De-fragmentation (revisited)

[John Baltutis]

On 07/03/04,  lists3-200402 <lists3-200402 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Randy B. Singer <randy at macattorney.com> wrote:
>>Daniel Beck said:
>>
>>>I'm sure you'll be fine. If someone does feel the need to defragŠCarbon
>>>Copy the
>>>entire volume over to another disk and then back again.
>>That will defragment the drive, but it won't optimize it.  In fact, it
>>might detrimentally impact performance.
>>
>>As Apple says: 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 actually decrease performance.
>>That's one of the reasons why it is important to defragment/optimize your
>>hard drive with a utility, and that you should use a utility that is OS X
>>savvy.  Which is why I can no longer recommend Alsoft's Plus Optimizer. 
>>(Some folks have reported that using Plus Optimizer has actually caused a
>>decrease in performance.  PO hasn't been updated in three years, and it
>>apparently is not OS X savvy.)
>
> why would you recommend ANY defrag utility? apple's knowledge base
> and just about every competent tech will tell you it's simply not an
> issue anymore. the system does a fine job managing fragmentation
> without any third party assitance (read: no need to spend money).

If you read <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668> closely,
you'll see this:

"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 Panther), there's a chance they could be fragmented. In this case, you
might benefit from defragmentation, which might be performed with
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."

And, <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42964> states:
"iMovie: "Disk Responded Slowly" Alert" If you see this alert, copy the
project to another disk, or consider using a disk defragmentation utility
to defragment the disk where the project is located."


So Apple hasn't shut the door to defraging and it might still be reasonable.

BTW, personal attacks are unwarranted.
>
> to beat on this dead horse shows you have waayyy too much time on your
> hands...maybe your time would be better spent learning/preaching unix?