[MacDV] Re: Disk fragmentation

[Michael Winter]

On Monday, April 14, 2003, at 10:30  PM, Mark M. Florida wrote:

> On 4/14/03 10:31 AM, "Dorothy Hennings" <hennings at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> I use an external firewire LaCie HD for my iMovies. I suspect it needs
>> defragmentation.
> Yes, stay away from Norton.  Bad ju-ju.  For most disk problems, Disk
> Warrior can do the job --

It depends on how you define "most disk problems". In truth, Disk 
Warrior does one thing and does it very well -fix directories. I think 
other disk utilities have earned a bad rep because they try to fix a 
lot of different things (bad dates, bundle bits, corrupted files...). 
Some of those things you only want to do if you're having serious 
problems and nothing else is working (last resort).

> I don't know if there's a defragging utility
> included with DiskWarrior 3, though -- there's a defrag utility with
> DiskWarrior 2.1, but I've never used it --

It does come with one called PlusOptimizer. If you have DiskWarrior, 
PlusOptimizer is the way to go for a basic defrag utility. I say 
"basic" because AFAIK it does not optimize disks specifically for OS X, 
where Norton (IIRC) can.

>  I usually don't have a problem
> with fragmentation,

I'd say its one of the most overfixed "problems" around (fixing 
permissions quickly gaining ground).

> Now remember, if your hard drive is already partitioned, reformatting 
> will
> wipe out ALL of your partitions, so that's probably not the best bet...

No, you can "erase" (reformat) a single partition, if that's what you 
select (I've done it more than once). Its only if you re-partition that 
you lose data on all partitions.

-Mike