[G4] defraging a Mac

[Alex]

On Friday, Apr 2, 2004, at 21:34 Canada/Eastern, Shaene wrote:

> Bottom line is that there's not even a third of the importance here as 
> there is on a Windows system, which brought "defrag" into mainstream 
> usage, and into the front of many's minds regarding what they must do 
> to keep their computing going along nicely.  Once again, on a Mac, you 
> just don't have to worry about keeping several things in line.  Unless 
>  you really think your disk is fragmented greatly and using a defrag 
> is a must, don't worry about it.

Bashing Windows on a Mac list requires just about as much guts as 
bashing George W. Bush to a meeting of the Al-Tikriti. Perhaps those 
who have the grit, knowledge, and appetite should take this kind of 
"mine is bigger than yours" to a PC list or group, where there they can 
find plenty of like-minded fellows eager to give them a run for their 
money.

As to disk fragmentation, it predates both Mac and Win. It's 
essentially a file system issue, and HFS (the earlier Mac OS file 
system) is actually more, not less, prone to it than comparable 
systems. It's a side-effect of HFS's unique two-fork file architecture, 
a sophisticated engineering feature which, unfortunately, has not been 
adopted by other file systems. (Incidentally, the Apple reference 
mentioned earlier in this thread alludes to this issue -- for those who 
can read). HFS+, the current native Mac OS, is even slightly more 
susceptible than HFS to fragmentation, again, a side-effect of its more 
sophisticated management of allocation blocks.

However, for other reasons (summarized in the Apple KB article ID 
25668) fragmentation is less of an issue nowadays than it was five or 
ten years ago. Some of those reasons apply to other computer platforms 
as well.

f