On Jul 28, 2011, at 10:01 AM, Cliff Rediger wrote:

> Back in the OS 9 days defragging seemed essential
> at least on my 5300 PB.
> 
> Now in Tiger and above, I'm wondering if it remains
> a useful or even necessary maintenance option.

Unnecessary, and potentially hazardous, as it does, remotely, put your system 
at risk for serious directory corruption if something happens while it's 
running. 

Two reasons:

OS X has a form of this built into the OS, as files are saved the system tries 
to keep them together.
Disk IO is such that there's just not the kinds of noticeable lag there used to 
be.

There are still a few times where defragging is warranted, but they're rare or 
specialized (such as video editing on a large scale), so that the preferred 
"Defrag" is  backup, reformat, restore. 

For video projects you should really have an entire drive designated for your 
working one, and reformat it between projects.


-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs


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