[Prijker]

I'v seen many posts by unix gurus saying basically that osx needs no defrag operation because it's the most advanced system in (their) world.

Anyway, as i didn't find my G3 500/384 specially faster after upgrading from 10.1.5 to 10.2 (clean install), i decided to give Speed Disk a chance again (i did it once a month in 10.1)

So this morning, i started from my OS9 partition, ran Norton Disk Doctor, then Speed Disk with OSX profile 4.0, then Disk warrior 2.1.1.

I was afraid of not being able to restart, and crossed my fingers... but Jaguar restarted as usual. No, not as usual!!!, faster than ever: from the gray apple to Finder it took about 35 sec (then the Finder needed about 10 secs more).

Generally, all my Finder operations are now a joy to use. Far better than 10.1.5! And I did not run prebind when back in OSX, due to the fact that it seems that Jaguar doest it by itself, and apps like Xoptimize are now obsolete. Are they? Anyway...

I made some benchmarks:

load PS7: (before/after defrag) 36/30 sec
load Classic: 26/19
load Mozilla 13/10

Even though these differences here doesn't seem dramatic, the fact is the Finder (the interface) is the one that feels more responsive than ever.

These kind of improvements were usual back in 10.1.5 after defrag with Speed Disk and Directory Optimization with Disk Warrior. But now, with Jaguar my old G3 can finally taste a "a-la OS9" Finder.

One last thing: my Internet connection (cable) seems to have vastly improved too, as most pages open instantly (try these forums), but this may be due simply to the fact that Mozilla (my default beast) now loads (and may be runs) faster too.

Anyway, to those who think their jaguar runs as a turtle, give it fresh meat!

And don't believe those horror stories about loosing all data during a defrag. It never happened to me, and i do it once a month. I think the most important is to have a decent backup of your system, but i assure you from my experience you can easily work on a OSX partition from a OS9 disk without risking any kind of implosion!!!

-------------
iMac DVSE G3 500 384 Mb/RAM 30 Gb
Jaguar 10.2 6C115

Vic

[mrtew]

I always use SpeedDisc and have never had any problem either... but I did NortonDiskDoctor for the first time since getting Jagwire the other day and when I proceeded to do SpeedDisc something really weird happened. With the normal 'General Use' profile the disc looked normal but when I checked it with the 'OSX 4.0' profile it seemed like more than half the files disappeared. It was like the hard drive was 3/4 empty when it's not. I freaked and didn't optimize but switched back to the general use profile at which point SpeedDisc crashed (very scary) so I just forgot all about it.

You're experience of the OSX4.0 profile working fine may inspire me to give it another try though. Are there any newer profiles designed for Jag?

[pid]

I used Drive 10 version 10.1.1.1 to defragment a harddrive on my G4-933 running OSX 10.2. Drive 10 was launched from a CD that had OSX 10.1.5 on it. Big mistake. Scrambled the contents on many files. My file loss was about 75%. This harddrive contain my system, all of my apllications, and a few data files. Most of my other data files are stored on another RAID drive set-up that is mirrored.

Well, I saved as many data files as I could and then reformatted the drive intalling the system and all of application on it again. I'll never use Drive 10 from a CD again. One nice benefit, it seems to run a little faster.

I've heard other grumble about Drive 10 software.

[OverclockedHomoSapien]

I used Norton Utilities 7 (for OS X) to optimize my OS X drive. It totally hosed my system and I had to do a clean install to get OS X back. Luckily I keep my home directory on a separate partition, so recovering my system was relatively easy.

I've heard similar reports from Drive 10 users.

Thus I'm inclined to agree with these Unix gurus who've told you that OS X doesn't need defragging. My system was about a year old and after installing OS X again on a newly formatted partition, the performance was exactly the same. Defragging may have been important back with OS 9 but I think for OS X it's a waste of time and dangerous as well. I'd personally like to see Apple put Symantec and Micromat out of business, but I suppose as long as Windows is around they'll have real problems for their utilities to fix. For now, Norton and Drive10 have to create problems in OS X so there's something to fix.

[ginoledesma]

What the Unix gurus have said is probably quoted out of context, or was not qualified. Most, if not all, Unix systems do not use HFS/HFS+ -- the filesystem which Mac OS X uses. Some use UFS, while others like Linux use ext2/ext3/XFS/ReiserFS/JFS. These filesystems do not need to be "optimized" because they work differently, in that they tend to "optimize" the use of the disk themselves, "on the fly." It is uncommon, if not totally foreign, to a Unix systems admin to reboot his system to single-user runlevel mode only to "defragment the disk." Most disk housekeeping is only performed during a system reboot/shutdown/failure and the like -- never routinely for "preventive maintenance" (after all, that's what backups are for).

[neverwind]

<quote>
I used Norton Utilities 7 (for OS X) to optimize my OS X drive. It totally hosed my system and I had to do a clean install to get OS X back.
</quote>

ummm, does anyone see anything strange with the above post? The software listed (Norton Utilities 7) was an OS X native version - why would it hose his drive? If symantic releases software for os x then it should run and defrag os x drives... whats the go here? Symantec SHOULD know if a os X drive needs defragging or not - not just make a lame attempt at organising files on a drive os 9 [sic] style.

Is there any documentation on the file system jagwire is using? and if it should be defragged or not? If so, what is the best method? Again, Symantec should be doing this - if it claims to be selling a product that does...

[himself]

I tried Speed Disk to optimize 10.2, and while it didn't "hose my disk", it didn't speed things up significantly... but then again, I don't have the "OSX 4.0" profile. Where can I get that profile?

[Prijker]

i think i got the 4.0 X profile from the Symantec site, but not sure anymore. Give it a try.

unless it was part of the NU 6.0.3 update.

i can send it to you, i don't think it's commercial material.

to all:
i forgot to say i was talking about Norton Utilities 6.0.3, starting from a OS9 partition.
I don't want to have anything to do with Norton 7 X. It's a total disaster!

[Prijker]

Just found this forum at MacFixIt:

http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/sh...b=5&o=&fpart=1

[barbarian]

ummm, does anyone see anything strange with the above post? The software listed (Norton Utilities 7) was an OS X native version - why would it hose his drive?

I can confirm that the OS X native version of Norton can hose drives rendering them unbootable. I had 2 good experiences with Norton and 2 bad experiences (had to do run the 10.2 update on a 10.2 installation to get it to boot again). Anyway, I'm done with Norton for now. The fact is this program is deeply flawed.

I never had a problem with the OS 9 version of norton running on OS 9. Have been using it for years on my OS 9 installations/partitions.

[kovacs]

Originally posted by barbarian:
ummm, does anyone see anything strange with the above post? The software listed (Norton Utilities 7) was an OS X native version - why would it hose his drive?

I can confirm that the OS X native version of Norton can hose drives rendering them unbootable. I had 2 good experiences with Norton and 2 bad experiences (had to do run the 10.2 update on a 10.2 installation to get it to boot again). Anyway, I'm done with Norton for now. The fact is this program is deeply flawed.

I never had a problem with the OS 9 version of norton running on OS 9. Have been using it for years on my OS 9 installations/partitions.

I had some serious problems with Norton Utilities 7, I used it to defragment a partition on my external firewire drive. After the defragmentation was finished I could still see all my files and folders but I couldn't open them anymore. Most files were 0 kb. big. I tried to run disc doctor but I always crashed after a few minutes, I also tried Norton Utilities 6 ( I never had any problems with this version ) running on OS 9 but with the same result. I think that apps like this can do more harm than good, an modern operating system like OSX doesn't need such apps anymore.

[ginoledesma]

Ugh. Norton Utilities 7.0.2 still doesn't recognize my disks on OS 10.2. Really wasted a lot with this software.

[Jeadhob]

I saw a huge change in speed on defrag for Jaguar but I used Diskwarriors utility.

[pilauh]

Hi,

I did a defrag using Drive 10 (10.1.1) from the CD and everything just worked fine.

All the process went thru without any problem :

1- ran Drive 10 from the CD
2- ran the optimize program
3- once finished, ran the catalog rebuild function
4- reboot and logged into single-user mode (command-S during boot), ran fsck
5- reboot in the normal OS X Aqua

a first, opening folders was slower, but I thought that the system was relocating were was everything after the defrag.. so I decided not to worry and think about something else.

So, I worked, had a few fun downloading some avi's and watched them, sent a few mails and did a lot of browsing...

that was 2 days ago now, everything is cool... the Finder is definitely quick, launching applications is fast, but I think that was already the case after the Jaguar clean install (... ...)

so, I didn't meet the situations here described with Drive 10. I don't even know if running that defrag brought me something... I run fsck every week as a routine check, and think that's a good thing to do.

I don't have the technical level with Unix (i don't have any... ;-) ) to understand the "defrag or not defrag OS X" situation...

C ya all...

[typoon]

Did you guys update to the newest versions of Norton and Drive 10? I would use Boot CD and create a bootable Drive 10 CD and boot from that and run it again. I have 2 Machines so I target mode one of them and use the other to fix them. that way I am using the newest version of both or either.

[jules]

BootCD doesn't work in Jaguar. Nor can you update the Drive 10 CD in the usual way with the 1.1.2 Updater.

[mrtew]

The new bug with Jag defrag > Norton 6 is kinda scary but I got around it and did the defrag and everything is fine and fast. All this was done while booted from my Classic partition in OS9.2. When I check the disc with either the General or OSX4.0 profile it works fine, but if I switch to the other profile most of the files show as free space... that's the scary part. I see the names when I look with the magnifying glass but they are white and tagged as Free Blocks. I was glad I noticed this before I hit Optimize.
Anyway I quit and restarted the program and checked and Optimized with the OSX4.0 proile and it worked fine. Here's hoping that Apple with slow down with switching everything around long enough for Norton to catch up!

[himself]

Originally posted by Prijker:
i think i got the 4.0 X profile from the Symantec site, but not sure anymore. Give it a try.

unless it was part of the NU 6.0.3 update.

I do have the OS X 3.1 profile, but I have never seen the 4.0 profile. I can't find it on Symantec's website either.

[Sophus]

Originally posted by neverwind:
<quote>
I used Norton Utilities 7 (for OS X) to optimize my OS X drive. It totally hosed my system and I had to do a clean install to get OS X back.
</quote>

ummm, does anyone see anything strange with the above post? The software listed (Norton Utilities 7) was an OS X native version - why would it hose his drive? If symantic releases software for os x then it should run and defrag os x drives... whats the go here? Symantec SHOULD know if a os X drive needs defragging or not - not just make a lame attempt at organising files on a drive os 9 [sic] style.

Is there any documentation on the file system jagwire is using? and if it should be defragged or not? If so, what is the best method? Again, Symantec should be doing this - if it claims to be selling a product that does...

From my personal experience, Norton Utilities is a VIRUS. It has never done any good. But I can assure that it has done A LOT of bad things to machines I have used it on. It is a piece of software made to accomodate masochists.

Sophus

Sophus

[ginoledesma]

Where can we get the OS X Profile for Speed Disk?

[Simon]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
Where can we get the OS X Profile for Speed Disk?

You can find it here .

[mrchin]

My advice is that no Symantec products are compatible with Jaguar. Installing System Works, Nort Uts, Internet Security or Antivirus on people's systems pretty much rendered them useless or created many errors which made the system, um... useless.

Disk Warrior is god. It does the best job in optimizng, repair and total recovery. I've had HDs seem to be completely dead, not mounting with anything. But DW did the job.

[hyperizer]

DiskWarrior and PlusOptimizer are especially nice because if your computer crashes while they're running (or if your power goes out), you won't suffer any data loss. I know this from experience.

Back to the subject at hand, Jaguar seems much worse at fragmenting a drive than 10.1. It seems that it only takes a week or so for logouts to get noticeably slower, for example. I hope this is fixed in an update somehow.

[himself]

Originally posted by Simon:


You can find it here .

This is that 3.1 profile, isn't it? I thought there was a "4.0" out there somewhere...

I'll have to admit that Norton is somtimes sketchy, often flakey, and overall kinda scary (at least since the move to OS X), but it hasn't given me any problems yet. I have Diskwarrior also, and that seems to be rock solid. What Symantec needs to do is update speed disk to recognize OS X-specific file types and file extensions. As it is now, speed disk can only identify files for optimization by the directory they're contained in, or the Creator/Type codes, which are pretty much useless when optimizing an OSX volume. Maybe (hopefully) they are working on it now.

[malvolio]

Originally posted by hyperizer:
DiskWarrior and PlusOptimizer are especially nice because if your computer crashes while they're running (or if your power goes out), you won't suffer any data loss. I know this from experience.

Amen to that! And furthermore, I recently read that even power surges during optimizing, such as from storms or just old wiring, can trash a hard drive. That would explain why some Norton Speed Disk defrags succeed while others don't.
From now on, it's only PlusOptimizer to defrag for me!

[Prijker]

The OSX profile 4.0 is here http://homepage.mac.com/m2tiure/.cv/...4.sit-link.sit

[squiggy]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
What the Unix gurus have said is probably quoted out of context, or was not qualified. Most, if not all, Unix systems do not use HFS/HFS+ -- the filesystem which Mac OS X uses. Some use UFS, while others like Linux use ext2/ext3/XFS/ReiserFS/JFS. These filesystems do not need to be "optimized" because they work differently, in that they tend to "optimize" the use of the disk themselves, "on the fly."

It's not that HFS+ on OS X is especially prone to file fragmentation, it's a byproduct of how OS X stores programs and some files.

On a Linux system (or Windows, or OS 9 or whatever) a program is generally a single binary. This is rarely ever fragmented and so can be read very efficiently. On OS X, a program is a "bundle" which is really a folder containing lots of individual files. This is inherently less efficient, and can also lead to the drive having to seek all over the place to load up the individual files.

[Simon]

Originally posted by squiggy:
On OS X, a program is a "bundle" which is really a folder containing lots of individual files. This is inherently less efficient, and can also lead to the drive having to seek all over the place to load up the individual files.

I understand this problem, but I could imagine that Apple could tell Darwin to copy app bundles to a place on the disk where the whole bundle can be written in one stream without fragmentation. Why don't they do this?
Once an app bundle is written to disk its contents shouldn't change anymore I suppose, since app prefs are written to a pref directory and not to the bundle itself. Is there an obvious reason for Apple not to implement such a behaviour.

[step]

The safest way to defrag an osx disk is ,with out question, to do a backup and restore with carbon copy cloner(erasing your drive before restoring)
There will always be at least one full working version of your data in existance through out, so power outs shouldn't be so catastrophic.
It has the benefit of being many times quicker than a defrag(by hours for a big drive), and it uses free software.
The only downside is you'll need a hard drive to back up to.

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by step:
The safest way to defrag an osx disk is ,with out question, to do a backup and restore with carbon copy cloner(erasing your drive before restoring)
There will always be at least one full working version of your data in existance through out, so power outs shouldn't be so catastrophic.
It has the benefit of being many times quicker than a defrag(by hours for a big drive), and it uses free software.
The only downside is you'll need a hard drive to back up to.

A friend of mine who is a Unix Admin confirmed this to me and recommended using an inexpensive firewire hard drive. For a little more than the cost of buying one of these utilities you can optimize your hard drive and receive an additional hard drive to boot.

[chezpaul]

I use norton 6.03 (Speed disk) It's always worked for me on over 15 macs that I work with. The only problem I've had is with my new DDR dual 1 gig mac I just got. I had to create a new OS 9 boot disk (from a OS 9 disk that came with a SDR dual 1gig mac cause none come with the DDR mac) and now when I boot from the CD ROM, my hard drive doesn't appear on the desktop and isn't seen by Norton.
My older hard drive is there and seen... wierd...

So I just copied the OS 9 system folder from the DDR to my second drive, booted from there and ran norton.. doctor and speed disk (profile 4) no problems what so ever.

Doctor reported major errors on my DDR drive and speed disk reported sever frag and cleaned it.

I'll be buying Diskwarrior 3 when it comes out.. (6-7 weeks I read)
To check out all the fuss. But norton has always been good to me.

Also ran speed disk and doctor 6.0.3 on three other jaguar systems and everything is fine.


As for the people who talk about surges during the checks.. I don't get it.. U should all have surge protector on all your macs. If not power backups. (Beklin makes one for $120)..


My two words.

[hyperizer]

Originally posted by chezpaul:
As for the people who talk about surges during the checks.. I don't get it.. U should all have surge protector on all your macs. If not power backups. (Beklin makes one for $120).

I have a UPS, but considering defragging my 80 GB drive takes over an hour, that's not going to cut it if there's a power outtage part-way through. Most UPSs only give you five minutes or so (with a monitor) to save and shut down.

[dfiler]

Originally posted by squiggy:


It's not that HFS+ on OS X is especially prone to file fragmentation, it's a byproduct of how OS X stores programs and some files.

On a Linux system (or Windows, or OS 9 or whatever) a program is generally a single binary. This is rarely ever fragmented and so can be read very efficiently. On OS X, a program is a "bundle" which is really a folder containing lots of individual files. This is inherently less efficient, and can also lead to the drive having to seek all over the place to load up the individual files.

This is a very misleading.

While its true that Apps, as represented in the finder, are actually folders, this doesn't mean that OS X apps are spread across more files than their counterparts on other platforms. Look in your 'Program Files' directory in windows or 'etc' (or numerous others) in linux to see how executables/programs/binaries are stored. OS X simply encapsulates everything in a more tidy manner.

I suppose the number of OSes and Apps out there is finite. Anyone care to do a real quantative analysis? Then we can argue about if more frequently used apps should have their file-counts weighted

Also, it is false to say that loading an App from more files is 'inherently less efficient'. It would be correct to say that loading an App from one file is potentially more efficient. However, I doubt that this is the case in the real world. You see, applications are compiled into binaries from which embedded data can be extracted. During application launch, the data is extracted but rarely in the exact order it was stored. Thus, larger and fewer files can actually increase data seek time.

Finally, if you figure multi-forked file systems, DLLs, extensions, and OS API structures into the equation, the whole concept of a 'single binary' becomes a red herring to this discussion.

Please disregard everything squiggy had to say about application bundles, disk thrashing, and launch times. (sorry squiggy)

[Prijker]

well, i've read you all,

i understand all your arguments

and i still love you all

but

the fact is after defrag my Mac now runs Jaguar faster than ever

that's reality

that's all that matters for me

period

vic

[chezpaul]

Originally posted by hyperizer:


I have a UPS, but considering defragging my 80 GB drive takes over an hour, that's not going to cut it if there's a power outtage part-way through. Most UPSs only give you five minutes or so (with a monitor) to save and shut down.

Hey Hyper, U live in a city that has hour long blackouts ???
We're talking up to 5 minutes at the most for the use of a UPS... At least that's how I'm talking about it. It's also used for surges which is what they were talking about.

If u're scared of hour long blackouts then I wouldn't even turn on my mac.

[squiggy]

Originally posted by dfiler:


This is a very misleading.

While its true that Apps, as represented in the finder, are actually folders, this doesn't mean that OS X apps are spread across more files than their counterparts on other platforms.

Since you suggest people look, I'll leave it at that. I'm not too worried about being proven wrong because, well, I'm not.

I suppose the number of OSes and Apps out there is finite. Anyone care to do a real quantative analysis? Then we can argue about if more frequently used apps should have their file-counts weighted

Also, it is false to say that loading an App from more files is 'inherently less efficient'. It would be correct to say that loading an App from one file is potentially more efficient. However, I doubt that this is the case in the real world. You see, applications are compiled into binaries from which embedded data can be extracted. During application launch, the data is extracted but rarely in the exact order it was stored. Thus, larger and fewer files can actually increase data seek time.

It's not only potentially more efficient, it *is* more efficient. The only argument you have is that for whatever reason you wouldn't notice the additional operating system overhead from opening, reading and closing the additional files present in a bundled app.

You can have instances where using larger files can be slower (like with nib files due to the amount of time it takes to parse through them) but this a design problem more than a filesystem thing.

Finally, if you figure multi-forked file systems, DLLs, extensions, and OS API structures into the equation, the whole concept of a 'single binary' becomes a red herring to this discussion.

Only if you don't care about the program and it's component parts getting fragmented across the hard drive, making the operating system work harder than it otherwise would to launch programs.

I suspect this is why Apple implemented their new 'pre-heating' app launching deal (see /var/vm/app_profiles) which helps to get around the problem for frequently used programs.

Please disregard everything squiggy had to say about application bundles, disk thrashing, and launch times. (sorry squiggy)

No need to apologize for making yourself look stupid, happens all the time on these boards .

[MrBS]

Originally posted by chezpaul:


Hey Hyper, U live in a city that has hour long blackouts ???
We're talking up to 5 minutes at the most for the use of a UPS... At least that's how I'm talking about it. It's also used for surges which is what they were talking about.

If u're scared of hour long blackouts then I wouldn't even turn on my mac.

I think he's worried about 6 minute blackouts.
~BS

[ginoledesma]

Unfortunately, long blackouts are a reality for some. Which is usually why I backup sometime 1AM or 2AM and leave it overnight -- blackouts don't strike often as more people go to bed already. Hehe. Anyway, what kind of UPS do you have? My lowly 500VA UPS lasts my Mac (G4/400+17" ASD CRT) 5-8 minutes with the monitor on, 10-15 minutes with the monitor off.

[dfiler]

Originally posted by squiggy:

It's not only potentially more efficient, it *is* more efficient. The only argument you have is that for whatever reason you wouldn't notice the additional operating system overhead from opening, reading and closing the additional files present in a bundled app.
...
You can have instances where using larger files can be slower (like with nib files due to the amount of time it takes to parse through them) but this a design problem more than a filesystem thing.
...
Only if you don't care about the program and it's component parts getting fragmented across the hard drive, making the operating system work harder than it otherwise would to launch programs.
...

I agree that application launching is slower on OS X than on other platforms. I also agree that it is possible to speed up launch times by compiling into single binaries that are loaded in a linear manner with no intra-process drive seek delays. Where I disagree is on the effect that Application bundles or file-counts have on real-world program fragmentation and launch times.

The development prowess and time required to actually construct a binary that is loaded and used in a perfectly sequential manner, generally makes the development of such binaries cost prohibitive. The fragmentation of programs represented as App bundles has a trivial effect on launch time when compared to the effects of initialization routine efficiency. This was one of the original motivations for the creation of HFS resource forks. The additional overhead associated with multiple entry points was more than made up for by lessoning the cognitive loads imposed on developers. OO techniques when applied to application binary storage, freed up enough developer time, that more effort could be spent on initialization optimization.

This is almost the exact same argument that the software industry went through when assembly code was being supplanted by procedural structures or when procedural programming was replaced by object-oriented programming. Yes, there is computational overhead associated with these abstractions. However, you more than make up for it by having more time to spend on code profiling and subsequent optimization. If economies of scale and/or an unlimited budgets are on hand, then by all means, let your programmers work inefficiently but longer in order to create the optimal, linearly loaded and initialized binary.

Have no fear, OSX's (NeXT's) app bundles are the way of the future. Multi-forked file systems, while nice, had too many caveats in the current, multiplatform internet age.

Its cheaper to pay for a faster hard drive than to pay developers to use non-OO techniques. Fragmentation? Yes, but its not paramount in the performance equation.

[hyperizer]

Originally posted by chezpaul:

Hey Hyper, U live in a city that has hour long blackouts ???

Not everyone lives in a big city. As you can see from my location, I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Although it's the state capital, the population is around 60,000 and the surrounding area is quite rural. Power outages are caused by human error, lightning strikes, traffic accidents, and even forest fires. I think the longest I've experienced was an entire afternoon. Even when I lived in Rochester, NY there were plenty of outages (including one that lasted a whole week due to an icestorm). Where do you live that the power never goes out?

[chezpaul]

I live in LA.. Never had the power go out at home.
At work... in Hollywood, we have the power go out for 2 or 3 seconds at least 2 or 3 times every six months. Kinda wierd and not all our gear is affected. Some gear doesn't even see it (when it goes out for less than a second). But one of our consoles never fails and will always tell us what happened.
All the macs have a Belkin UPS thing on them. I bought 2 APS's which both broke down on me.. They just started beeping like hell and the mac wouldn't boot. I booted them.... out....