On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Bruce Johnson <[email protected] > wrote:
> > > On Apr 21, 2009, at 11:26 AM, Wallace Adrian D'Alessio wrote: > > > On another forum I have seen opinions that defragging of OS X hard > > drives is > > both unnecessary and even harmful? > > OS X already minimizes fragmentation as a normal part of the OS, and > frankly, there's been little advantage to defragging any system since > the days when hard drives were measured in megabytes. Doesn't the OS have to use the blocks as it finds them? Admittedly bigger drives have more room so may minimize fragmentation. But I am not sure how the OS itself minimizes fragmentation unless there is code to make the program look for the largest contiguous area to write onto. > > > Defragging can be harmful because you're futzing around with the whole > disk...something screws up and your system can be rendered unbootable > or worse. The Apple website cites a power outage as a possibility. But this could happen during any critical read/write procedure. > > > Generally speaking, the ONLY times actually defragging is valuable > these days is when you have lots of file additions and deletions near > the capacity of the drive. About the only time that happens these days > is when you're doing things like editing video or doing FX for video, > etc. Which happens with me. I am constantly near full on disks and adding /removing programs and other files. > > > Much simpler there to use a scratch disk to hold all the project files > and reformat the scratch disk between projects. > > That works for those who know and use programs or practices to enhance disk area usage. the guy posting the original question on the Mac list referred to is using a G4 with an 80 Gig drive. He was asking what he could do to speed up a sluggish system. Thanks for the input Bruce --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
