[Mr_E]

Supposedly defragmenting isn't necessary on HFS+/OSX due to the filesystem and OSs ability to take care of it on the fly (or, so I read.)

I'd be interested to know what kinds of results these guys get from this study.

Looks like they're considering breaking into the Mac market.

Think a Mac defrag utility is even necessary?

http://www.diskeeperblog.com/

[ghporter]

Macs don't need defragmenting the way Windows does, but that doesn't mean that OS X keeps the hard drive all defragmented. There's a specific file size limitation, as well as the fact that OS X doesn't care about keeping free space contiguous (a major PITA for Boot Camp users). Diskeeper is Good Software, with a great history of not hosing up Windows (quite the feat!), so if they think they can offer something that competes with iDefrag and other existing Mac defraggers, then I too will be very interested in their product.

[Curiosity]

I tried Diskkeeper for Windows once, and I was not impressed. It was almost glacially slow, and that was just to do an analysis, never mind moving anything. Another thing it did was to replace the shortcut to the Windows Defrag tool in the Start Menu (to point it to itself) without asking. That kind of behaviour really annoys me.

[hookem2oo7]

The defrag utility that was included with XP was based on/licensed from Diskeeper

[Mr_E]

They were Executive Software, if I recall correctly. And yes, 'm pretty sure the early Windows (NT?) defrag utility was/is based on their code (maybe still is, dunno...)

I guess I'd just have to get past my hate of all things Scientology-related to give it a fair shot..

[msuper69]

I've never defragged an OS X volume starting with the beta.

I rarely defragged any Windows drives either.

It can be important for enterprise level databases where many hundreds or thousands of users are accessing the database simultaneously but an overnight dump/restore is much quicker.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Curiosity 

I tried Diskkeeper for Windows once, and I was not impressed. It was almost glacially slow, and that was just to do an analysis, never mind moving anything. Another thing it did was to replace the shortcut to the Windows Defrag tool in the Start Menu (to point it to itself) without asking. That kind of behaviour really annoys me.

It was slow because the drive had never been examined by that app. The next time it would be faster, and every time after that it would get a little bit faster. This is because it's exhaustive in its analysis, even if you don't need it to be.

Originally Posted by hookem2oo7 

The defrag utility that was included with XP was based on/licensed from Diskeeper

Yep, and...

Originally Posted by Mr_E 

They were Executive Software, if I recall correctly. And yes, 'm pretty sure the early Windows (NT?) defrag utility was/is based on their code (maybe still is, dunno...)

Yep again.

Originally Posted by msuper69 

I've never defragged an OS X volume starting with the beta.

I rarely defragged any Windows drives either.

It can be important for enterprise level databases where many hundreds or thousands of users are accessing the database simultaneously but an overnight dump/restore is much quicker.

You have been either extraordinarily lucky or have had really big drives for your Windows machines. The storage strategy Windows uses, based on DOS (maybe 2.0?) is to write new stuff on an area of the disk that hasn't been used recently to help with recovery of accidentally deleted files. Dumb? You betcha! But I think even Vista and Win7 do the same thing. So the OS intentionally fragments the crap out of the drive, and if you don't defrag now and then you wind up with a really slow drive because of the fragmentation.