[Ti] Speeding it up.../ [Long reply]

[b]

According to Manoel Felciano:

>OK--
>
>I'm so tired of things going at a snail's pace on my tibook 667 with 
>10.2.4 and 1 gig RAM.
>
>I've tried most of the things I've researched on the web. Gotten the 
>"Macaroni" tool to repair permissions, etc. Tried (in vain) to get 
>rid of most of Norton stuff on my machine.
>
>My last step is to repartition everything onto ONE drive, which 
>apparently is the better way to go so as to assure contiguous free 
>space, contrary to what I had read in a lot of the mainstream mac 
>press. Right now I have my 40 gig drive partitioned into 30 gigs 
>storage, 5 gig for OSX and 5 gig for OS 9. Something tells me this 
>may not have been wise.
>
>Anybody have any other tips? a link to "top ten things to do to 
>speed up OSX" kind of stuff?
>
>thanks again
>
>mano

Hi mano,

I run the same setup you describe, a 667, 2 partitions.

The 'mainstream' Mac press recommends one partition, but I love 
having two, and the machine works great set this way, in my 
experience. Installing Norton on the Mac was a goof, but there are 
ways to get it off the machine.

When I have some app that I've got to get rid of, I usually use 
FileBuddy, although Sherlock, when booted into OS 9 will also work. 
One of the many reasons File Buddy is so great is this: If you can 
see, visually, even one file belonging to Norton, then you hit a 
Command-N in File Buddy, to get a new window for 'Lists' [it's 
automatic. Then you drag the one file you found to the List window, 
select "Find Similar", and here they'll all come. I set mine to 'Show 
Visible and Invisible". A somewhat 'safer' method with File Buddy is 
to drag the one file to the List window, select the get Info icon, 
and look at the Info. It will show you the Creator code. Which, for 
Norton Utilities is "PNsd". Once you have that Creator code, you can 
set File Buddy's 'Find' box to find all files, visible and invisible, 
with that Creator. Once the list appears [in the familiar 'List' 
window, jus hit Commad-A to select all, click the Trash icon, and for 
good measure hit Empty trash in File Buddy's menu.

This may sound a bit complicated, but believe me, once you've run one 
good search and trash with FB, you'll wonder how you survived without 
it

By the way, having one partition, or 5, doesn't guarantee anything as 
far as disk fragmentation, which is what happens as files are written 
to smaller and smaller amounts of contiguous free pace, made worse 
when files are also deleted, leaving gaps all over the place.

The thing with having a relatively small OSX partition, really a 
negative, to be honest, is that OSX must have a good amount of 'free' 
space on its own partition or drive, so that it can make swap files, 
etc. having a minimum of 20% free space on all partitions, or drives, 
is a good rule of thumb. So, having multiple partitions, especially 
small ones, is not a great thing. To keep well within tolerable 
specs, you'll find yourself off-loading stuff to CDs and external 
drives in order to 'make room'.

If you get rid of your Norton installation, which I personally think 
is very wise, then what I would do is this:

Start up the Ti from your OS X Installation disk.  Just put it in 
with the machine 'Off' and hold down the "C" key till it is booted 
and you see the grey apple logo.

Then, Run the Disk Utility app on the Installer disk. Just go to the 
menu, ignore the Window that might be opened by the Installer [you 
don't want to re-install anything, anyway]. Just select Open disk 
utility from the File menu, and Run the Disk Utility on each 
partition, one after the other. it'll take 15 minutes or so to get 
through them. If the Disk Utility "First Aid" finds any errors and 
fixes them on a partition, then, when it completes its bit, run it 
again on the same partition, and it should not have to fix anything 
the second time.

Complete that process on all partitions, THEN run Repair Disk 
Permissions [also in the "First Aid" window of the Disk utility app] 
on the OSX partition. I stay way away fro third-party Permissions 
repairs apps, 'speeder-uppers', etc. As a matter of fact, once you're 
finished, run the same Repair Disk Permissions from the Disk Utility 
that is already in your Utilities folder on your OSX partition, 
because it is guaranteed to be up-to-date with the version of OSX 
that you have installed.

Meanwhile, I keep a little folder on both of my partitions called 
"Disk Frag". All I have in it are two items "Speed Disk" from Norton 
[not the utilities or Disk Doctor, just Speed Disk] and the "Norton 
Shared Library". Speed Disk won't run without it being in the same 
folder.

Boot into OS 9. With the Finder, find each copy of Speed Disk. [You 
want it on two partitions, as you'll see why]. Selct a copy of Speed 
Disk, hit Command-I to "Get Info" and change the maximum RAM to 512 
MB, change minimum to 384 or so. Then find the other copy of Speed 
Disk, on the other partition, and do the exact same thing. The reason 
for doing all this is simple: When you de-frag your drive, meaning 
each partition, you will boot up with the OS 9 Installer disk and run 
Speed Disk from whichever partition you are NOT de-fragmenting. Your 
OS 9 startup CD will use the Macs available RAM to run the Speed Disk 
app, and it  the process will move much faster with all that extra 
RAM.

But before you run Speed Disk, get ahold of DiskWarrior, and rebuild 
your Directory. Not the desktop, the Directory. DiskWarrior will 
straighten out damaged wrappers, nodes, bits that are messed up, and 
about 20 other things, WITHOUT creating any of the damage that Norton 
is infamous for..

Once you've Run Disk Utility [First Aid first, the Repair Disk 
permissions], and ten run DiskWarrior, and used Speed Disk to de-frag 
all partitions, your Mac will boot, reboot, and run [copy files, find 
things, etc] much faster. Using third-party apps to enhance or 
speed-up, the Mac is treating a symptom, and letting the dis-ease get 
worse. Eventually you will find the Mac not 'seeing' the OS 9 System 
Folder, not mounting partitions, and not recognizing CDs that worked 
fine two weeks ago, etc... At that point it's time to take a day off, 
or a Sunday, and do the right thing.

Good luck. It ought to be just fine.  I have done the same types of 
things: Installed little Optimizer OSX apps, loads of menu 
'enhancers', and Contextual menu plugins,  you name, done it, and 
almost always, without fail, further on down the road it all seems to 
be running knee-deep in mud, and that's the 'good part'... But wising 
up and dumping the little 'helpers' and instead, setting the 
situation right, the way it was designed always, always, always, pays 
off bigtime.


~flipper