[Nassifer]

Hello all, I am looking for the BEST app that will do a system veal, and clean if need be. I have used a few, but want ONE that does it all if there is such a beast. Please advise.

thanks

[Spheric Harlot]

What for?

Delete any third-party apps and plug-ins you aren't using, trash documents you no longer need.

No application is able to decide whether that is the case or not.

The only really effective method of purging old preferences etc. is to do a complete format and re-install from scratch.

[Big Mac]

Mac OS X is not Windows.

[Nassifer]

OK if this is the case, then why are there so many so called cleaners out there, I have se stuff like CleanMyMac and others,

[Spheric Harlot]

Because a fool and his money are easily parted.

People defragment their drives and repair permissions weekly, too.

[P]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Because a fool and his money are easily parted.

This.

Most of these cleaning tasks are either irrelevant on Mac OS X or historical anomalies. E.g. fragmentation: Fragmentation became interesting on DOS & Windows back in the eighties, when a) disks were so small that they were often full to the brim and b) the filesystem, FAT, lacked a free space bitmap to easily put files in the optimum location. With more modern filesystems fragmentation is less of an issue, and even less if you make sure to keep 10% of the drive free. Most of those "cleaning" apps on Windows remove autostarting apps and try to bring some order to the table of registered DLLs - neither of which is a problem on Mac OS X (knock on wood in the case of the autostarting apps).

[ibook_steve]

I just want to know what a "system veal" is.

Steve

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by P 

This.

Most of these cleaning tasks are either irrelevant on Mac OS X or historical anomalies. E.g. fragmentation: Fragmentation became interesting on DOS & Windows back in the eighties, when a) disks were so small that they were often full to the brim and b) the filesystem, FAT, lacked a free space bitmap to easily put files in the optimum location. With more modern filesystems fragmentation is less of an issue, and even less if you make sure to keep 10% of the drive free. Most of those "cleaning" apps on Windows remove autostarting apps and try to bring some order to the table of registered DLLs - neither of which is a problem on Mac OS X (knock on wood in the case of the autostarting apps).

Well, I wouldn't say that HFS+ is a "more modern" filesystem, I would just say that fragmentation is a particular and unusual weakness of MS filesystems.

[Big Mac]

It's more sophisticated/better than FAT certainly. You have to stop being such a filesystem snob, besson.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

It's more sophisticated/better than FAT certainly. You have to stop being such a filesystem snob, besson.

Sure, but FAT hasn't been the Windows default filesystem for over a decade now.

[P]

And fragmentation hasn't been relevant for about as long. HFS+ certainly has its weaknesses, but it did get the basics right.

The free space bitmap is like a black and white picture of the disk, with the filled blocks black (1) and free ones white (0). If the filesystem gets a file that needs 100 blocks, it can find a slot that is a little larger than 100 blocks and put the file there. In that case, fragmentation only happens if the file grows or if there isn't a single slot big enough to put a certain file in. The last usually happens when the drive is close to full. The first can happen at any time, but does not happen for common OS files, which are commonly read only.

If you don't have that free space bitmap, the FS will randomly pick a free block and start writing, and if it runs out of contiguous space, fragment and find another random block. This is what old FAT did, and this is why defragging was required maintenance. For anything more modern than - and I certainly include NTFS in that - it's something that can be avoided.