OS X Defragmentation

Discussion in 'General Mac Discussion' started by Will Jones, Dec 22, 2002.

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  1. Will Jones, Dec 22, 2002

    Will Jones macrumors member

    Joined:
    Dec 18, 2002
    #1
    (http://www.ambitiouslemon.com/hints.php?id=28)

    Can someone explain to me what it is about OS X's file structure that results in only having to defrag when your harddrive is using 80% (or more) of it's total capacity?

    Thanks,
    Will

    PS. Apologies if this has been covered before, which it most probably has somewhere along the line.
     
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  2. benixau, Dec 23, 2002

    benixau macrumors 65816

    benixau

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2002
    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    #2
    concatenation of free space

    yeah as any less and you are wasting time as OS X scatters swap files all over the place. at 20% free they are in such a small space that they are pretty much going to be ignored by a defrag app.

    long:

    the swap file will be in the 20% free and the defrag app will treat them as a file to be placed at the end of the file system. Therefore the rest of your file system will be concatenated properly. At more than 20% free the swap will more liekly be treated as a permanent file and placed around the middle meaning that when OS X deletes it you have free space in the middle of your HDD. As soon as a file is written to your HDD it will go into the first free space which happens to be in the middle instead of the end, i.e. the free space is no longer concatenated.

    hope it helps. :)
     
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  3. mac15, Dec 23, 2002

    mac15 macrumors 68040

    mac15

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2001
    Location:
    Sydney
    #3
    Defragmentation isn't really a necesstiy, plus it takes almost 24 hours to defrag my HD, 40 gigger, 30gig full. It didn't speed it up all that much, but if your really picky, then by all means do it.
     
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