[faddah]

hi all,

i'm wondering if any of you have seen the article in the computer free paper "computer bits" (also on-line at http://www.computerbits.com) by michael pearce. the article can be found at --

http://www.computerbits.com/archive/...earce0301.html

... and it can also be found at pearces personal web site, http://www.moonmac.com, at --

http://www.moonmac.com/Macking90.html

you have to scroll down about mid-way through the article to see the section i'm concerned about, "apple & shut-up orders."

pearce says that for the last 18 months or so, all new macs coming from the factory have had severly fragmented hard drives (the data being written in non-contiguous bits all over the drive, instead of one long contiguous stream at the start of the drive). pearce postulates that there is some sort of "evil" master disk at the factory for apple that is mirror copying all the drives this way.

i'm finding this story a bit hard to believe or swallow. i've talked to pearce privately on e-mail. he is a mac computer consultant who also does a radio show about computers here in the northwest. he says all recent macs with os x he has set up for clients have, out of the box, had severly fragmented hard drives, as reported by norton utilities for mac speed disk. and that apple is saying and doing nothing about it. when i asked him for some sources besides his own observation, he pointed to this discussion at the macintouch site --

http://www.macintouch.com/fragmentation.html

apparently, not only pearce, but many are concerned about this issues, especially as concerns having contiguous space to save large media files, i.e., from imovie, etc.

i've scoured apple's support site, the discussion groups here, etc., but can find no support article or discussion regarding this. the same is true at sites like macintouch.com (save the one discussion he pointed me to on this), macfixit.com & macnn.com -- no news articles of late proclaiming this whatsoever. has anyone else heard of this? does anyone know if apple is doing anything about it? it would seem that if apple was notified about this over year ago, even if they didn't want to talk about it, they would have done something by now to make sure their manufacturing process at the factory didn't spit out macs for public consumption that had fragmented hard drives. any info, agreeing with fragmentation observation or saying it is bogus, along with documented sources and links, please, would be much appreciated.

-- faddah steve wolf
portland, oregon
[email protected]

[siluni]

Originally posted by faddah:
hi all,

pearce says that for the last 18 months or so, all new macs coming from the factory have had severly fragmented hard drives (the data being written in non-contiguous bits all over the drive, instead of one long contiguous stream at the start of the drive ...

I understand that a fragmented drive can cause performance problems over time, but to ask the obvious, what's the real issue or problem here? I'm not getting what problem this has caused for users, and why you're taking on this issue. Has this affected you personally?

[faddah]

Originally posted by siluni:
I understand that a fragmented drive can cause performance problems over time, but to ask the obvious, what's the real issue or problem here? I'm not getting what problem this has caused for users, and why you're taking on this issue. Has this affected you personally?

o.k., here's the clarification --

the article by pearce was forwarded to me by some friends i'm helping set up with things like a home network with airport, transferring data from an older imac to a newer, recently purchased flat screen imac, and updating them to os x jaguar 10.2.3. the user e-mailed me in a slight panic after reading pearce's article, and generating more work for me (sigh), asking -- is this something we should do??? everyone *has* to buy norton (or tech tool pro, or whatever) and optimize if they buy a new mac?!

so i e-mailed pearce and posted here and other mac related discussion groups to ask -- has anyone else seen this problem? is it documented in a news, article, or tech tip section on apple's support site or any other third party site (here, macintouch, macfixit, etc.)? is it a valid issue or a tempest in a teapot. i want to do valid follow up for the people i'm helping set up because i'd like to get the *real* facts behind this issue and what's causing it, if it truly exists.

pearce has told me in private e-mail all recent hard drives on new macs he's looked at, while setting them up for clients, have data sprayed all over the drive, and verified this with the latest norton speed disk. i haven't looked at a new mac straight out of the box with norton, tech tool or anything else lately, as i usually reserve that for a little later down the line after some use. so that's why i'm asking, has anyone else seen this? is it documented? if so, where and can you provide sources/links? the one source pearce provided me was the macintouch discussion thread i posted the url for in my first message in this thread.

one somewhat valid point pearce makes is: if you are doing saving of or streaming download of large media files, such as *.mov or *.mpg files in imovie, final cut pro, quicktime, etc., they require lots of contiguous disk space to edit easily or run correctly. having lots of bits of data all over the drive would hinder this (at least in the way these programs and their caching are written now in what they require, both in system 9 classic and os x). my argument back to him is: even on newer macs with all extra software loaded (ms internet explorer, itunes, imovie, iphoto, mail, java 2, all applications and utilties, etc.), that and the os x take up about 5 - 6 gigabytes on what is an average 40 gigabyte drive. that means only approximately 15% of the drive is sprayed with bits of unfragmented used disk space. yes, optimizing would help here, but its not that much of a hinderance to start, as with 85% of your disk space still free, that's still a lot of open room to work with, unless you're doing something like steaming a full 2 hour digital film in highest resolution (and if you're doing that, why not just get a dvd from your video store and watch it on your tv?).

but to do thorough investigation and follow up for the folks i'm helping, i want to see if anyone else has seen this or found it a problem.

so... has anyone?

thankful for any responses,

-- faddah steve wolf
portland, oregon
[email protected]

[rytc]

Sounds like a storm in a tea-cup to me. Perhaps he owns shares in Norton. Its one of those things that makes no diference but when told about it makes you think maybe something could go wrong.....I'd just forget about it and have a another cup of coffee.

cheers Ry

[Dex13]

Did he only run norton? Cause we all know that nortons the Devil, how bout Diskwarrior?
Just to check the severity of this problem, i would want a second opion, not some forum discussion(s) but from a professional.