On Jun 4, 2005, at 9:44 AM, Yersinia wrote:
Mike writes,
<Everytime I install a program or update I see a message of
"Optimizing
Volume..."
What exactly is it doing?>
I've never had any of my Macs do this spontaneously and don't know why
yours is doing it -- I have to actively optimize.
In any case, when your computer stores stuff, it's not necessarily
to the
same exact location on the hard drive every time, even when saving the
"updated" version of a file -- as one example: updating your resume
and
save over the old one. Over time you get "fragments" where pieces of
particular apps or files are...for lack of a better description,
"elsewhere from the original location" on the drive.
This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the 'Optimizing'
that you see going on with software installation.
What you're talking about is disk defragmentation, and is a
filesystem-level thing.
What is going on when your see 'Optimizing...' during a software
install is called 'pre-binding' and has to do with pre-configuring
software to use the various libraries in the system
Here is a rather exhaustive but understandable description:
<http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/stories/2002/08/24/
prebindingExplained.html>
While we're on the subject, this is what Apple has to say on the
subject of defragmentation:
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668>
--
Bruce Johnson
"no matter where you go, there you are", B. Banzai
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