[wily]

Using Techtool Pro 4, I noticed I could turn OFF filejournaling
and optimize my hard drive.

I didn't, but what would happen if I did?

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by wily:
Using Techtool Pro 4, I noticed I could turn OFF filejournaling
and optimize my hard drive.

I didn't, but what would happen if I did?

Nothing really. Before 10.2 journaling was not an option. It basically helps in the case of a system crash or power failure to prevent corruption of the drive's file system.

[Brass]

Actually, you don't need any 3rd party tools to do this.

[wataru]

You can just turn it off, optimize, and then turn it back on.

Do a search if you want to know more about what journaling does and why it's a good thing.

[wadesworld]

There's no need to optimize. Really.

Wade

[wataru]

Originally posted by wadesworld:
There's no need to optimize. Really.

Wade

I beg to differ, as do many people. My hard drive was ridiculously fragmented when I finally got around to actually checking it.

[piracy]

Fragmentation in HFS Plus Volumes

http://kernelthread.com/mac/apme/fragmentation/

"Conclusion

Defragmentation on HFS+ volumes should not be necessary at all, or worthwhile, in most cases, because the system seems to do a very good job of avoiding/countering fragmentation."

[wataru]

Yeah, I've read plenty of stuff that says things like that. But the fact is that my hard drive had thousands of fragmented files, and the free space was in tens of thousands of fragments. VM swapping got very slow, and only defragging fixed it.

[hudson1]

Originally posted by wataru:
Yeah, I've read plenty of stuff that says things like that. But the fact is that my hard drive had thousands of fragmented files, and the free space was in tens of thousands of fragments. VM swapping got very slow, and only defragging fixed it.

Your experience would be helpful to a broader audience if you tell us whether you had enabled journaling and the percent of free space that was on your disk/volume.

[wataru]

Yes, I always have journaling enabled (except, obviously, when defragging). At the time I had about 8 out of 37GB (≈20%) free, with over 300,000 files. I think one thing that might have contributed was the fact that I have recently installed a lot of stuff with fink (my /sw is 3.22GB), which means a lot of small files have been flying around.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by wataru:
I beg to differ, as do many people. My hard drive was ridiculously fragmented when I finally got around to actually checking it.

Many people are wrong.

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/fragmentation/

and

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

With Panther's on-the-fly defragmentation of files plus the hot file clustering, fragmentation is not really an issue anymore.

[wataru]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
Many people are wrong.

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/fragmentation/

and

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

With Panther's on-the-fly defragmentation of files plus the hot file clustering, fragmentation is not really an issue anymore.

Perhaps you didn't read my other post. I'll spell it out for you: Fragmentation is an issue, at least in my case. You can tell me all you like that so-and-so claims this or that, but the fact remains: My hard drive was severely fragmented, and defragging it improved performance. End of story.

[cybergoober]

Originally posted by wataru:
...in my case...

[wataru]

Yeah, that's why I said that. Arkham_c (who clearly didn't read the whole thread, as he cited the exact same source that piracy did) said that defragmentation is not necessary, with no qualifications, period. This is clearly not the case.