There are some important points brought up in that thread. Specifically, Mac drives under HFS are far less prone to fragmentation than PC drives under FAT16/32. Defraggers are really a thing of the past and are only really *necessary* for people who keep their drives at a ridiculously high capacity and without any contiguous free space.
There are some important points brought up in that thread. Specifically, Mac drives under HFS are far less prone to fragmentation than PC drives under FAT16/32. Defraggers are really a thing of the past and are only really *necessary* for people who keep their drives at a ridiculously high capacity and without any contiguous free space.
by the way, from what i was told by a rep presenting a seminar at apple canada in markham, ontario last winter, people also need to get out of this "file fragmentation is bad" mentality 100% of the time. in fact, an operating system may be more efficient if it is allowed to write files where it, not you, see fit. now a disk utility like diskwarrior defargments/rewrites disk directories, which IS a good thing.
the way i think about the defrag of a disk DIRECTORY (like diskwarrior does) is this. lets' say you have a list of a hundred items you are keeping track of, and the location. let's say you delete a file. no biggie -- you just cross it out, right? well, now, depending on the size of that file, let's say you open up a file, but then resave it elsewhere. well, maybe to save time, instead of erasing the old reference and writing it into this new spot, you just draw an arrow from the old location to the new. still makes sense, right?
repeat EIGHT MILLION TIMES, and start doing it with parts of files. you will end up with a map so littered with cross-outs, erasures and arrows that it will not only slow down access of these files, but increase the likelihood that a new files is placed int he wrong spot, or something gets deleted or moved incorrectly.
so a utility like diskwarrior comes in, looks at the map, deciphers wht it's saying, and puts the locations all where they are supposed to be on a new list, free of arrows, cross-outs, and erasures. nothign actually moved, but the map to get to all these files is immensely easier to navigate.
also, as you can tell, if the directory map disappears, you may as well be looking for the ark of the covenant from the last scene in the raiders of the lost ark movie (i.e. utterly impossible).
yes, in theory. but different file systems handle this differently. hfs(+) is smart enough to not draw too many arrows to far off places for pieces of a file. it, for the most part, will make sure that is space enough in an easy and sufficiently large location to put the file. most modern file systems don't thrash the drive so much as they used to. defragging shouldn't really be a concern.
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However, in light of Panther (and Mac systems overall), defraggers aren't really necessary:
Panther Adds "Auto-defragmentation" ability to our Systems?
There are some important points brought up in that thread. Specifically, Mac drives under HFS are far less prone to fragmentation than PC drives under FAT16/32. Defraggers are really a thing of the past and are only really *necessary* for people who keep their drives at a ridiculously high capacity and without any contiguous free space.
Originally posted by Brad
There's Norton Utilities -- it comes with a defragger.
However, in light of Panther (and Mac systems overall), defraggers aren't really necessary:
Panther Adds "Auto-defragmentation" ability to our Systems?
There are some important points brought up in that thread. Specifically, Mac drives under HFS are far less prone to fragmentation than PC drives under FAT16/32. Defraggers are really a thing of the past and are only really *necessary* for people who keep their drives at a ridiculously high capacity and without any contiguous free space.
I thought Panther only defrags small files?
the way i think about the defrag of a disk DIRECTORY (like diskwarrior does) is this. lets' say you have a list of a hundred items you are keeping track of, and the location. let's say you delete a file. no biggie -- you just cross it out, right? well, now, depending on the size of that file, let's say you open up a file, but then resave it elsewhere. well, maybe to save time, instead of erasing the old reference and writing it into this new spot, you just draw an arrow from the old location to the new. still makes sense, right?
repeat EIGHT MILLION TIMES, and start doing it with parts of files. you will end up with a map so littered with cross-outs, erasures and arrows that it will not only slow down access of these files, but increase the likelihood that a new files is placed int he wrong spot, or something gets deleted or moved incorrectly.
so a utility like diskwarrior comes in, looks at the map, deciphers wht it's saying, and puts the locations all where they are supposed to be on a new list, free of arrows, cross-outs, and erasures. nothign actually moved, but the map to get to all these files is immensely easier to navigate.
also, as you can tell, if the directory map disappears, you may as well be looking for the ark of the covenant from the last scene in the raiders of the lost ark movie (i.e. utterly impossible).
does that about sum it up?
Originally posted by rok
does that about sum it up?
yes, in theory. but different file systems handle this differently. hfs(+) is smart enough to not draw too many arrows to far off places for pieces of a file. it, for the most part, will make sure that is space enough in an easy and sufficiently large location to put the file. most modern file systems don't thrash the drive so much as they used to. defragging shouldn't really be a concern.