[OmniX]

is there any consensus as to what is the best disk defragger for Panther?

tx,
ox

[gorickey]

Actually, there is:

It's called "Apple Mac OS X Panther"

Yeah, that's right. It's built-in now, no need to defrag with a Journaled HFS+ system.

[Judge_Fire]

And it's described in pretty good detail at:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...p;m=9900929295

[plants word defragment for future searchers]

J

[Krypton]

Panther only defragments small files, but I wouldn't think defragmentation is much of an issue for OS X.

[pat++]

Originally posted by Krypton:
Panther only defragments small files, but I wouldn't think defragmentation is much of an issue for OS X.

Panther defrags files < 20mb which is already quite big. I guess it covers 99% of the files on a harddisk...

[Moonray]

You won't need one and this question arises monthly here. period.

-

[SMacTech]

Norton Speed Disk still does a good job for me. I run it about every 2 months. Don't visit the Doctor though.
Panther does a great job defragging behind the scenes too.

[Orion27]

Would never touch Norton. Tech tool Pro 4 if I had to defrag.

[Brass]

Even if it does get fragmented, HFS+ doesn't suffer the same problems as some other filesystem types. For many Mac users, defragmenting is more trouble than it's worth.

[Moonray]

Placebo effect. Defragmenting a hard drive is a pacifier to people who believe into it. I doubt any of them could tell if their hd has just been defragged or two months ago if they wouldn't remember when they did it last time.

-

[Truepop]

I don't have enough funds right now to get tech tools 4 but Drive 10 does a good job, or at least a job of defraging. You just have to remember to turn off journaling in disk utility before booting to it. But I have two macs that can boot to 10.1. If I ever get a newer mac I guess I will have to purchase some new software or wait for BootCD.

[bergy]

From Apple ...

OS 10 Disk Optimization
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

"For most users there is little benefit to defragging ... however ... if your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files, there's a chance they could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation. "

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by bergy:
From Apple ...

OS 10 Disk Optimization
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

"For most users there is little benefit to defragging ... however ... if your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files, there's a chance they could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation. "

That's just way to many "maybes", "mights" and "under the right circumstances" to even be worth the trouble.

[Orion27]

The risk may outweigh the benefit here: "Truepop" Drive 10 worked for me too.
I don't bother anymore.

[Back up 15 and punt]

The easiest way to defrag OS X is to copy the contents of your drive to another drive and then copy it back. The copy process will defrag your files for you.

[malvolio]

For those who have their hearts set on defragging their disks in Panther, let me just point out that the only safe defragger is still Alsoft's trusty old PlusOptimizer 1.3 (included on the DiskWarrior 2.1 CD). Although it runs in OS 9, it works fine on OS X disks.
With any other defragger program, if you have a crash, power failure or even a power surge during the defragging process, you will suffer major disk damage. If the same happens while using PlusOptimizer, no harm, no foul.

[[APi]TheMan]

Man I swear by Norton Disk Doctor. I support Macs at our university and I touch OS 9 and OS X machines a few times a month with Disk Doctor. It works well. The hard stuff like Btree errors, volume header errors. Norton fixes it.

Defragging is a thing of the past, though.

[tooki]

Oh, so Norton Disk Doctor Kevorkian is so kind as to fix all those errors it erroneously shows, and to fix the errors it causes itself? How generous.

Wait till you get a severely corrupted disk and Norton can't fix it. DiskWarrior stands a much better chance at repairing it correctly.

tooki

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
Man I swear by Norton Disk Doctor.

Maybe you meant "at" instead of "by"? I swore at Norton Disk Doctor quite a bit when it destroyed two of my drives, one of which had been working fine and checked out in every other utility prior to running NDDK.

[kovacs]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Maybe you meant "at" instead of "by"? I swore at Norton Disk Doctor quite a bit when it destroyed two of my drives, one of which had been working fine and checked out in every other utility prior to running NDDK.

I too lost one partition after using Norton Disk Doctor, all files were still visible but they were all empty, I haven't used Norton Disk Doctor or any other app ( besides Cocktail ) anymore and so far haven't had any problems...

[Sven G]

For Norton haters, lovers and indifferents... here's the Symantec Forum at MacFixIt: rather interesting. (After the most recent updates, the Norton products are getting a little better, anyway - finally...)

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by tooki:
Oh, so Norton Disk Doctor Kevorkian is so kind as to fix all those errors it erroneously shows, and to fix the errors it causes itself? How generous.

Wait till you get a severely corrupted disk and Norton can't fix it. DiskWarrior stands a much better chance at repairing it correctly.

tooki

Wow, folks, strongly opinionated. Though I don't underestimate your own valid usage and personal experience with Norton Disk Doctor in the least, I must disagree. Yeah, DiskWarrior's a great tool as well, and when I do get a problem that Norton can't fix I usually DO resort to DiskWarrior. While I'm not sure how the tools differ, as I'm sure you gentlemen do, volume header errors and btree errors are what they are, and whatever can fix them is good in my book. I generally try to stay away from newer Nortons, though, as I think everything in Norton's package besides Disk Doctor is a joke; and that goes for both Anti-virus and internet security.

DiskWarrior saved my butt... twice. I used Diskwarrior 3 public beta on a FireWire drive that had suddenly gone south, if I remember correctly I unplugged it while it was still mounted. DiskWarrior 2.x worked wonders, albeit a little bit slower than 3.

While we're on the subject of disk repair utilities, what experiences have you had with Drive 10? I've never really been a fan of Micromat, so I've got a semi-skewed opinion of their stuff. I remember when Drive 10 came out there was some skeptism as to if it actually did anything, and since then I guess I've never given it a second thought.

[MDA]

Originally posted by Back up 15 and punt:
The easiest way to defrag OS X is to copy the contents of your drive to another drive and then copy it back. The copy process will defrag your files for you.

This works for an OS 9 volume but won't work on an OS X volume. In the process of copying some essential invisible files will not be copied.

MDA

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by MDA:
This works for an OS 9 volume but won't work on an OS X volume. In the process of copying some essential invisible files will not be copied.

MDA

You are correct but it will catch a very large majority of the files. This technique was recommended to me by a long time Unix Admin. And honestly, it works just fine.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
Wow, folks, strongly opinionated. Though I don't underestimate your own valid usage and personal experience with Norton Disk Doctor in the least, I must disagree. Yeah, DiskWarrior's a great tool as well, and when I do get a problem that Norton can't fix I usually DO resort to DiskWarrior. While I'm not sure how the tools differ, as I'm sure you gentlemen do, volume header errors and btree errors are what they are, and whatever can fix them is good in my book. I generally try to stay away from newer Nortons, though, as I think everything in Norton's package besides Disk Doctor is a joke; and that goes for both Anti-virus and internet security.

DiskWarrior saved my butt... twice. I used Diskwarrior 3 public beta on a FireWire drive that had suddenly gone south, if I remember correctly I unplugged it while it was still mounted. DiskWarrior 2.x worked wonders, albeit a little bit slower than 3.

While we're on the subject of disk repair utilities, what experiences have you had with Drive 10? I've never really been a fan of Micromat, so I've got a semi-skewed opinion of their stuff. I remember when Drive 10 came out there was some skeptism as to if it actually did anything, and since then I guess I've never given it a second thought.

Well all I can say is to be sure and run NDD once without letting it fix *anything* to make sure that the errors it reports only occur once and not a huge number of times repeatedly. It's when it starts doing that that it is misdiagnosing errors that don't exist and will destroy your drive if you let it continue. Interestingly after it destroyed one partition, I tried it on the other ones just for curiosity's sake but without letting it "fix" anything. Turns out it was reporting the same repeated errors on *all* my drives. So it would have completely destroyed everything if I had let it.

The thing about DiskWarrior is that it is the only one that tells you about everything it's going to do before it touches your drive. And it also makes its replacement directory, and performs all repair operations on it before that report comes up. So you know that part is not going to get screwed up halfway in like Norton sometimes does with its "Norton has encountered a problem that it cannot repair" message that always means your drive has just been scrambled. When DiskWarrior lets you know what it's going to do, it's already done everything except for actually writing the new directory to the disk, so there's only one operation that can go wrong. And even then it does a fail-safe write so that even if the power went out while it was writing the new directory, the drive would be OK. And what's more is that it lets you mount and look over the new directory to make sure it works properly before you replace the old one.

By contrast, Norton just looks for problems and tries to "fix" them as they come. If too many come at a time, it bails out, leaving your disk in a "stick a fork in it" state, and there's no way for you to know if it's going to do this unless you run it once first without letting it fix anything. Basically, DiskWarrior is a much, much, much, much, much safer tool than Norton.

[MDA]

Originally posted by Back up 15 and punt:
You are correct but it will catch a very large majority of the files. This technique was recommended to me by a long time Unix Admin. And honestly, it works just fine.

So you're saying that if you copy and OS X volume to an external drive, wipe the OS X volume clean, then copy the OS X volume back it will boot? I don't think so.

MDA

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by MDA:
So you're saying that if you copy and OS X volume to an external drive, wipe the OS X volume clean, then copy the OS X volume back it will boot? I don't think so.

MDA

I never said that. You simply copy the files that the system will allow you to copy and then copy them back. The copy process will defrag the files that you are allowed to copy. The hidden files won't be touched.

[MDA]

Originally posted by Back up 15 and punt:
I never said that. You simply copy the files that the system will allow you to copy and then copy them back. The copy process will defrag the files that you are allowed to copy. The hidden files won't be touched.

Okay. I thought you were saying that it could be used as a method of backing up an entire volume like in OS 9. I think I'd still rather use Norton to defrag.

MDA

[Cadaver]

Defragging OS X 10.3.x. is a waste of time. Anything less than 20MB will be defragged anyway when they're touched by the OS. And don't forget, even large, multi-megabyte applications are (most of the time) packages containing dozens of tiny files anyway.

Defrag: Windows, yes. OS X, no.

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by MDA:
Okay. I thought you were saying that it could be used as a method of backing up an entire volume like in OS 9. I think I'd still rather use Norton to defrag.

MDA

I think you will find this method more reliable and certainly cheaper than buying a utility to perform what is certain to be an identical function. Besides, its virtually impossible to screw up your disk with this method.

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Defragging OS X 10.3.x. is a waste of time. Anything less than 20MB will be defragged anyway when they're touched by the OS. And don't forget, even large, multi-megabyte applications are (most of the time) packages containing dozens of tiny files anyway.

Defrag: Windows, yes. OS X, no.

So I guess I strayed on the subject a little bit. I guess if some new reader is following along with us they might be confused, so here: Norton Disk Doctor != defragger. Speed Disk would be the tool for that in the Norton Suite. Although Speed Disk was awesome in its heyday, back when it was on floppy disks, I would never use any recent version of Speed Disk on an OS X drive.

Also, to address the original topic, defragging in Mac OS X is overrated and pointless. I don't know what the draw to "defrag" is for most users, I guess they're just assuming that harddrives generally make use of our good friend entropy and start lazily plopping files all over the place as time goes on. Personally, I don't run diagnostic tools on my home machine, and though I hold DiskWarrior in a very high regard, I use Norton to fix most of the problems on computers at the University. I will admit, though, that 90% of the computers that I run Norton on are Mac OS 9 computers, Norton and OS X has never made me feel right.

Whenever I have an OS X disk with problems I usually run Disk Utility to see if there are problems with the disk, and if they cannot be fixed, then I back up the user's data and format their drive. I rallied to get our tech shop a copy of DiskWarrior 3 last summer when it went final, but I'm not sure if we ever picked one up.

Drive 10's got a pretty interface, but the disc is slow and frankly, I'm not sure if it works well.

[MDA]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
So I guess I strayed on the subject a little bit. I guess if some new reader is following along with us they might be confused, so here: Norton Disk Doctor != defragger. Speed Disk would be the tool for that in the Norton Suite. Although Speed Disk was awesome in its heyday, back when it was on floppy disks, I would never use any recent version of Speed Disk on an OS X drive.

Also, to address the original topic, defragging in Mac OS X is overrated and pointless. I don't know what the draw to "defrag" is for most users, I guess they're just assuming that harddrives generally make use of our good friend entropy and start lazily plopping files all over the place as time goes on. Personally, I don't run diagnostic tools on my home machine, and though I hold DiskWarrior in a very high regard, I use Norton to fix most of the problems on computers at the University. I will admit, though, that 90% of the computers that I run Norton on are Mac OS 9 computers, Norton and OS X has never made me feel right.

Whenever I have an OS X disk with problems I usually run Disk Utility to see if there are problems with the disk, and if they cannot be fixed, then I back up the user's data and format their drive. I rallied to get our tech shop a copy of DiskWarrior 3 last summer when it went final, but I'm not sure if we ever picked one up.

Drive 10's got a pretty interface, but the disc is slow and frankly, I'm not sure if it works well.

Whenever I feel like an OS X volume is getting a bit sluggish and noisy I run Norton Speed Disk and get good results. I definitely notice an increase in speed and quieter reads and writes on the hard drive. However, I have never felt good about using Norton Disk Doctor on an OS X volume. I always use either Disk Utility or fsck -yf. In the four years that I've been the support person for the 100 Macs at the advertising agency I work for I've never had a problem with Norton Speed Disk.

MDA

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by MDA:
Whenever I feel like an OS X volume is getting a bit sluggish and noisy I run Norton Speed Disk and get good results. I definitely notice an increase in speed and quieter reads and writes on the hard drive. However, I have never felt good about using Norton Disk Doctor on an OS X volume. I always use either Disk Utility or fsck -yf. In the four years that I've been the support person for the 100 Macs at the advertising agency I work for I've never had a problem with Norton Speed Disk.

MDA

Although I can't share the same sentiments, I understand where you're coming from. I try to check out fsck -yf before Norton or if I happen to be in single user mode.

[yukon]

I'm running TechTool Pro 4's optimization (defragmentation) routine.

While the other things were alright (it crashing when doing file integrity checks doesn't inspire confidence though), this is taking forever. I decided to try a 3rd party defragmentation program on Windows on a lark, and suddenly Mozilla took almost no time to launch, so I decided I'd try it on the G4 (as my drives are always full and I play with huge files).

I first ran it for about 5 hours, it said it was halfway through, I needed to use the drive. Tried it again, left it for 12hrs, and I realized that every time it almost reached the end, the total to be done would rise and suddenly 9/10ths done turned to 3/4ths done. It's running now, I started it around 22 hours, and I'm just waiting for it to rise that total again.

If I can stand it, I'll let it continue for another 12 hours, and report back here. this is painful....

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by yukon:
I first ran it for about 5 hours, it said it was halfway through, I needed to use the drive. Tried it again, left it for 12hrs, and I realized that every time it almost reached the end, the total to be done would rise and suddenly 9/10ths done turned to 3/4ths done. It's running now, I started it around 22 hours, and I'm just waiting for it to rise that total again.

If I can stand it, I'll let it continue for another 12 hours, and report back here. this is painful....

Good lord, man. That's crazy. Though I let DiskWarrior 2.x run for 30 hours one time... haha. That was resurrecting a drive, though, not just sweeping stuff up

[sharkstank]

i have an 80GB drive, and load it up with VOB files on a daily basis, burn to DVDs, delete, load up the drive again and repeat... and i use SpeedTool™ - it's a GEM!

[finknottle]

How do you turn off journalling? Is that the reason that I can't startup with Diskwarrior in OS X.3? All i get is a kernel panic when I boot from it. Apple disks are fine on start-up from them.
ANybody?

[AllenHuffman]

I have used Nortons under 9 and the first version that was out under X, butI haven't trusted my old version past the last few X updates.

I am sure I am not one of the "most" Mac users. I will routinely do a backup from my home directory (from a shell, a ditto-type script) which copies thousands of small/large files. I also drag iMovie and iDVD files back and forth quite often. I am sure my drive is very fragmented, though the FILES may not.

I think the deal is that Mac OS X's file system works much like Microware OS-9's RBF. FILES don't fragment (if done correctly), but the drive itself might. Under OS-9, you could specify a size when creating a file, and it would give you one large chunk of contiguous disk space. When you were done, you would seek to the end and close. No fragmentation. As that file grew, it fragmented, but you could easily copy it and it would not be fragmented.

The "optimize" program I had under OS-9 on an old Motorola computer was very fact 'cause all it really did was defrag all files (doing the copy trick, bascially). But the "file system repack" program I had would take DAYS and it optimized by sorting directory entries and placing files all together. When it was done, the drive was silent (this was back in the old 20MB -- megabytes! -- drive days). So that was a BIG difference than just file optimizing.

Am I correct to get that X just has an advanced feature that keeps a FILE contiguous, but does not have any way to optimize file directory structures, etc.? (Like, an app made of 500 files might have those 500 all in single pieces, but could be scattered all over the drive.)

?

[tekgraf]

I thought with the new OS you no longer have to deframent a disk. Can someone out there give a difinitive answer.

Also, which software tool would be the best? I had Tech Pro when I was using OS9.

[BurpetheadX]

There IS a reason to defrag on 10.3, you people all get so cocky. Journaling does NOT do disk fragments, and does NOT catch everything. When I run Tech Tool i see a huge difference. READ THIS.

http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/sh...31&amp;fpart=1

[Frederico]

There sure is an incredible amount of arrogance on this thread regarding absolutes and the need, rather the alleged lack of need for defragging.

Built into Panther or not, defragging is still necessary for optimal performance. Period. Thus some level of defragging is built in to the OS. Go figure. That your degraded level of performance is close enough to optimal for *you*, is a subjective, and not an absolute; nor is it applicable to other users.

The original poster asked a question, and based on the question, the user clearly has determined a need (perceived, real or imagined) for a good optimizer. Telling him he doesn't need one is far from helpful (especially when that's wrong).

How do you know the user isn't doing audio or video work, using very large files where performance is absolutely and measurably degraded when fragmentation is high? (see Apple's TILs on fragmentation and video if you doubt me)
How do you know the user is not a serious Web or PS pro who adds and deletes hundreds, if not thousands of files ranging from very small to very large, and not only frags their disk as a whole, but the Directory structure itself?

How do you know that the user doesn't have an exceptionally slow HDD (such as those in early iMac and iBook/PowerBook), where boot time, application launch and file opening is frequent and aggregate slowdowns add up to excruciatingly slow performance?

Case in point: I recently visited a friend with an iMac 400 and its original 10GB HDD. She had recently installed Jaguar over her original OS 9, and then ran each and every update available. Her disk was extremely full when she began, and had never been defragged, let alone optimized. The machine was *insanely* slow, and very frustrating to try to even browse and clear unused files in order to clear space. It took several minutes (nearly 10) just to calculate the total size of the /Applications directory. After clearing about 2GB of unneeded files, the machine showed no improvements in Finder or application performance (nor did I expect it to). It took close to four minutes to boot to just the login screen; another 30 to open her to a usable Desktop. IE5 took more than 20 bounces and nearly thirty seconds to open to a simplistic home page (that is nearly 100% cached). Other apps were similarly intolerable.

Running DiskWarrior 3 showed 35% Directory fragmentation and less than ten minor issues (mostly custom icon flags). Boot time and above app testing improved only slightly, but did improve by about 10-15%.

I did not have my full toolset with me, so I had to resort to PlusOptimizer 1.3, which, despite the name, is just a defragger. We tried to graph the disk, but after nearly 30 minutes with no graph, we decided to just go ahead and defrag (since the PO graph is purely visual and gives no percentage, anyway).

Four hours later when we returned from dinner, it was less than 10% complete. Yes, PO takes a very long time with any OS X disk, but this was the worst I'd seen in a long time. I made the mistake of canceling it (I needed to take my iPod home; using it as the boot disk), and rebooting showed no improvement. Long story short, I left her with a bootable CD with PO running; 13 hours later, it was done. She says she feels like she has a new machine. Apps launch in 2-4 bounces/seconds; boot time is well under 2 minutes to a completed Desktop.

The moral of this story is that *you* may not feel the need for defragmentation or optimizing (two different things), but you do not need to be an audio/video/graphics pro to generate the need *eventually*, unless you both run Panther and never create files over 20MB (virtually impossible), *and* never fill your drive to greater than 50% capacity, relative to the largest file created.

To the original poster, my post is already too long; use PlusOptimizer (cheap, safe, reliable, slow, must boot in OS 9; was free with DW 2.x) if defragging is sufficient; use Speed Disk (with appropriate backup precautions) if true optimization is required. TTP and Drive10 are viable alternatives if you want native OS X ops in a more complete package. Mourn ye all the loss of MTP and DEP; may they one day be reborn for best possible safe optimization.

[Angus_D]

In the meantime, let's all buy shareware utilities that will update our prebinding for us and run those cron scripts that don't always get run since we shut down our computers. Oh, and complain about Apple not removing the debug code from OS X. Yeah.

[Moonray]

And let's all reset the PRAM daily and repair permissions each time we start a text editor.

Those who want to waste time and money don't deserve better.

-

[yukon]

Well, just reporting back. I couldn't stand it anymore, I had to cancel the defragmentation again. It was just too much. Though the checks say that i went from 440 fragmented files to 33, and file fragments were about 5x worse before.

Am I noticing a huge speed boost? No, not really. It wasn't terribly fragmented to begin with, and I didn't let it complete. Might have helped, might not have, but it wasn't a system drive I defragged, so it's difficult to tell.

BTW, put the Repair Permissions into your crontab, run it weekly or so, you'll never have to deal with it again. Caches, don't know, maybe make a bash script that deletes them. PRAM, not necessary anymore it appears. OS X should have anacron, it's a desktop OS. Diskwarrior, I DO see a speed inrcease there, but I'm waiting for their OS X version to mature (I've had slight problems with 3.0). I stopped doing optimization crap quite a while ago, started again and I saw improvements....a directory optimization/repair every 6 months might be advisable, PRAM no.

[Moonray]

Oh you didn't get me right. I do not reset my PRAM, I never repaired permissions, and the last time I attempted to defrag a drive was before OS X was out. And if shareware programmers try to make money with applications that empty any caches and promise speed boosts I don't even laugh about them any more.

It's all a waste of time.

-

[yukon]

yeah moonray, I must have missed the multiple ;rolleyes; GIFs and the sarcasm ;-) ;-P

Just giving out my opinion and what I've found saves my time while still keeps my "supercomputer" performing properly, in a general response to the many sarcastic posts that deride "optimization" and repair/maintenance procedures.

On another topic, Norton Speeddisk might be the best defragmentation program as it has schemes to organize the order and placement of files. The only difference between my "Professional" defragger and the default Windows one was the order the files were put in, so a huge speed difference would confirm it's an issue (and Panther does reorder files as well). Though yes, Norton has a TERRIBLE track record with causing more data loss than anything else, but it is apparently the only application that does "optimize file placement" rather than just "defragment" (TTP4 might, but it doesn't give much info).

[Moonray]

Maybe someone has a link to some benchmarks about this coming from a neutral side and not from companies that make big money with such little-effect software. If there is a measurable performance increase such statistics must exist.

-

[mds]

'' You'll KILL your drives by regularly defragging...

Much better to reformat the drive and restore your data back to it. This effectively "defrags" the drive and the files. It also can be accomplished in a few hours (even with the largest of drives today), a task that will take days for a disk optimizer days to accomplish - and place a lot of heavy read/write activity on the platters.

Most importantly, it "re-invigorates" the electro-magnetic field generated by the coils and surrounding the platters - the "invisible jelly" that holds your data. This, by the way, is the same technology that holds your magnet to the door of your refridgerator - and it degrades in strength over time. This degraded electro-magnetic field requires more work from the drive heads to read through the "fog", regardless of fragmentation issues.

Here's a good tip, as reformatting your drive regularly is as important as changing the oil in your engine:

"Every 3 months or 3000 files, whichever comes first."

Look, it's simple to do, really:
1. Have a good backup solution that includes booting up from a backup
2. Do the backup
3. Reboot from the backup as the startup drive
4. Use Mac OS X Disk Utility to Erase the Drive Mechanism (leave as "Untitled")
5. Click on the Formatted drive named "Untitled" and give it the drive the name it had originally (usually, "Macintosh HD")
6. Restore your data from your backup*

Mac OS X requires many hidden and protected/secure files that cannot be copied using the desktop drag-and-drop method. Use a software solution like Retrospect to create a mirrored drive copy, among other backup and archival choices, or, a great shareware title called "Carbon Copy Cloner" from Mike Bombich (bombich.com). You can even use an iPod as your backup hard disk drive for this.

Another consideration is CMS ABS backup solution consisting of either a mobile (bus-powered ) or desktop FireWire drive and their proprietary software for completely unattended, on-line, bootable backups.

And if you ever have to depend on recovering data from a crashed drive with presumed directory damage, DiskWarrior should be your 1st tool to use AFTER you give FSCK and Disk Utility a chance (as they are fairly "non-destructive" disk repair utilities). Once you are successful (and when you are done rejoicing), you should backup and reformat, as repeated use of DiskWarrior is usually telling you that it's time to reformat.

[Brian Filipiak]

Check out the following posting on the MacFixIt Forums:

<http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/sh...rue#Post570760>

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by mds:
'' You'll KILL your drives by regularly defragging...

Much better to reformat the drive and restore your data back to it. This effectively "defrags" the drive and the files. It also can be accomplished in a few hours (even with the largest of drives today), a task that will take days for a disk optimizer days to accomplish - and place a lot of heavy read/write activity on the platters.

Most importantly, it "re-invigorates" the electro-magnetic field generated by the coils and surrounding the platters - the "invisible jelly" that holds your data. This, by the way, is the same technology that holds your magnet to the door of your refridgerator - and it degrades in strength over time. This degraded electro-magnetic field requires more work from the drive heads to read through the "fog", regardless of fragmentation issues.

Here's a good tip, as reformatting your drive regularly is as important as changing the oil in your engine:

"Every 3 months or 3000 files, whichever comes first."

Look, it's simple to do, really:
1. Have a good backup solution that includes booting up from a backup
2. Do the backup
3. Reboot from the backup as the startup drive
4. Use Mac OS X Disk Utility to Erase the Drive Mechanism (leave as "Untitled")
5. Click on the Formatted drive named "Untitled" and give it the drive the name it had originally (usually, "Macintosh HD")
6. Restore your data from your backup*

Mac OS X requires many hidden and protected/secure files that cannot be copied using the desktop drag-and-drop method. Use a software solution like Retrospect to create a mirrored drive copy, among other backup and archival choices, or, a great shareware title called "Carbon Copy Cloner" from Mike Bombich (bombich.com). You can even use an iPod as your backup hard disk drive for this.

Another consideration is CMS ABS backup solution consisting of either a mobile (bus-powered ) or desktop FireWire drive and their proprietary software for completely unattended, on-line, bootable backups.

And if you ever have to depend on recovering data from a crashed drive with presumed directory damage, DiskWarrior should be your 1st tool to use AFTER you give FSCK and Disk Utility a chance (as they are fairly "non-destructive" disk repair utilities). Once you are successful (and when you are done rejoicing), you should backup and reformat, as repeated use of DiskWarrior is usually telling you that it's time to reformat.

Would you like to provide the technical data to back up much of what you have said about reformatting your drive?