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Mr49er · Mar 11, 2006, 01:02 PM

I'm new to Mac and coming from the land of Win-doze I am used to always tweaking and optimizing my computers. What utilities, programs or applications do you guys receommend for optimizing my new MBP? I'm looking for something that slso has some diag tools, ut this is not requisite.

Mr49er · Mar 11, 2006, 08:42 PM

Wow. No one is willing to share their opinions on what they think is the best overall optimization utility. What's up? Help a new Mac brotha out (ha ha ha) . . .

Daniel Bayer · Mar 11, 2006, 08:59 PM

Disk Warrior has been my ute of choice. It won't work on the Intel chips at the moment...

hickey · Mar 11, 2006, 09:05 PM

you gotta wait more than a couple of hours before you bump your post to get more views.

Anyway, Im not entirely sure what you mean by optimization since there are tons of different meanings and solutions for each one. But what I do, is run Disk ulility found under the Utilities folder in your applications, while in DU, I 'repair disk permissions' this allows your OS to run a tad bit faster and smoother and sometimes fixes some bugs you may be having. Also, try not to let your HD have less than 10Gbs of space, in my experience that slows it down more.

Caetano · Mar 11, 2006, 09:59 PM

You may be reffering to defragmentation, and tools for it are extremely scarce in the Mac OS X ecosystem. Disk Warrior works in some ways, and doesn't on others. OS X itself defragments files on the fly, but only if they're 20MB or less in size.

I'm kinda curious myself for a defragmenting tool that is robust and painless to use.

B Gallagher · Mar 11, 2006, 10:14 PM

Anyone tried iDefrag? I've seen it around but have no idea if it's any good or not...

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php

Mr49er · Mar 13, 2006, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by hickey

you gotta wait more than a couple of hours before you bump your post to get more views.

Anyway, Im not entirely sure what you mean by optimization since there are tons of different meanings and solutions for each one. But what I do, is run Disk ulility found under the Utilities folder in your applications, while in DU, I 'repair disk permissions' this allows your OS to run a tad bit faster and smoother and sometimes fixes some bugs you may be having. Also, try not to let your HD have less than 10Gbs of space, in my experience that slows it down more.

This is exactly what I was looking for. Hard drive cleanup and defragmentation tools. Stuff to keep the hard drive running as smoothly as possible. I'll start off with DU and maybe get into using iDefrag and Disk Warrior when it is released for use on the Intel platform.

Thanks for all your comments.

john h · Mar 13, 2006, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by Daniel Bayer

Disk Warrior has been my ute of choice. It won't work on the Intel chips at the moment...

That is good information. It could effect me upgrading to the Intel Laptop as I am a big fan of Disk Warrior. I think the Intel computers ship with TechTool Pro so I assume it must work. It is one of the better utilities and is great as you do not have to tote around a disk for startup in case of a problem. It does a decent job of optimizing but I have not found any that are really fast. Much of what you read about a Mac indicates many of us may be optimizing to much. I do not know if Drive Genius will work on the Intel models. It is a new utility and a very good one. Small Dog Electronics sells it for around $65 which is the cheapest I have found.

john h · Mar 13, 2006, 12:49 PM

I will say again that TechTool Pro and Drive Genius are excellent all around utilities that do a lot more than just Optimization.

cambro · Mar 13, 2006, 12:55 PM

YOU SHOULD NOT NEED TO "DEFRAGMENT" or "OPTIMIZE" OS X DISKS!

This is done automatically by the system everytime you open a file.

You are not using Windows anymore!!!

From Apple...

Tomchu · Mar 13, 2006, 01:09 PM

When the file and situation meet certain criteria, then OS X will defragment the file, yes, but due to the nature of file systems and hard disks, you can still have a fragmented disk. It's just impossible to avoid.

Any fragmented disk will induce a performance penalty over a non-fragmented disk.

angelmb · Mar 13, 2006, 02:15 PM

Onyx is a good tool, and it is free!

http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html

cambro · Mar 13, 2006, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Any fragmented disk will induce a performance penalty over a non-fragmented disk.

Originally Posted by Apple Developer Connection

Note:Mac OS X systems use hundreds of thousands of small files, many of which are rarely accessed. Optimizing them can be a major effort for very little practical gain. There is also a chance that one of the files placed in the "hot band" for rapid reads during system startup might be moved during defragmentation, which would decrease performance.

Guess ADC just got it wrong....

I suppose there might a peculiar situation in which your disk gets screwed up and needs "defragmented" or "optimized" but 99% of Mac Users should not attempt to do this.

Tomchu · Mar 13, 2006, 03:53 PM

Originally Posted by cambro

Guess ADC just got it wrong....

I suppose there might a peculiar situation in which your disk gets screwed up and needs "defragmented" or "optimized" but 99% of Mac Users should not attempt to do this.

I guess I have to put it in simpler terms for you:

File. 30 MB. Continuous. Files after this file on disk. You edit file in multiple places, multiple times. File is now not continuous. Reading back file is now not as fast as reading continuous file.

If you knew anything about file systems, you would know that complete avoidance of fragmentation is impossible, unless the file system does on-the-fly defragmention of every file regardless of size. HFS+ tries its hardest to avoid performance-hurting fragmentation where it can, but only within reasonable constraints.

"Fragmentation" has nothing to do with your disk "screwing up", but rather with normal day-to-day manipulation of larger files.

iREZ · Mar 13, 2006, 04:44 PM

i second onyx as an overall great app.

jocker · Mar 13, 2006, 04:45 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

I guess I have to put it in simpler terms for you:

File. 30 MB. Continuous. Files after this file on disk. You edit file in multiple places, multiple times. File is now not continuous. Reading back file is now not as fast as reading continuous file.

If you knew anything about file systems, you would know that complete avoidance of fragmentation is impossible, unless the file system does on-the-fly defragmention of every file regardless of size. HFS+ tries its hardest to avoid performance-hurting fragmentation where it can, but only within reasonable constraints.

"Fragmentation" has nothing to do with your disk "screwing up", but rather with normal day-to-day manipulation of larger files.

Hmm - may have misread you but every time you save a file over a certain size (forget the exact figure now) on any osx system from Panther onwards, the OS automatically defragments the file in the background. I'll post the link later once I find it. So it does on-the-fly defragmentation

cambro · Mar 13, 2006, 06:07 PM

Originally Posted by jocker

Hmm - may have misread you but every time you save a file over a certain size (forget the exact figure now) on any osx system from Panther onwards, the OS automatically defragments the file in the background. I'll post the link later once I find it. So it does on-the-fly defragmentation

Thank you jocker....On-the-fly is in the Tiger.

RTFA before preaching.

LINK AGAIN

mrmister · Mar 13, 2006, 06:24 PM

Cambro, you should read the entirety of the articles you post:

"If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files there's a chance the disks could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation, which can be performed with some third-party disk utilities."

When I'm editing video, defragging is very helpful. It definitely isn't needed every day, but there are cases where one wants/needs to defrag. Perhaps you haven't used your computer for very HD intensive activities?

cambro · Mar 13, 2006, 07:23 PM

Dude, I read the article. How about you read the thread?

As they say...defragging MIGHT (not WILL...MIGHT) help if your disk is filled to capacity and/or you use really large files that fill the disk to near capacity regularly. Please, by all means, defrag away if you think it will help...just be aware that chances are good that it won't do anything and that it could slow down your system if the aforementioned system files get "optimized."

But the issue raised by OP and discussed in this thread is day-to-day "optimization". In windows, yes, it really does help because your disk gets fragged up. In OS X deferagging is just not necessary under the vast majority of situations and is NOT recommended.

Tomchu · Mar 13, 2006, 07:30 PM

And if the file you're working with is 21 MB? What about if you regularily work with a lot of 30 MB+ files?

Frick. Get a clue before going all emotional.

Tomchu · Mar 13, 2006, 07:31 PM

*sigh*

So tell me ...

Is a fragmented file read just as fast as a continuous file? Answer that basic question.

cambro · Mar 13, 2006, 08:12 PM

Tomchu:

I hear you in principle...a perfectly structured/optimized drive will be faster. All I am saying is this:

From kernelthread.com:

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.

It is risky to defragment anyway: What if there's a power glitch? What if the system crashes? What if t e defragmenting tool has a bug? What if you inadvertently reboot? In some cases, you could make the situation worse by defragmenting.

So I think I "have a clue" on this one...

Even if you are correct in principle, in practice it just isn't worth it and if you are unique vid-editing god, use a dedicated scratch partition and be done with it. Telling a mac user that they should defragment and that it will make their system faster is just a bad idea.

Tomchu · Mar 13, 2006, 08:44 PM

I'm not saying that a Mac user should defragment their drive. I don't do it myself.

All I'm saying is that fragmentation is still a very real occurrence, and that any fragmentation degrades performance -- even on our beloved Macs.

amazing · Mar 13, 2006, 09:10 PM

What happens if you use Carbon Copy Cloner? Does it put all related stuff together and therefore defrag the resultant volume? If so, you've got a historical backup as well as a defragged HD.

Tomchu · Mar 13, 2006, 10:27 PM

I believe CCC copies on a file level rather than a sector level, so yeah, it would result in a completely defragmented drive.

mrmister · Mar 14, 2006, 02:21 AM

"Even if you are correct in principle, in practice it just isn't worth it and if you are unique vid-editing god, use a dedicated scratch partition and be done with it."

You don't need a dedicated partition, but if you run into space issues you may need to defrag. It isn't as dangerous as you're making it sound.

Also, you *will* need to defrag that dedicated scratch partition if you aren't just wiping it clean periodically.

"Telling a mac user that they should defragment and that it will make their system faster is just a bad idea."

I'm not telling anyone to do anything--but it will make things run faster. Whether that speed is enough to justify the time and risk of defragging is quite debatable, but a properly defragged drive does run faster than an undefragged one--that doesn't mean everyone should be doing it all the time, or at all. Most HFS+ drives have very little fragmentation until they get quite full.

cgijon · Mar 14, 2006, 07:09 PM

http://www.alsoft.com:16080/DiskWarrior/

one link does it all.

mrmister · Mar 14, 2006, 08:26 PM

DiskWarrior is great, but it should be noted that it doesn't defragment your hard drive; it is a tool for repairing, replacing and optimizing disk directories.

maxhedrum · Mar 15, 2006, 03:08 PM

As no one has mentioned it yet, there is one thing you should be aware of in OSX pertaining to system maintenance.

It's basicly designed to be left running 27/7 so that automatic UNIX maintenece processes can run in the wee hours of the morning. There are several shareware utilities that allow you to perform this manually if you don't leave your machine running.

I've used macjanitor in the past and now use yasu, as it also lets you repair permissions and clear web junk in one swell foop. I usually do it every couple of days and it's a good idea to run permission repair after installing/updating apps, and before and after system updates.

Both get the job done and others may know of more.

Cheers

PHitchcox · 02:45 PM

Withdrawn

mrmister · Mar 16, 2006, 11:09 AM

"SOMEDAY, when you've filled your hard drive, or are working with LARGE files, then yes, there are defragment programs; I use DiskWarrior."

Sigh.

Diskwarrior is NOT a disk defragmentation program--it is a very good disk *directory* repair and optimization tool.

PHitchcox · 02:44 PM

Withdrawn

tooki · Mar 16, 2006, 11:45 AM

Right: it's defragmenting the directory, not the files.

tooki

tooki · Mar 16, 2006, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

I guess I have to put it in simpler terms for you:

There is no need for you to take a patronizing tone like that to anyone here.

tooki

Tomchu · Mar 16, 2006, 01:37 PM

Obviously I do if I've tried to explain the concept of file system fragmentation repeatedly, and yet someone still refuses to believe that HFS+ would be affected by it. I would think that it's pretty much a GIVEN that a file will get fragmented given changes that increase its size.

It's not terribly difficult to imagine.

CharlesS · Mar 16, 2006, 02:50 PM

Originally Posted by maxhedrum

As no one has mentioned it yet, there is one thing you should be aware of in OSX pertaining to system maintenance.

It's basicly designed to be left running 27/7 so that automatic UNIX maintenece processes can run in the wee hours of the morning. There are several shareware utilities that allow you to perform this manually if you don't leave your machine running.

I've used macjanitor in the past and now use yasu, as it also lets you repair permissions and clear web junk in one swell foop. I usually do it every couple of days and it's a good idea to run permission repair after installing/updating apps, and before and after system updates.

Both get the job done and others may know of more.

Cheers

Wrong.

1. In Tiger, if the machine is off/asleep when the maintenance scripts would have run, they just run automatically whenever the machine wakes up.

2. The maintenance scripts don't really do anything vitally important anyway.

3. Repairing permissions on a regular basis is a waste of time.

Ilgaz · 04:58 PM

Oh the usual, boring debate. One guy good heartedly asks if any defrag tool available and which is the "best", half of zealots attack "it is not needed".

Hello? MS claims it is not needed too and yet they offer a "defrag SDK" built into every OS since win2k.

Some people will really live happily without defrag. Some people may need it as a "luxury tweak".

I have seen amazing results on my brothers PB 12" G4 when I defragmented it with iDefrag, connecting it via firewire.

I hear much less noise on my G5 desktop. The G5 disk noise is really awful on fragmented disk. I work with 40 GB files usually (raw video)... I use $50 professional defrag tool (OO GmbH defrag pro) on my windows AVID workstation, on 15k RPM SCSI tower.

Well Coriolis does not offer a "full function" demo for obvious reasons (pirates) but I gambled, bought full version and happily using since.

I agree you should have a full feature "system check" software like Techtool first. They have basic (yet powerful) defrag capabilities.

As for maintanance of OS itself, one tool , get "macaroni" from http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16593
right now and install.

You will buy it for sure.

CharlesS · 05:17 PM

Originally Posted by Ilgaz

Oh the usual, boring debate. One guy good heartedly asks if any defrag tool available and which is the "best", half of zealots attack "it is not needed".

Hello? MS claims it is not needed too and yet they offer a "defrag SDK" built into every OS since win2k.

Some people will really live happily without defrag. Some people may need it as a "luxury tweak".

I have seen amazing results on my brothers PB 12" G4 when I defragmented it with iDefrag, connecting it via firewire.

I hear much less noise on my G5 desktop. The G5 disk noise is really awful on fragmented disk. I work with 40 GB files usually (raw video)... I use $50 professional defrag tool (OO GmbH defrag pro) on my windows AVID workstation, on 15k RPM SCSI tower.

Well Coriolis does not offer a "full function" demo for obvious reasons (pirates) but I gambled, bought full version and happily using since.

I agree you should have a full feature "system check" software like Techtool first. They have basic (yet powerful) defrag capabilities.

As for maintanance of OS itself, one tool , get "macaroni" from http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16593
right now and install.

You will buy it for sure.

Okay...

1. The maintenance scripts have nothing to do with defrag

2. Repair Permissions has nothing to do with defrag

3. As I said before, the damn maintenance scripts run every day, regardless of whether the computer is on at night or not, because in Tiger, if launchd misses the time to run them, it just runs them at its next opportunity

4. Macaroni is a waste of time and money since it's just running the maintenance scripts that are already running anyway because of launchd

5. We're not zealots, we just happen to actually have an understanding of what these things do instead of following voodoo rituals that we don't understand in order to keep the evil spirits away.

Ilgaz · 05:49 PM

I am not mad to call you (Charles) a "zealot".

"What utilities, programs or applications do you guys receommend for optimizing my new MBP?"

I say the truth about Defrag and even call it (even IF IT IS NEEDED) "a luxury tweak". What else I can do? I should claim the 8 mb cache having low grade SATA drives "magically" ended the fragmentation? That a horribly fragmented disk performs same speed as defragmented disk in situations like power video editing etc?

I said another thing: The effect of defragmentation was easily seen in PowerBook which has 5400 rpm drive optimized for low power usage. For G5 Desktop, it was like only 10-20% (or maybe less) performance increase but very low noise.

I also suggest a 45 day no nag trial program as it does some additional things, it is NOT anancron, the scripts running in macaroni has very nice additions and even if it doesn't satisfy, it has "language cleaning" which is well coded.

I also see the OP kind of asked a maintanance/optimize tool, I informed him.

These kinds (and tone) of replies belongs to Linux World, not OS X.

If OP needs "best overall application", I suggest Micromat Techtool Pro which has everything
http://www.micromat.com

For daily maintanance like cleaning outdated error logs, temp printer files, deleting unneeded languages (which means thousands of folders) I suggest macaroni.

It is in case he/she does want to USE the system, not maintain it like a pro, "run and forget" type of stuff.

CharlesS · Mar 16, 2006, 06:01 PM

Originally Posted by Ilgaz

I am not mad to call you (Charles) a "zealot".

Er...

"What utilities, programs or applications do you guys receommend for optimizing my new MBP?"

I say the truth about Defrag and even call it (even IF IT IS NEEDED) "a luxury tweak". What else I can do? I should claim the 8 mb cache having low grade SATA drives "magically" ended the fragmentation? That a horribly fragmented disk performs same speed as defragmented disk in situations like power video editing etc?

I said another thing: The effect of defragmentation was easily seen in PowerBook which has 5400 rpm drive optimized for low power usage. For G5 Desktop, it was like only 10-20% (or maybe less) performance increase but very low noise.

Erm... I said absolutely nothing about defrag at all. I was talking about the maintenance scripts and Repair Permissions, neither of which have anything to do with defrag.

I also suggest a 45 day no nag trial program as it does some additional things, it is NOT anancron, the scripts running in macaroni has very nice additions and even if it doesn't satisfy, it has "language cleaning" which is well coded.

I also see the OP kind of asked a maintanance/optimize tool, I informed him.

There are plenty of freeware utilities for deleting localized files. And if hard disk space is really that tight, that's more of an indicator that you need a larger hard drive than anything. Other than that, this app's purpose seems to be running the maintenance scripts, which launchd already does! Oh, and running the Repair Permissions script every night, as if that were needed.

Paying money to automate something that's already automated makes very little sense to me.

These kinds (and tone) of replies belongs to Linux World, not OS X.

Well, if what you meant was that the Linux community is made up of open-source hackers and programmers, so they will have a higher percentage of people that actually know what they're talking about, then yeah.

Ilgaz · Mar 16, 2006, 06:19 PM

That must be fault of "Atomic Bird". In fact I purchased Macaroni since for a strange reason anacron wasn't running here. I bought it since I wanted scripts run and they run when my system is idle,e.g. I am not using.

Later I figured Macaroni has "additions" to the daily and weekly scripts. It must be their fault not publicizing them.

For example, daily says:
"Cleaning up old printer temporary files in /var/spool/cups:

Cleaning up old temporary files in /tmp:

Cleaning up old temporary files in /var/tmp:

Cleaning up after Mac OS X Installer in /var/log:

Cleaning up old crash logs in /Library/Logs/CrashReporter:

Removing system messages older than 21 days...
"

I say "fire and forget" type , e.g. install and forget type of maintanance.

I have seen some amazing "CrashReporter" directory sizes on newbie mac users machines for example.

BTW, normally repairing disk permissions after installing something should be called "needless". If ADOBE/MACROMEDIA like giants figure how to make a installer not breaking system rights. Latest 8.0.28 Flash plugin AGAIN installs under user 501...

analogika · Mar 16, 2006, 07:01 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

*sigh*

So tell me ...

Is a fragmented file read just as fast as a continuous file? Answer that basic question.

I'm willing to bet that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference UNLESS you're working with HUGE streams of media (say 30+ channels of audio) and your disk is running full.

To regularly waste hours of your time and risk complete data loss for that potential theoretical advantage is a completely pointless exercise.

CharlesS · Mar 17, 2006, 01:33 AM

Originally Posted by Ilgaz

That must be fault of "Atomic Bird". In fact I purchased Macaroni since for a strange reason anacron wasn't running here. I bought it since I wanted scripts run and they run when my system is idle,e.g. I am not using.

Later I figured Macaroni has "additions" to the daily and weekly scripts. It must be their fault not publicizing them.

For example, daily says:
"Cleaning up old printer temporary files in /var/spool/cups:

Cleaning up old temporary files in /tmp:

Cleaning up old temporary files in /var/tmp:

Cleaning up after Mac OS X Installer in /var/log:

Cleaning up old crash logs in /Library/Logs/CrashReporter:

Removing system messages older than 21 days...
"

I say "fire and forget" type , e.g. install and forget type of maintanance.

I have seen some amazing "CrashReporter" directory sizes on newbie mac users machines for example.

Meh, I like having old crash logs in the CrashReporter directory. It lets me see how stable an app has been by seeing how many times it has crashed in a given amount of time. But regardless... the original poster was asking about the best overall Mac hard disk optimizer (i.e. defragger).

A periodic script runner is not a defrag.

Repairing permissions is not a defrag.

Updating the prebinding is not a defrag.

DiskWarrior is not a defrag (although unlike the other solutions, DiskWarrior is actually a great program).

Sadly, by now this thread is horribly off topic, probably irrecoverably.

Tomchu · Mar 17, 2006, 05:26 AM

Originally Posted by analogika

I'm willing to bet that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference UNLESS you're working with HUGE streams of media (say 30+ channels of audio) and your disk is running full.

To regularly waste hours of your time and risk complete data loss for that potential theoretical advantage is a completely pointless exercise.

Wrong. Why is there this misconception that a defragmentation tool means almost certain data loss? Are they simply not implemented properly? Tools like Diskeeper on Windows run on an intelligent schedule, and can defragment your drive *while you work with the files already on it*.

As for "theoretical advantage" ... there we go again -- people who don't understand file systems spouting off their opinions. Consider a 40 MB file. Forty MB isn't all that large by today's standards. Now let's say this file is in 500 fragments -- not impossible if it has been worked on repeatedly.

At an average seek time of, say, 11 ms for a 7200 RPM drive, it would take roughly 5 seconds of *seeking* alone to gather up all of those fragments -- and that's added on to the actual reading of 40 MB of total data, so let's say 1-2 seconds. Now consider that same 40 MB file in a single continuous segment. It will take 11 ms to find it, and then about 1 second to read it.

I don't know about your math education level, but the last time I checked, 1 second was a lot faster than 7 seconds. So there's your "theoretical advantage". Go ask a file system developer to explain the adverse effects of file fragmentation to you if you still don't believe any of it.

Ilgaz · Mar 17, 2006, 11:32 AM

A "non geek", non advanced user new to Mac world asks a question.

I like having old crash logs etc too, you may like too, it is not the question.

Ordinary user does NOT want megabytes of needless (if Apple does not care) crash logs already reported to apple and/or software vendor (if smart crash reports etc installed)

Ordinary user asking how to optimize and general maintanance, I answer him. I also (at my first post) tell the common misconception that defrag not needed anymore.

If it was a "advanced" user, my suggestions would be _very_ different.

Why picking on me really?

You said macaroni does stuff system already does. I say it is not the "usual" /etc/daily and it has some great features like "run in idle". Lets say you play a FPS game at 3:15 AM or do something disk activity critical. Want weekly run? I don't. The update locate database takes huge amount of disk speed and cpu activity on 10.4.x, not counting update whatis database.

The best dedicated defragment tool is iDefrag. It is a disk optimizer. It moves whole disk and re-organizes by classes. So there is risk, backup and checking disk can make user ignore the risk.

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php

For usual maintanance, I SUGGEST macaroni 45 day no nags-no risk trial. Shoot me for that!

Ilgaz · Mar 17, 2006, 11:44 AM

I am a video editor and "monster like" 15k RPM SCSI towers are very usual to us.

Everyone has http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/oodefrag/pro/ or

http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp

Yes, forget the entry level SATA on end user machines which computer companies call them "fast", even on setups like SCSI card having its own 32bit CPU and RAM handling requests (e.g. ATTO), defrag is widely used.

There is no computer company in IT history who honestly said defrag can improve performance. It includes MSFT which created the FAT system. I was only answering to "zealots" jumping to every "defrag" post saying HFS+ is so superior that defrag does nothing.

My message was not directed to Charles (author of Pacifist) allthough he misunderstood.

BTW even they are now moved to launchd , the "OS Scripts" which are daily, weekly and monthly does not "auto run" if machine was turned off/asleep at 3:15 am.

There is freeware Anacron for that:
http://members.cox.net/18james/anacron-tiger.html

Daily script has a very , very important function: Backing up netinfo database. I lost that database once by a stupid error myself, it was a total nightmare to recover.

Also the logs can get HUGE if not rotated.

CharlesS · Mar 17, 2006, 02:29 PM

Originally Posted by Ilgaz

Ordinary user asking how to optimize and general maintanance, I answer him. I also (at my first post) tell the common misconception that defrag not needed anymore.

No, the guy was asking for a disk defragger, as clearly stated by the thread title.

This is what bugs me - when people ask for an apple on here, they tend to get a crateload of oranges. DiskWarrior is not a defrag, repair permissions is not a defrag, and the freaking periodic scripts sure as heck are not a defrag.

You said macaroni does stuff system already does. I say it is not the "usual" /etc/daily and it has some great features like "run in idle". Lets say you play a FPS game at 3:15 AM or do something disk activity critical. Want weekly run? I don't. The update locate database takes huge amount of disk speed and cpu activity on 10.4.x, not counting update whatis database.

This right after the lecture about what ordinary users want.

Most "ordinary users" don't care when the periodic scripts run. Usually they're not that intensive, either, and your examples, the locate and whatis update, only run once a week.