[kevs]

Just got a G5 a few months ago and am up to optimize as I used to for my G4. But I've heard the only way to do that is with tech tool. I have that, but I've heard it's too slow. I called them, and they can't say weather it will be done in the morning. Which is unacceptable. Wondering how others are dealing with this dilemma

[Boondoggle]

conventional wisdom says it is not nessesary to optimize the hard drive with Panther. It is done on the fly. This is consistent with my observations.

bd

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by Boondoggle:
conventional wisdom says it is not nessesary to optimize the hard drive with Panther. It is done on the fly. This is consistent with my observations.

I agree. As long as you have enough RAM and your disk has at least a gigabyte of free space you should see no problems. Optimizing is really not necessary in OS X.

[wataru]

Do a search. This topic has been covered a million times, and the answer is not as simple as "you don't have to."

[kevs]

Did a search, did not find anything.

Well, I remember, and I was in OSX, that using Disc-warrior's optimizer, the graph comes up and the HD does not look so good.

And if I want to optimize, any tips besides tech tool?

[Rodster]

I agree with the previous poster. I did my own search and was amazed to find that even Symantec says there is little to no gain trying to optimize Panther because the OS takes care of itself. It uses it's own built in optimizer.

If you try and optimize the hard drive you can move certain files that are placed in Panther's "hot zone". If any of those files are moved it could slow down your Mac's performance.

There's one program that some have had good success. It's called SOX and it's a shareware program, $12 to register if you like it. You can find it here http://www.mkd.cc/sox/

It uses a different way of optimizing. Instead of rearranging files on your hard drive it "repairs file permissions, updates prebindings, runs system maintenance scripts, and cleans system and applications cache, in that order".

[Rodster]

Here's what you were looking for:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...ghlight=defrag

http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/10/30/1942232.shtml

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...ghlight=defrag

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07254

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Rodster:
There's one program that some have had good success. It's called SOX and it's a shareware program, $12 to register if you like it. You can find it here http://www.mkd.cc/sox/

It uses a different way of optimizing. Instead of rearranging files on your hard drive it "repairs file permissions, updates prebindings, runs system maintenance scripts, and cleans system and applications cache, in that order".

Well, first of all, let me say that I haven't optimized my hard drive since Norton and I had a little... falling out, when it completely hosed one of my drives. For years, I have just left optimizers alone, and since Panther came out, I've just let it do its thing. Haven't noticed any real slowdowns yet.

With that said, this SOX program is not what you are looking for. Its function is not anything near what a disk optimizer does, and half of the things it does are things that would happen anyway if you left your computer on all the time (update prebinding, run system maintenance scripts).

[yukon]

Rather than buy a program to run scripts that do periodic maintenance, why not use the program meant to do so? That's Cron. But that's a server application, meant for machines that stay up all the time. I'd suggest using Anacron to replace cron, which runs the maintenance scripts after set time periods, rather than when a certain time has passed. Add the repair permissions to the crontab, run it once a week or so....you could add repair_prebinding or update_ or whatever to run once a month. Never have to bother with it again

http://www.alastairs-place.net/anacron.html
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...41117193822290

[barbarian]

I manage many macs (in a software company) and have found over and over that our users who try to get smart and optimize invariably end up screwing up their systems.

OS X does a pretty good job of optimizing on it's own especially if you use lots of small files.

For large files over 20megs, if you have plenty of disk space you aren't going to run into problems.

Until software comes out that is significantly better than what we have now, don't touch your hard disk, you'll regret it later on.

Want a faster computer, load in more memory & buy a faster video card.

[Earth Mk. II]

Your hard drive has a large cache on it (2 MB or larger - 8MB on all current G5 PowerMac models).

OS X (10.3 and later) will automagically defragment small files (under 20MB) as they're accessed. Frequently accessed files are even placed in a 'hot-zone' to minimize average seek times when reading the data.

For large files (> 20MB), defragmentation probably wouldn't help much anyway. With the large disk cache and comparatively low seek times on modern hard drives, there'll still be data in the drive's cache from the last fragment when it finds and starts reading the next one. Also, operating systems have become pretty smart about buffering data before it's needed.

I'm not going to say that defragmentation/optimization won't help at all.... but you'd probably never notice the benefits unless you're almost out of disk space already. And, if that's the case, you're better off backing up some of that data and freeing up the disk space anyway.

just my 2� though.

[Boondoggle]

Originally posted by wataru:
Do a search. This topic has been covered a million times, and the answer is not as simple as "you don't have to."

Well if you, as I have done, spent hours reading all the links, digesting the information and come up with something for most users other than "you don't have to" then please share your rationale. The answer is that simple. The explanation is another matter. I see you didn't trouble yourself with that any more than I did.

bd

[wataru]

If you actually did a search, you would have found that I have answered this question in detail in just about every thread that has popped up. Now I'm answering it yet again because you people are too lazy do do a simple search.

The short story: Despite running Panther, Drive 10 finds many thousands of free space and file fragments on my drive. I do not use my drive for anything out of the ordinary, so I assume that most peoples' drives are in the same condition. Clearly, the built-in defragging feature does not do that good a job.

[bergy]

From Apple ...

Apple OSX Disk Optimization
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

[kevs]

Wataru:
You did not say what to search for! I searched for optimize, nothing good came up. Maybe had you said de-fragment...

Anyway....

I really confused now. the Apple doc says you really don't need to optimize, but you say yes, you should.

I have Tech Tool Pro 4, but like I asked at beginning of this thread, how long does it take? Tech tool wont even give me the foggiest idea. Before I got my G5, when I was doing it with Diskwarriors OS9 disk everything was always done by the morning.

[CharlesS]

I would not worry about defragging the disk. What wataru mentioned is simply that the built-in defragging does not optimize the entire disk. However, it does optimize the most commonly used files, and this seems to be good enough most of the time. At least, I have never noticed a difference.

TechTool will take a very long time to optimize. It is quite slow. I personally don't bother with it.

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Depending on what you're doing with you mac, the answer ranges from not needed to good practise. For example, if you're doing a lot of video editing effects/compositing, your files that you're using will get mad fragged with all the effects and cutting and adding stuff. After a session a good admin will defrag the arrays or local drives on the computer. But if you're only using your rig for word processing it's not going to see any issues if you're not defragging...

[Boondoggle]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Depending on what you're doing with you mac, the answer ranges from not needed to good practise. For example, if you're doing a lot of video editing effects/compositing, your files that you're using will get mad fragged with all the effects and cutting and adding stuff. After a session a good admin will defrag the arrays or local drives on the computer. But if you're only using your rig for word processing it's not going to see any issues if you're not defragging...

the imporant thing is that for most users it is a waste of time. By moving the hot files it can even slow down your system. Fragmentation does not mean much more than an aesthetically pleasing graphic in defragmentation programs for MOST users. Fragmentation does not have a measureable impact on reliability or performance. The files that really impact reliability, the system files, do not get re-written enough to be significantly fragged.

If you're doing a lot of video editing or some other massive-file operations the thing is you probaby (wisely?) have a dedicated drive(s) that you use for a project. So there is no need to defrag the boot disk for example. Also, you've got to back up the massive files before defraging, so why not just copy them back to the working drive? that defrags too and takes a lot less time.

the other important point is free space. If you are really low on free space, below 10%, then you might consider defraging, because you increase the odds of a problem dramatically as space gets tight. A smarter move howerver would be to back up your crap and make some room, as defraging does not prevent problems with overloaded drives, just may lessen the impact or postpone the bad day. Defragging also takes FOREVER on nearly full drives.

After reading all the articles I could find on defraging in general and on OSX in particular, the only guy that was a really strong proponent of it was an employee at MicroMat, Go figger. As far as I can tell, one of the strongest point he raised was that a defragged drive was cheaper to recover by proffessional recovery firms than a fragged one. Well, the cheapest recovery is still a good backup.


http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/s...true#Post570760

[entelechy]

it may have come up on one of the links, but I just had a nightmare after optimizing my drives in OS X - it was only after joining this forum that I discovered what has been posted above. I've learned my lesson!

[wadesworld]

Originally posted by wataru:
The short story: Despite running Panther, Drive 10 finds many thousands of free space and file fragments on my drive. I do not use my drive for anything out of the ordinary, so I assume that most peoples' drives are in the same condition. Clearly, the built-in defragging feature does not do that good a job.

Clearly, you're worrying too much about it.

Who give's a rat's butt how many free space and file fragments there are? They're supposed to be there and it's the computer's job to handle that.

For 99% of normal users - quit wasting your time and USE your computer.

For the 1% that are audio or video pros, defragging is often necessary.

Wade

[wataru]

Originally posted by wadesworld:
Clearly, you're worrying too much about it.

I'm not saying everyone should run out and get a defragger. All I'm doing is stating the facts. In case you didn't notice, I didn't make any claims as to performance, or whether defragging was actually necessary. My point is just that Panther's built-in defragger obviously does not do the job of a regular defragger.

[yukon]

It does matter wade, I won't bother explaining it though (search my previous posts if it matters to you). Suffice to say that the less the drive/formatting-structures have to keep track of, the more reliable and faster it will be. As well, there's nothing special about A/V that requires defragmenting, the issue is "working with large files".

The desire is basically, to use up time that would otherwise be wasted (like night time, or distributed.net kinda thing), to optimize in order to make the machine faster for when it is in use. Theoretically possible, but not very helpful. Defragmenting may take all night, but if it makes the computer faster when used (which is debatable), then it's worth it. The problem is that this "maintenance" can take up usable time, so making it automatic and simple is important. we don't have an automatic defragmentation program that I know of (other than the basics that are in 10.3), 0&0 Defrag on windows is automatic, and it's organize-by-access-time actually does noticably improve performance (try loading mozilla before, and after, reboot so it's not in ram-cache).

[wadesworld]

t does matter wade, I won't bother explaining it though (search my previous posts if it matters to you). Suffice to say that the less the drive/formatting-structures have to keep track of, the more reliable and faster it will be. As well, there's nothing special about A/V that requires defragmenting, the issue is "working with large files".

In the strictest of technical terms, yes, it will make a system faster.

That's not the point though. The point is that normal users will see negligible benefit for lots of wasted time while introducing some real risk. If you can set it all up to run at night, then you could presumably remove the time aspect (of course then you also probably wouldn't have time to run your nightly backup at night - which I know everyone does, right?).

Defragging is very much like optimizing a program. You can spend hundreds of hours optimizing the stew out of a routine, only to find out it has minimal impact on anything. You've got to find those areas that produce the biggest benefit for the time spent. Again, for MOST users, the biggest benefit is acheived by using the computer, not spending time doing maintenance which is at best, of questionable and temporary benefit.

As for audio and video, there is something special that requires a defragged drive. It's not just about large files. If it was, graphic designers would have issues too. Programs need to be able to write to disk with the smallest possible latency. That's also why audio and video pros use 10,000 RPM drives.

Obviously anyone can feel free to ignore my opinion. But over the years I've just seen a lot of time wasted and some real damage done by people needlessly optimizing and running disk repair programs.

Wade

[kevs]

I would optimize every 3 months with Disk Warrior, and it was all done by morning. Never did it becasue I needed to. I just did as routine maintenance. From reading this thread etc, I may just bag it.

I do some light video, are you saying that just dragging the video out (of my video drive) and then back will defrag, or you must erase that drive. My second drive is for video, but I also put a lot of data on it.

[Mr. Blur]

Originally posted by kevs:
I would optimize every 3 months with Disk Warrior, and it was all done by morning. Never did it becasue I needed to. I just did as routine maintenance. From reading this thread etc, I may just bag it.

Diskwarrior does *not* optimize like a defrag - it is a completely different tool - it rebuilds the disk directory (you can read more details of what diskwarrior does here ) Alsoft used to bundle a defrag utility called PlusOptimizer with diskwarrior but as yet there is no OS X version although it is expected eventually.

[yukon]

In the strictest of technical terms, yes, it will make a system faster.

That's not all I said. And yes, it does make a speed difference. You can check my previous posts as to why fragmentation is bad when extensive, or Micromat techs will be happy to overestimate the dangers for you ;-)

As for audio and video, there is something special that requires a defragged drive. It's not just about large files. ....the smallest possible latency.

large files, created and deleted, cause heavy fragmentation. fragmentation in turn causes higher latency when using the disk, as the head has to move to multiple places to reconstruct the file. Graphic designers can have heavy fragmentation, it's partly why photoshop wants it's swap on another drive, they just need more raw speed rather than low latency, defragging is also effective there to make full blocks of free space for new files.

I've just seen a lot of time wasted and some real damage done by people needlessly optimizing and running disk repair programs.

ABSOLUTLY. Good point. Defragmentation can be dangerous with a badly made program, flaky power, or a dying drive. If the program is crap (cough, norton) it can cause damage itself or may crash with unwritten data. power goes out, something may have gone wrong (good programs, like DiskWarrior, do their best to take this into account). A dying drive won't take kindly to the extra heat, surface errors will show and cause problems. I've seen systems "optimized" to be useless, mainly by people who don't know what actually happens when they do whatever optimization.

Time wasted, I waste none though I run all the periodic stuff, repair permissions every week, etc, good old anacron.

I'm not sure if it's a stage that has to be gone through, probably not, but I know of a lot of people who do this....run virex on every drive every day, for example. After a while, you see what works, what doesn't, and you see through crummy programs (that run things in the crontab, ick. or simply renice stuff). A defrag once a month is the most that's probably ever desireable on a heavily used desktop system, every three months is probably not a bad idea, 6 months is a good idea. And when you have your drives at 98 and 94% filled like me, then it can be dangerous when there's lots of fragments. To illustrate, my main drive has 1,099 fragmented files, 22,511 file fragments, 8,843 disk fragments, defragmented two months ago, no one should say that's not a bad thing. And yes, ATA100, 136gb limit, nothing I can do until SATA NCQ cards are out, but at least it's the end of the month so I get a chance to clean some stuff out.

Oh, and DiskWarrior every 3 months is a decent idea, keep a watch on any corruption...not always necessary to actually replace the catalog when it asks with no actual "fixes" to be done, and best to have a UPS hooked up when you do risky stuff (DW isn't bad there).

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Dosk warrior is great... like most people I use it maybe every 3 months. But DW is not a defragger. If there was a defragging app that was shareware or low priced I say just go ahead and buy one, but because the only products I can find that do defrag are utility apps that bundle the defragger w/ a ton of other apps, they get expensive. Maybe somebody here knows of one. The only 2 I can think of is Micromat's Tech Tool Pro
and Intech Software's SpeedTools Utilites for OS X:

http://www.micromat.com/tt_pro_4/tt_pro_4.html

http://www.speedtools.com/STUS.shtml

Both are way too expensive to buy just for disk defragmentation

[kevs]

I also rebuilt the directly with disc warrior, but I guess I was talking about the optimizer plus - which was OS9 and wont work with G5. I assumed this is a defragmenter. no?

[typoon]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Dosk warrior is great... like most people I use it maybe every 3 months. But DW is not a defragger. If there was a defragging app that was shareware or low priced I say just go ahead and buy one, but because the only products I can find that do defrag are utility apps that bundle the defragger w/ a ton of other apps, they get expensive. Maybe somebody here knows of one. The only 2 I can think of is Micromat's Tech Tool Pro
and Intech Software's SpeedTools Utilites for OS X:

http://www.micromat.com/tt_pro_4/tt_pro_4.html

http://www.speedtools.com/STUS.shtml

Both are way too expensive to buy just for disk defragmentation

TTP 4 is a little slow at times. I know the update has imporved it. I also use Drive 10 at times to Defrag the drive.