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Friday, August 30, 2013

Defragmentation Safeguards Used By Mac OS X


Overfilled hard drive, obsolete hardware configuration, accumulation of system-generated waste, and many more factors, though, are responsible for minimizing the performance of Mac; fragmentation, nonetheless, is one of the foremost causes of the poor performance of your Mac system. Meanwhile, you come across a colored spinning beach ball, sluggishly booting Mac, and poorly executing applications and files.


Ever since you purchased this so-called excellent computer (i.e. Mac), it is proving itself exactly how you had heard about it. However, this excellence does not last long and it starts facing performance issues as mentioned above. In such a painful situation, many of the users do not even know what the actual cause of this annoying state of Mac is and directly contact with Mac technicians. Well, taking help from experts is a wise decision, but it does not guarantee that the same issue will not arise again just as every other issue does. On the other hand, a few users even ask why to optimize Mac, as it is the finest computer that does not require optimization at all. However, all such users need to know that excellence lacks a lot to meet perfection. This means that performance degradation is a state that is strongly associated with every machine and so does with Mac.


Apart from the typical causes of slowdown of Mac computers, fragmentation is also a major cause of poor performance of computers, since it is responsible for scattering of data segments on the hard drive. For demonstration, go through this article carefully.

“Fragmentation refers to a deprived state of the hard drives that involves data being scattered or stored randomly.”


Mac OS X employs HFS+ file system for allocation of storage blocks to data. Well, formatting a hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) splits its storage space into blocks of certain sizes to store data. When you save a large file to your Mac drive, based on its size, Mac file system divides it into a number of segments of smaller sizes and each of these segments gets a separate storage block. The storage blocks occupied by all segments of a single file are logically connected to each other. However, due to some poor storage allocation algorithms, file segments occupy blocks that are at distant locations on the drive. Likewise, because of the variance in the sizes of these segments and the storage blocks, many storage blocks contain free spaces, whereas several others require these segments to undergo segmentation again in order to be able to fit in those blocks.


However, not only these internal factors are responsible for fragmentation, but some external factors are as well. For example, when you move a large file from one location to another on your Mac, then a slew of storage blocks are emptied simultaneously. Mac users believe in the fact that Mac OS X does not face fragmentation issue, as it employs HFS+ file system to format its hard drive. This means, if Mac OS X does not face fragmentation issue, they why to optimize Mac? Well, you might be thinking this; it is also a fact that the HFS+ file system only minimizes the need for defragmentation on Mac OS X, but it does not eliminate fragments. Let us discuss how Mac file system deals with fragmentation:

“Defragmentation involves rearranging all physical blocks on the hard drive in a logical order aspiring to reduce the response time of data stored onto them. During this process, all fragments are eliminated throughout the allocated regions on the hard drives, which results in improved performance of the Mac systems.”


Every time you open the files stored on your Mac, HFS+ file system thoroughly scans each file for fragments. In case, if a file is found as highly fragmented (i.e. having eight or more fragments), the file system defrags it automatically. However, not every file satisfies the criteria set (i.e. it works on a fragmented file only if it is not more than 20MB of size) for automatic defragmentation. Therefore, since Mac is unable to defrag large files (more than 20MB of size), you have to use a professional disk defragmentation tool for Mac to get its performance improved significantly.


A professional Mac disk defragmentation application thoroughly analyzes your Mac drive when it is initiated. This analysis includes scanning all storage blocks, storage algorithm used for storage blocks allocation and the remaining free blocks as well. In technical terms, defragmentation involves maintenance of the work done by the file system and yields the highly efficient and contiguous storage blocks with reduced number of fragments. Thus, it minimizes the response time of data and improves the performance of your Mac system. For this, all storage blocks in non-contiguous regions on the hard drive are rearranged in a logical order, which results in improved productivity of your Mac. Besides, it uses compaction mechanism to impede fragmentation to occur again by creating larger regions of free spaces on your Mac drive.


Since a slew of disk defragmentation apps for Mac OS X are available on the Internet, when it comes to selection of a reliable and efficient one, many users get confused and select a random one. However, selection of such an inefficient Mac app may adversely affect your Mac system. In general, an unreliable Mac disk defragmentation app may cause data loss. What all you come across is reliant on the selection of the app. Therefore, in case you are confused or unaware of which app is to choose for your Mac, you can take the help from Mac experts. Besides, make sure you properly go through the user manual provided with the app before using it, as the security of your data as well as the Mac system is must.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Drive Cleaner for Mac to fix slow speed

The smooth running of Mac OS X impresses us all, but with time, it deteriorates its performance and becomes as slow as sloth. No one likes to see a spinning beach ball for minutes while trying to perform any activity, whether it is important or unimportant. Users often come across such problems wherein their Mac starts taking too much time even when performing simple file saving tasks. In such cases, many of you may think of replacing your old Mac with a new machine. However, before opting for such an expensive resolution for this problem, it is recommended to watch out some simple yet cost-effective ways of handling these cases. If you follow these below mentioned fixes for slow Mac, then you can get back the old speed of your machine:
  • Clean the Hard Drive: Most of us forget that hard drive is a mechanical device that has limited space, and keep it cluttered with unnecessary stuffs. It is seen that the 40% of the space of user’s hard drive is filled with the items that are very rarely or never used. Removing the unnecessary items from hard drive and moving the less used ones to an external drive like external hard drive or CD drive can be a way to make free space on your Mac. Moreover, visiting the trash of your iPhoto is also recommended. Deleting your photos does not mean that they are gone completely from your machine’s hard drive. The iPhoto has its personal bin that contains all the deleted photos. Emptying this bin can clean up your hard drive.
  • Watch Out the ‘Activity Monitor’: Keeping an eye on the ‘Activity Monitor’ of your Mac machine, you can find out the application that is using maximum CPU resources, and hence making machine sluggish. Go to ‘Applications >> Utilities >> Activity Monitor’, click the ‘%CPU’ to get the list of the percentage of CPU used by all the running applications. If you find that an application is showing 90% or above number here, then close that application immediately by clicking the ‘Quit Process’. Another check that you can perform here is for ‘Disk Usage’. Click the ‘Disk Usage’ tab provided at the bottom of the ‘Activity Monitor’. If the free space (in green color) is getting narrow in the provided pie chart, then you should clear unused files from your hard drive.
  • Check the ‘Log in’ Items: A sluggish Mac performs a slow start up. This is because the ‘Startup Items’ or ‘Login Items’ collect so many applications. All these applications take a start when you start up your Mac, and hence deteriorate the speed of your machine. To check it, go to ‘System Preferences >> Users & Groups >> Log in Items’. From here, uncheck all the applications that you do not want in startup.
  • Clean the Desktop: After removing all the unneeded applications from ‘Start Up’, it is time to check out your desktop. Mac users often keep their desktop cluttered with hundreds of icons. For better working of Mac, it is suggested to stop saving anything on desktop and organize files into their respective folders. However, for best results, it is suggested to keep the desktop completely clean.
  • Close Unused Programs and Perform Regular Restarts: This point is especially for Mac users as they take the advantage of multi-tasking facilitated by Mac. Many applications running simultaneously slow down the processing of Mac. Close all the applications that are not currently in use. Apart from this, most Mac users keep their machine in sleep mode and do not restart it regularly. This again makes machine slow. Therefore, to make machine faster, it is recommended to restart Mac frequently.
  • Use Mac Cleaning Utility: The easiest yet most efficient way of speeding up your Mac is cleaning it with the help of a professional utility. Professional Mac cleaning utility removes all unnecessary files, large files, and junks, and completely uninstalls an unused application by simple drag and drop. An efficient utility of this category provides you the feature to schedule the cleaning task at your desired ‘Time’ and ‘Date’. Some tools provide the feature of automatic cleanup of Mac removable devices, which are attached to your Mac. The option to set filters for the searching of specific category of files enables the software to include or exclude some particular type of file for cleaning. A reliable utility also provides the option to get the preview of the files before removing them from your machine. This feature prevents removal of useful files from your machine.
  • Upgrade Your RAM: If none of the above-mentioned methods is a useful fix for slow Mac, then upgrading your Mac can be a way to speed it up. Upgrading your Mac is not very expensive method and it speeds up your machine. Generally, two GB RAM is sufficient for a normal computer user. However, for graphic designers, this limit increases to 4GB because they use graphic files with heavy applications like Adobe PhotoShop, which eat a lot of RAM. However, if your machine is losing performance even after 2GB or 4GB of RAM, then adding extra 2GB can speed up its performance at least by 50%.   

Almost all aforementioned methods are the best ways for speeding up your slow Mac and more specifically, the professional Mac drive cleaner, which you can opt when basic cleaning methods do not work. If you have doubt that which software you should select for cleaning Mac, then you can download the free demo version of the tool. Most of the efficient utilities of this category provide the free demo version of their software.

Generally, a free utility performs all basic Mac cleaning tasks, and to avail extra features, you have to purchase the license of the software, which too is not very expensive. So, use the method of your choice and get back the old speed of your machine without much trouble.