>>Hello Mike: >>I think your remark is alarmist. I've run Norton Utilities once a >>week for years and I optimize my drive nearly as often. However, I >>don't live dangerously. I keep adequate backups. > >Good! Everybody should backup. > >I was talking about risk but I forgot to talk about the other side of the >coin: benefit. For all you people who defragment all the time, there's >almost no benefit. Try this: just before defragging your drive, run a >disk-intensive program and time it. Then defrag the disk and time the >program again. You'll find the speed improvement is small to >imperceptible. Meanwhile, you take PLENTY of time (and risk) defragging >the disk. just adding to the static... :) Rarely is an application (Photoshop, for example) installed on a drive where it fragments to the point that it is significantly slower to load unless the install is conducted on a disk already badly fragmented (say, well over 5%). However, if a photoshop file (say, that 40 mb client graphic you've spent two weeks opening, correcting, saving, etc) is fragmented above the same 5% threshold, your results upon defragmenting may very well surprise you. On faster machines, the hard drive is often the bottle neck. On slower machines, it can be the bus speed, CPU speed, video (raster), amount of RAM, RAM allocation, and speed of RAM that contribute significantly to performance. I doubt you'd see much gain to defragging a G3 until it was up to 10-15% or higher. On a Duo 250, you'd see a big-time gain (not that you are using PS on a 250). Once a year or every six months is sufficient, too. the risk to the data is remote on a laptop (we have built-in backup batteries) and overstated. It can happen, but is usually the fault of the operator, whether they want to admit it or not. and anyone who doesn't make backups should reconsider their philosophy on that. ---------- Duo/2400 List, The friendliest place on the Net! A listserv for users and fans of Mac subportables. FAQ at <http://www.themacintoshguy.com/lists/DuoListFAQ.shtml> Be sure to visit Mac2400! <http://www.sineware.com/mac2400> X-Router | Share your DSL or cable modem between multiple computers! Dr. Bott | <http://www.drbott.com/prod/MIH120.html> PowerBook Guy is | Click here! Everything PowerBook! | http://www.powerbookguy.com Midwest Mac Parts ][ <http://www.midwestmac.com> After-market parts for Macs. ][ 888-356-1104 ][ MacResQ Reader Specials: 2.5GB Seagate SCSI: $119, 4GB IBM SCSI: $199, Norton Util. 4.0: $29, Mac Parts, Systems & Repairs <http://www.macresq.com>
