[dikraduni]

I know... MacBooks don't NEED to be defrag'd.... but I've had mine for almost 6 years (current internal HD for maybe 3yrs) and I probably keep it within 5G of full most of the time. Lately it's been slowing down quite a bit and I want to try to defrag it to see if that speeds it up a bit ((since I don't want to invest in additional RAM if I don't have to))! That said, I just don't know what software/process to trust with my HD (which I will backup first, but...)

Suggestions???

[ghporter]

If you have less than 20% or so free space, the automatic fragmentation management becomes less efficient and drive performance suffers. Go through and dump a lot of unneeded stuff (old log files are a good place to start), and when you get to having the drive under 80% full, just use it for a while. Within a few days, you'll probably see a noticeable improvement.

If that doesn't work, or not well enough, then it is time for a third party app like iDefrag. But I think you'll find that just letting the built in functions do their job will be more than enough.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by dikraduni 

I know... MacBooks don't NEED to be defrag'd.... but I've had mine for almost 6 years (current internal HD for maybe 3yrs) and I probably keep it within 5G of full most of the time. Lately it's been slowing down quite a bit and I want to try to defrag it to see if that speeds it up a bit ((since I don't want to invest in additional RAM if I don't have to))!

1. Keep at least 10% of the internal drive free at all times.
2. Investing time for defragging over investing $20 into maximizing the RAM shows two things, when you think about it:
a) your priorities are screwed up, and
b) your time is worth nothing.

I doubt that your time is worthless, so I'd reconsider my approach if I were you.

Oh, and do develop a plan on how to free up hard disk space: that will speed up your machine almost as much as maxing out the RAM will.

And another thing: I hope you're running with a full backup of everything at all times.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by dikraduni 

...I've had mine for almost 6 years (current internal HD for maybe 3yrs) and I probably keep it within 5G of full most of the time. Lately it's been slowing down quite a bit...

Hard drives can become unstable when they get as full as yours is. Add to that the fact that all hard drives fail, plus 3 years of mobile-usage age, and you should consider your data to be at high risk. Like Spheric said: "I hope you're running with a full backup of everything at all times. "

Hard drives slow as they fill, and laptop HDDs start out slow anyway. Approx. 70% full maximum is a good guideline relative to speed and consistent operation of a main drive. Move 30% or more of the data off that drive.

My guess is that once you remove a third of the data the operation will be back to normal. Personally I use Disk Warrior to help stay ahead of hard drive problems, but even with the ideal tool available I seldom manually defrag. Note that if you do use DW it is important to have the correct DW version for the OS version in use. A dozen years ago DW was golden in my workflow, but today's OS/drives may obviate its utility, I do not know.

HTH

-Allen

[SierraDragon]

I do understand why you do not want to spend money (e.g. RAM upgrading) on a 6-year-old Macbook. Better to save for a Macbook Air.

You can evaluate whether or not you have adequate RAM by looking at the Page Outs number under System Memory on the Activity Monitor app before starting a typical work session; recheck after working and if the page outs change (manual calculation of ending page outs number minus starting page outs number) is not zero your workflow is RAM-starved. Ignore page ins, the pie charts and other info in Activity Monitor.

If your test shows that page outs increase at all during operation it is affecting performance (and exacerbated by paging to an overfilled hard drive). You can

• add RAM as feasible

• and/or simply try to run only one app at a time, for sure diligently closing unneeded apps like browsers

• restart with some frequency if you suspect memory leaks (common especially with less-than-top-quality applications)

HTH

-Allen

[OreoCookie]

You have way too little free space on your hard drive. OS X doesn't like it if you have less than 10 GB of free space. You can even crash your system: if you force OS X to create more than 5 GB swap space, your system will invariably crash since OS X runs out of memory.

Defragmenting your hard drive with extra software won't help since the data has nowhere to go.

Instead, you should invest in a new hard drive (~$70-100) and perhaps also more RAM. By the way, do you keep backups of your data?

[printbucket]

Best bet is to go ahead and manually dump your old log files and folders you don't use anymore. Then a third party app could help you.

[anthology123]

Like the others have indicated, defrag will not do much good with only 5GB left, and with only 5GB left, it will take forever to complete. First, you better be making a backup of all your data, if not this conversation is over. If you have, and you need to keep everything you have on your hard drive with 5GB of space, then you need to consider moving some less used data off to a 2nd hard drive (and you need to back that up, too!)

[Big Mac]

Defrags aren't a waste of time if you're talking about true fragmentation. You can download iDefrag and see your level of fragmentation, then judge whether or not you want to do the full defrag.

[jim19720]

I also have a 5 year old MacBook that had gradually filled up (< 1gig free). After getting rid of lots of junk plus 1500 emails and bringing free memory up to 6gig, I decided to install Snow Leopard which I had had laying around for 2 years but couldn't install due to lack of memory.

Result: free memory went from 6 to 19 gig? ???!!! Why?? More efficient? Reorganization of 5 years of stuff? I know that installing Microsoft updates of ANYTHING never took less memory!

p.s. What are the bulky log files one responder mentioned?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by jim19720 

I also have a 5 year old MacBook that had gradually filled up (< 1gig free). After getting rid of lots of junk plus 1500 emails and bringing free memory up to 6gig, I decided to install Snow Leopard which I had had laying around for 2 years but couldn't install due to lack of memory.

Result: free memory went from 6 to 19 gig? ???!!! Why?? More efficient? Reorganization of 5 years of stuff? I know that installing Microsoft updates of ANYTHING never took less memory!

p.s. What are the bulky log files one responder mentioned?

Two things happened:

1) Snow Leopard is Intel-only, so it's a lot leaner than Leopard was, which dragged everything along in duplicate binaries for both PPC and Intel platforms.

2) Snow Leopard changed the way disk size is reported, from a gigabyte being 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes to being 1000 x 1000 x 1000 bytes, the way drive manufacturers calculate it. This is not as big a difference to your free space calculations, though.

It's also quite possible that a bunch of old log files were removed by the upgrade.

[Helmling]

So what log files can I delete and how do I find them?

What are other hidden space hogs?

[anthology123]

If left running overnight, unix cron jobs clear some unneeded files. Also, apps like Applejack and Onyx can also help remove things like cache files too.

[adambrown2738]

Anthology - is a unix cron job straightforward to execute? Had a quick google but lots of stuff far beyond my knowledge came up!
Much appreciated!

[anthology123]

I suggest you just download Onyx and use that to help you execute the cron tasks.

[Spheric Harlot]

As of about five years ago, the cron jobs are queued and executed the next time the computer is switched on.

Using Onyx to run them (or in fact, to do ANYTHING) has been pretty much a useless placebo for Windows switchers who feel the need to do *something* to keep their system running smoothly.

And removing cache files will slow down your computer. Leave them alone unless you're explicitly seeing problems with an app that might be caused by a corrupted cache.

[anthology123]

I would like to reiterate what SH said, you really don't need to run the cron tasks manually.