Need of defragmenting Mac and software to defrag Mac - are the
questions being asked by one of our readers who owns a recordine
studio. The applications he uses take about 5-10 minutes to start
which usually used to take a minute. He faces programs running very
slow and sometimes hanging with no responses at all.
He feels that if he had been on Windows he would have fixed the
issue with virus scan, disk cleanup, registry clean, defrag,
scandisk, and finally, reinstall the OS. But on a Mac, doesn't know
what to do?
From an Apple Support article entitled “About disk optimization
with Mac OS X“, it would seem that Mac
defragmentation isn’t necessary.
Why should I not defrag my Mac OS X? Here are the reasons:
Now a days the hard disk are available with very high storage capacity which is much more than those available a few years ago. So, the file systen doesn't need store data in section of drive. The HFS+ file system smart enough to self optimize the drive. It avoids reusing space freed after deleting files as long as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space.
The method of delayed memory allocation in and after Mac OS X 10.2. This makes combined memory allocation into a single large area of the disk.
The more frequently we edit a file, the more are the chances of getting fragmented. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment mac files. This process is sometimes known as “Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering.”
In OS X the low levl fragmentation rarely affect the system performance due to aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching technique.
If you read the article mentioned at Apple support site you would have noticed a line stating “If your
disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files,
there’s a chance the disks could be fragmented. In this case, you
might benefit from defragmentation, which can be performed with some
third-party disk utilities.”
Please note that a good quality audio track of an average of 3
minute song can create a file of 50-100 MB. So, the size of about 60
to 70 tracks can be put under “large files” list of the Apple
Support document.
In looking for more information about the value of defragging a
Mac the general opinion is 'NO'. Although it is not necessary, but if
you’re using large files regularly, like audio and video, you
should defrag your Mac regularly.
How to defrag Mac drive?
The Mac OS X doesn't have any inbuilt utility to defrag the drive
so, you can opt for some third party Mac defragmenting software like
Stellar Drive Defrag. One can choose to defrag a specific volume , a
single large files or an entire disk to defragment.
For more details about the software visit:
http://www.stellardefragdrive.com/
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