It was 19/9/03 5:38 pm, when Keith Cooper wrote:

>> How do you defrag a hard drive on a g4 powerbook running osx ?

> In general you don't! :-))

Keith

I have heard that too. Not sure how much credence to give to it. I mean, if
your files are scattered all over the HDD, the read/write head ^must^ do
more travelling than if they were located in one place. No?...

> Macs have rarely needed this sort of disk repair, and in over 15yrs of
> looking after them I've hardly ever seen it really make much practical
> difference.

I'd call it house keeping or file cabinet tidying up. As you say, it
probably doesn't make that much difference.

> You can start up in "safe boot" (hold the shift key down) and let it
> start(it will take a while), then restart as normal. Then run Disk Utility
> to run disk first aid and repair permissions.

You can't do a lot to the boot drive with the Disk Utility, just verify and
repair permissions. You can hold down C and boot from your OS X disk but
unlike OS 9, it can only install the OS again and not give you access to
your HDD. But it does have the Disk Utility on it so you can do repairs to
your boot drive if needed.

> OSX is in fact very robust compared to many systems, and has a lot of self
> repair capabilities built in. Several of these are run on a regular basis
> (like 3am once a week), which is fine for my server, but not a laptop. You
> could try something like MacJanitor
> <http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10491>

MacJanitor runs the same maintenance scripts that the OS does if you leave
your Mac on 24/7. It can't actually defrag your HDD, which is what Janus
wants to do, or do repairs. You need DiskWarrior for OS X to do a defrag or
to rebuild your directories. There is another HD utility for OS X called
Drive X, you can read about its features on the Apple site.

HTH.

--/ Shangara Singh
    :: Adobe Certified Expert ~ Photoshop 7.0
    :: Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Essential Tips
    :: Exam Aids for Photoshop, Illustrator & Dreamweaver
    :: Http://www.shangarasingh.com


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