Defrag Mac Hard Drive to keep it Healthy

While working on your Mac, you might have experienced it running slower than it usually does. That annoying spinning beach ball and things responding slower etc. are denoting your Mac is getting slower and needs optimization to meet its exact performance level.

Data stored on a hard drive does not always occupy the memory in a continuous fashion, but may store in a fragmented manner. This is because large memory blocks are kept empty and proper logical addresses are not assigned. These un-occupied memory blocks create internal fragments. On the contrary, when you delete some data from the same hard drive, it vacates its current memory location. These memory blocks are of uneven sizes and cause external fragments in the memory. Mac OS X utilizes a file system that includes some sort of defragmentation tools and does not much require any manual drive defragmentation. It has inbuilt memory maintenance subprograms that exercise frequently and filters out the fragments to improve the performance of your Mac. It shifts the data stored at the same drive in order to occupy that vacated location. Moreover, it monitors the complete hard drive dynamically in order to unite all small files and arrange them in a collective manner at a common logical memory location, which automatically defrags the vacated memory.

To examine, you can go to the embedded disk management tools i.e. Disk Utility in Mac and see that it does not include any sort of tool to defrag a hard drive or even a volume. Mac OS X with a version above 10.2 does not require any defragmentation, as they include self-monitoring and self-defragmentation sub-programs that does not let the memory to fragment whether you save or delete something. Moreover, the file system (i.e. HFS+ file system) in Mac employs smart memory allocation mechanism that first allocates already vacated memory to fit up the data in, thereby leaving recently vacated space that could also have occupied, but the data had to disunite. 

Additionally, the Hot File Adapting Clustering mechanism employed by Mac OS X monitors the entire frequently accessed (read-only) files and moves them into a hot file zone. It defragments all these files while moving and keeps them into fastest access area on the hard drive. Every opening file on the drive is checked for fragments, and defragmented, if required. However, if you still find your Mac running slow and you are not satisfied with its performance, you can go for the software to defrag your Mac. Moreover, if you think that the internal mechanism of Mac is not efficient enough to defrag my Mac, then you can use defragmentation software for Mac, as these tools remove all internal as well as external fragments from the hard drive and hence, optimize Mac performance.