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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Consumer Hardware & Components > How can you check on your main hard drive's condition?

How can you check on your main hard drive's condition?
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Veltliner
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Aug 28, 2010, 12:39 AM
 
I just read on another thread that slowness of a computer is a hint of a hard drive dying.

Now, my 24" white iMac is getting really slow. I first put the blame on Bridge and it's slow rendering on high quality previews, and on the fact that I'm processing 21 Megapixel files.

But there are instances that can't be explained away like this where the beachball is rolling like crazy.

I recently worked the drive over with Disc Warrior, who found quite a lot of trouble (is this a sign?).

The drive doesn't make any noises, doesn't click.

Is there any way to check it if it's in his last moments? I've had the computer for three years and used it intensively.
     
reader50
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Aug 28, 2010, 04:18 AM
 
If Disk Utility shows a SMART status of impending failure, then the drive is failing. However, the reverse is not true. A clean SMART report is not definitive - the drive can still fail without any SMART warning.

That said, how full is the drive? Filling up your drive is a much more common way to slow it down. Anything above 90% is bad, it should be below 80% to resist fragmentation.
     
ghporter
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Aug 28, 2010, 10:18 AM
 
Slow operation is often far more due to a nearly full hard drive than to a failing hard drive. Failing hard drives usually cause programs to fail or crash, and can even cause kernel crashes. Just slow is really not a "fault" indication. How big is that drive and how full is it? A really big drive can slowly fill up with various and sundry detritus like log files and downloads, and eventually slow the whole system down. Keeping the drive relatively clean of useless files and downloaded bits and pieces will help the speed of any system, though you really won't notice it unless the drive is fairly full.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Aug 29, 2010, 01:23 AM
 
It's a 250 Gb hard drive and I have 30 Gb available. (I have been down to only 5 Gb available, but moved older RAW files on an external hard drive).

How do you clean a hard drive from old log files etc. ?

Do you have to buy one of those "spring cleaning" apps - and which one would be the best?
     
ghporter
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Aug 29, 2010, 09:28 AM
 
The "spring cleaning" apps are generally a ripoff. I haven't cleared out my log files for a while, but the first place to look is under user/Library/Logs.

Most logs have the extension ".log" so you can use Searchlight to find others after you've gone through those in Library/Logs. Of course most logs are also in hidden folders, so you have to tell Searchlight to look there (which I have forgotten how to do at the moment).

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
reader50
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Aug 29, 2010, 01:54 PM
 
When you dropped to 5 GB available, you reached 98% full. On a working drive, that translates to heavy fragmentation for any file saved at the time. OSX will defrag many smaller files over time, as you open them. But larger files will not be defragged automatically.

You would benefit from a defrag utility. But since you've pushed so close to capacity, you would also benefit from a drive upgrade. If you did buy a bigger drive, the transfer process would defrag your data.
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Aug 29, 2010, 06:32 PM
 
I was thinking of buying a bigger drive.

But I guess I have to give it to a mac repair shop to do that.

A 1 Terabyte drive would be nice - a Hitachi, like the original drive, I suppose?



PS: Is there a defragmentation software you can recommend?
     
reader50
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Aug 29, 2010, 06:38 PM
 
My rule of thumb is to make the new drive at least 2x as big as the old one. After spending the money and the hassle of transferring, I want it to last awhile. More than 2x is icing on the cake. Eventually, you will use the extra storage. That's a truism with computers.

I use iDefrag, and am happy with it. This isn't a useful comparison though, since I haven't used any of the other defrag utilities.
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Aug 29, 2010, 06:48 PM
 
I just read you can defrag using Disc Warrior:

How to Defrag a Mac Hard Drive | eHow.com

I have never heard of that.

I guess it's typical online bs.

I also read that OS X doesn't defrag files over 20 Mb. Which would be most of my photography files (between 120 Mb and 800 Mb)
( Last edited by Veltliner; Aug 29, 2010 at 06:55 PM. )
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Aug 29, 2010, 06:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by reader50 View Post
My rule of thumb is to make the new drive at least 2x as big as the old one. After spending the money and the hassle of transferring, I want it to last awhile. More than 2x is icing on the cake.
If I do it, I'll put in a 1 Tb disc (4x of what I have now).
( Last edited by Veltliner; Aug 29, 2010 at 06:56 PM. )
     
ghporter
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Aug 29, 2010, 09:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Veltliner View Post
If I do it, I'll put in a 1 Tb disc (4x of what I have now).
And this is bad how?

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
auto_immune
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Aug 29, 2010, 10:38 PM
 
Onyx will clean some logs, but you can view your logs in Console.app (in the utilities folder)
and erase the unneeded ones from there - just right click on the log and choose either delete
or reveal in finder to delete the log from the folder it is located filed in.

Just be careful which logs you delete, as some are required for your console to work properly.

According to About disk optimization with Mac OS X ,
You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Here's why:

Hard disk capacity is generally much greater now than a few years ago. With more free space available, the file system doesn't need to fill up every "nook and cranny." Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus) avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space.
Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X Extended-formatted volumes. This allows a number of small allocations to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk.
Fragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to existing files, especially with resource forks. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files. This process is sometimes known as "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering."
Aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching means that minor fragmentation has less effect on perceived system performance.

For these reasons, there is little benefit to defragmenting.

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.

If you think you might need to defragment

Try restarting first. It might help, and it's easy to do.

If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files (such as editing video, but see the Tip below if you use iMovie and Mac OS X 10.3), 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.

Another option is to back up your important files, erase the hard disk, then reinstall Mac OS X and your backed up files.
( Last edited by auto_immune; Aug 29, 2010 at 10:55 PM. )
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Aug 30, 2010, 12:02 AM
 
I will do the defragmentation and get idefrag.

I'm not in the mood for a disk upgrade and will simply move RAW files to an external hard drive.
     
sadpandas
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Aug 30, 2010, 05:30 PM
 
Wow, you are using a ton of disk space on that drive. I have heard that after a drive is more than 50% full it starts to degrade in performance from an Apple tech. i don't know if that's true but kind of makes sense. I use a 1.5 TB drive for my programs (1TB free) and a 500 for my audio or scratch disk and another drive for all of my itunes and photos. might be overkill but it seems, like ram or money, you can never have too much...

pandas
*Dual 2.8 quad core Mac Pro, 512 8800 GT, 1tb boot, 500gb audio, 340gb video, 6gb ram
*15"pb*1.67*128vm*100hd*2g ram*
*PMac*Dual 2.0GHz* 4g ram*
*3.0 p4 630* gigabyte848p775* radeon X800 Pro 256* 2g ram*
     
   
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