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MacBook Pro Yearly Maintenance

T

ttracy007

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 13, 2008
2
0
I've had a MacBook Pro now for over a year and was wondering if there was anything I could do 'tune-up wise' to optimize the computer's performance and keep it running well. (I switched from a PC last year and remember there being a laundry list of things you needed to do to keep it from bogging down.)

Along those lines, is there anything I should be doing more regularly to keep it running well also?

Thanks.
 
Repairing permissions is a good maintenance task, as is running disk warrior or drive genius. If you haven't maxxed out the ram, now would be a good time to think about that as well.
 
I'm sorry as I'm a Newbie to Mac. How do you repair permissions and clean up your Mac? I know how to do it for Windows but I'm lost when it comes to Mac.
 
How to repair disk permissions

Run the Disk Utility app that comes with Mac OS. Go to your Applications folder and find the Utilities folder. In that folder you'll find the Disk Utility.

Click on your hard drive on the left and you'll see a Repair Disk Permissions button in the bottom middle of the window.
 
This is a website I came across while searching around on M|R once... I know it is good up to OS X 10.4, but it can give you ideas of what to do:
• Repair disk permissions (Disk Utility, among others)
• Run routine maintenance scripts (wiget: maintidget)
• Clear Caches (on OS X 10.4 I use cache out X)
• Repair and backup preferences (I think there is a way to do this in OS X w/o an additional application)
• Do a file system check and disk repair
• Defrag
• Check S.M.A.R.T. status
 
techound1 said:
Repairing permissions is a good maintenance task, as is running disk warrior or drive genius. If you haven't maxxed out the ram, now would be a good time to think about that as well.
Click to expand...

Repairing permissions is a troubleshooting tool, not a regular maintenance step.

And also a much longer, more robust rant on why repairing permissions as a regular maintenance step is useless:

Now that that pleasantness is over with, the real issue I have is all these websites that suggest repairing permissions will actually fix/prevent problems. Even worse is when otherwise intelligent people are poised with a Mac OS X related troubleshooting problem and immediately suggest the user repair permissions. Repairing permissions won't fix your problem. As Jason Harris said (and I am paraphrasing), "Repairing permissions is zapping the PRAM for the twenty-first century". I couldn't agree more. Both are equally futile attempts to fix a completely unrelated problem. In other words, 99% of the time, neither will fix nor prevent any problem. Especially not the problems they are recommended for. Covering yourself in vaseline and rolling around naked in the dirt and repairing permissions are just as likely to fix your Mac OS X problem. People swear by repairing permissions as often as they save files and present as proof the fact they don't have any problems. That's rather specious reasoning.
Click to expand...
 
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