[G4] defraging a Mac

[Alex]

On Thursday, Apr 1, 2004, at 23:52 Canada/Eastern, Shawn King wrote:

> On 4/1/04 7:38 PM, "Kevin Willis" <res19rmg at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> Is there an application either in OS 10.2.8 or third party for
>> defragmenting my hard drive?  How important is it in a Mac?
>
> Apple says not at all:
> <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668>

Apple says:

"You _probably_ won't need to optimize at all [...]" (my stress) and 
"[...] If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create 
large files (such as editing video [...]), 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."

Which doesn't at all amount to "not at all".

The bottom line is this. If you're an average user, then probably you 
don't need worry about it. That's because you don't read/write large 
files on a regular basis, and likely your hard disk has tens of 
gigabytes of free space.

If, however, you don't fit into this category, then you might benefit 
from defragging and optimizing (incidentally, the two are different 
operations). It's particularly critical for those who do video editing; 
it might also help if you access locally large databases, etc.

Norton SystemWorks, TechTool or Drive X can be used for the job; 
alternatively, you can back up, reinitialize the drive, and restore 
from backup. Keep in mind that, whatever you do, it's essential to back 
up prior to defragging, and that -- depending on your setup -- 
restoring from backup might be faster to than defragging.

f