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Stuncle Eve · Feb 27, 2007, 06:06 PM

Any opinions as to which of these is the better utility for regular maintenance tasks, cache clearing etc?

MacBook 1.83 Core Duo, 2GB RAM

Lee33 · Feb 28, 2007, 11:04 AM

OnyX is free. That's one big plus.

chabig · Feb 28, 2007, 12:46 PM

I like Onyx and I keep it around just in case. But there is no need on the Mac to perform any kind of "regular" maintenance, as you suggest. That is all handled automatically by the system.

kcmac · Mar 1, 2007, 03:31 AM

I didn't know OS X automatically cleans your cachés, cleans browser, deletes temporary logs, etc.

Just in case, I use Onyx....MacJanitor is a one trick pony.

Stuncle Eve · Mar 1, 2007, 12:04 PM

It's my understanding that desktop Macs can wake themselves up in the middle of the night to run their cron jobs, but laptops, asleep with the cover closed, or any machine that has been turned off, can't do that at the scheduled intervals, hence the need for utilities like OnyX, MacJanitor & Macaroni.

Have I got this right?

frankthetank966 · Jun 27, 2007, 10:09 AM

Onyx recommend that I repair my startup disk could this be an actual recommendation or is it a flaw.

CharlesS · Jun 27, 2007, 10:22 AM

Originally Posted by Stuncle Eve

It's my understanding that desktop Macs can wake themselves up in the middle of the night to run their cron jobs, but laptops, asleep with the cover closed, or any machine that has been turned off, can't do that at the scheduled intervals, hence the need for utilities like OnyX, MacJanitor & Macaroni.

Have I got this right?

No, launchd is supposed to automatically run the scripts the next time a Mac starts up or wakes up if it was off or asleep when the job was supposed to be run.

Some people were complaining a while ago (I think it was around 10.4.6 or so) that the weekly or monthly scripts sometimes weren't running for them, but for all I know, that could be fixed by now (on my machine, as always, the scripts are running fine). Regardless, it doesn't matter at all, since those scripts do not do anything terribly important.

allblue · Jun 27, 2007, 05:55 PM

It's not just the cron jobs that Onyx runs. I give my iMac pretty much the full maintenance sequence (optimising system, updating databases etc.) about once a month. I have thousands of files moving from my hard drive to external drives and back again, and I definitely find Finder snappier after running Onyx. In fact I had left it about ten weeks last time, and the system speed-up, while not huge, was definitely discernible.

CharlesS · Jun 27, 2007, 07:28 PM

I'd say that's placebo effect. Onyx doesn't do anything that I can think of that would make the Finder run any faster. It could possibly make things run a little slower, though, due to all the cache deleting that it does.

ghporter · Jun 27, 2007, 09:45 PM

How about Maintiget?" Free, does lots of stuff, easy to use. I don't know if Charles could do everything it does from Finder, but it does keep my MBP purring.

allblue · Jun 28, 2007, 05:24 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

I'd say that's placebo effect. Onyx doesn't do anything that I can think of that would make the Finder run any faster. It could possibly make things run a little slower, though, due to all the cache deleting that it does.

I don't think it is a placebo Charles, my experience is that it does make a difference. The cache deleting you refer to is in the 'Cleaning' section, not the 'Maintenance' section, and having run it a couple of times I don't do it any more, as you suggest, it seems to get rid of useful stuff as well. However, in maintenance, apart from permissions/cron jobs (probably already covered by the system itself) there is the "Optimise the System" command (I always go for complete optimisation) and the updating of the 'Locate' and 'Whatis' databases. Those processes take about twenty minutes, it's working away there doing something, and it is my definite opinion that it leaves my system back at a base line that heavy use seems to slowly drift it away from.

CharlesS · Jun 28, 2007, 10:19 AM

The thing about that is that the "Optimise the System" thing is probably just running prebinding, which is not used for much in 10.4, and even when it was useful under earlier versions of OS X, all it sped up was launching applications. Permissions aren't going to alter the performance of anything. If you denied yourself read access to the Applications folder, then you wouldn't get to your apps - but it wouldn't slow anything down. The cron jobs (inaccurately so called by Onyx, as OS X uses launchd instead of cron to run its automatic maintenance scripts) usually get run automatically by the OS anyway, and don't do anything terribly important - they rotate some log files, delete some temp files, back up the NetInfo database, and update the locate and whatis databases (thus making me wonder why Onyx would do those things separately), which themselves affect nothing other than the 'locate' and 'whatis' ('apropos' uses whatis too, I think) Terminal commands.

I don't see how any of those things could possibly affect Finder performance.

frankthetank966 · Jun 28, 2007, 01:55 PM

So whats the best way to "defragment" a disc on a mac?

almaink · Jun 28, 2007, 03:42 PM

Originally Posted by frankthetank966

So whats the best way to "defragment" a disc on a mac?

You don't defrag OSX as it has it's own defrag system built in to the OS.

ghporter · Jun 28, 2007, 06:09 PM

Originally Posted by frankthetank966

So whats the best way to "defragment" a disc on a mac?

Originally Posted by almaink

You don't defrag OSX as it has it's own defrag system built in to the OS.

OS X handles file fragmentation for relatively small files. But defragmentation DOES happen with OS X and it can sometimes be a problem. iDefrag is a well-regarded option for working on this issue. You can also back up and reinstall, which should lay down the data all together and effectively defragment that way. But that's a pain.

chabig · Jun 28, 2007, 08:23 PM

I never defrag. That's so...Windows!

CharlesS · Jun 28, 2007, 10:03 PM

To clarify something, some people in here seem to be implying that Onyx's "Optimize" feature defragments the disk. This is not the case. All the "optimize" options do in these freeware utilities is generally updating the prebinding, which was useful once upon a time, but not anymore in recent versions of OS X. They do not defragment the disk at all (and I'd be quite wary of letting an app written in AppleScript Studio do such a thing, anyway).

P · Jun 29, 2007, 08:50 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

OS X handles file fragmentation for relatively small files. But defragmentation DOES happen with OS X and it can sometimes be a problem. iDefrag is a well-regarded option for working on this issue. You can also back up and reinstall, which should lay down the data all together and effectively defragment that way. But that's a pain.

Fragmentation of free space can be a problem, because the OS does not attempt to fix that. It only really affects scratch files for image and video editing though, and those should be a on a separate partition in any case.

While you're technically correct that fragmentation can be an issue, it is much less of an issue than noobs tend to think. It's better to never defragment ever and just make sure to use a second partition for scratch and leave at least 10% free on the startup drive - that takes care of 99% of all fragmentation issues on OS X.

frankthetank966 · Jun 29, 2007, 10:00 PM

So I will stay away from the defraging.

D'Espice · Jun 30, 2007, 07:43 AM

Personally, I'd stay away from Onyx too. In my experience, these tools can break more than they can fix - I've been running OS X basically ever since 10.1 and have never had a need for these so-called 'optimizers'

ghporter · Jun 30, 2007, 09:06 AM

[QUOTE=P;3417082]While you're technically correct that fragmentation can be an issue, it is much less of an issue than noobs tend to think. /QUOTE]I think you have the core of this right here. For Windows, fragmentation is a Major Issue® that really does need to be dealt with, sometimes aggressively. Unless you're creating thousands of text files that you edit frequently, you won't wind up with much fragmentation under OS X anyway. Fragmented free space is a problem for almost every OS, but that 10% free space is a magic number most of the time-as long as you have that much free, you shouldn't have any problem. I have about 60% of my MBP's drive free (I make use of external drives for a lot of things

) and it just purrs. At this point in time, the only reason I can think of for me to play with a defragmenter is to review it.