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Disk Defragmenting in OSX Panther


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I noticed my mac does not come with a disk defragmenting program like windows does (long time windows user). Why is that? Does OSX do a better job of file management? What do you guys do/use? There doesn't seem to be very many defragmenting programs out there that will run on Panther...
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You are correct, sir! :)

 

There is almost never a reason to optimize disks in OS X.

 

Info about this direct from Apple:

 

Mac OS X: About Disk Optimization

 

According to Apple, optimizing a disk can actually decrease performance in OS X:

 

"Mac OS X systems have hundreds of thousands of small files, most of which are rarely accessed. Optimizing them is a major effort for very little practical gain. There is also a chance that one of the files placed in the "hot band" for rapid reads during system startup might be moved during defragmentation, which would actually decrease performance."

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In that case it would be good to optimize the external non-system disk you're using for large audio or video files.

 

More info from Apple:

 

If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files (such as editing video...), there's a chance they could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation, which might be performed with third-party disk utilities. Another option is to back up your important files, erase the hard disk, then reinstall Mac OS X and your backed up files."

 

You could also backup your audio disk to another disk, then copy that backup disk to the original (erased) disk again, overwriting what was there before. On a UNIX based system like OS X, this will arrange all the files back contiguously on your original disk, essentially optimizing the disk.

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While there is less fragmentation in OSX, audio drives still require regular defraging. The fastest and best way is to simply reinitialize them. Back up the files, which you should have already done, reinitialize the drive and copy the files back.

Hope this is helpful.

 

NP Recording Studios

Analog approach to digital recording.

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After running into some mild application launch problems, I ran something called Cocktail, which did some resetting of permissions and that stuff. It solved the problem and seemed to give my Mac a little performance boost as a whole.

 

- Jeff

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