advice guys!
also, someone mentioned SSD before, what is that? is that for external drives?

Solid State Drive...

It's a new form of storage, replacing the traditional Hard Drives in the near future.

 

[bobr1952]

Is that also true when the computer is in sleep mode?

Maintenance is done when your computer awakens. I had doubts about this so I put a maintenance app in my dashboard just to see for myself--monthly, weekly and daily maintenance all get done.

 

[Hellishness]

I'm surprised that no one mentioned to calibrate your battery monthly .

 

[AppleMacDudeG4]

periodic scripts

Macs have scripts that can be run for some very basic maintenance. The command itself has to be typed from the terminal command line. It is a UNiX command. Here is the command with different parameters:

sudo periodic daily

sudo periodic weekly

sudo periodic monthly

You wil be prompted for your administrator password. The daily script gets run around 3 am or so if you leave your computer running. Typing the commands at the terminal line just makes the scripts run without having to wait.

 

[yusukeaoki]

Macs are well made.No maintenance needed unless you see something wrong.

 

[krravi]

according some of the forum residents here osx doesn't need maintenance. might want to ask them wat they mean by that b/c i have no idea as well

I don't think they were talking about maintenance. They were probably talking about "Defragmentation".

Defragmentation has been a subject of controversy on Mac OS in general. Because of the way it operates.

When you delete some files from your disk there are gaps in the physical layout of the files on the disk. What Mac OS does, is look at the empty space and if, what its going to write is larger than that space, then it ignores it and writes in on the large available space. So it avoids fragmentation, naturally. Now, thats why you don't need to defrag your disk.

But overtime, this can go on and the disk will have lot of empty spaces as you keep deleting files from the disk. Thats when defragmentation software helps. But these days with very large disks we always seem to have lot of space left on your hard disks and hence people think defragmentation is not necessary.

But what if you are writing small files that can fill up those spaces? I honestly don't know if it uses them or just starts using the next available free space. Mostly I would guess that it does use those unused spaces.

To put this theory to test, I did notice that my new imac hard disk was making grinding noises(normal btw).. as i have been moving/copying/deleting lot of files lately(moving from windows).

So I did a restore from my time machine backup and the grinding noise is gone and all the files do seem to open up fast. So defragmentation does help and doing a time machine restore is probably the best way to defrag your disk. Doing the restore once every 6 months or so or based on your usage helps keep the disk in good shape.

Others who know more about this, please add your input to this so we can know better.

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Regarding maintenance scripts, I read somewhere that it starts those at around 3:00 AM and finishes it around 5:00 AM.

So I scheduled my Mac to turn on around 3:00 and shutdown around 6:00.

Just curious, where is this time stored and how can we modify those settings and schedule?

 

[Lukewarmwinner]

you can go to apple and download ONYX a good mainteance software.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

Brett

The only maintenance software I've ever used