Finally, some sanity - Xeater

Right on! OS X defrags file fragments under 20 MB in size. Fragments larger than 20 MB just don't measurably slow modern drives and operating systems down.

File fragmentation really was a problem back when HD size was measured in MBs, and Windows was the OS. Due to a design flaw in Windows, the file system fragmented to a nearly unusable state over time. I remember seeing Windows systems with over 98% file fragmentation (according to Norton Utilities). That sort of fragmentation has never been a problem on Macs, and it's even less of a problem with OS X. Windows XP doesn't have that problem, but the fix has persisted, apparently because computer users like to think they can do something to "fix" their systems even if they aren't broken.

I would challenge anyone in a blind test to detect any differences in the speed of OS X after running a defragging and optimization utility. If anything, the system will slow down due to disruption of the system's "hot zone" on the disk.

You want to spend 30-100 bucks on your computer? Buy another hard drive and use it for backup. If it's a tower, buy a RAID card and mirror your drives. That is the best way to "fix" your system for reliability. If it's speed you're after, check the speed of your HDs: the fastest SATA drives spin at 7200 rpm, and if you upgrade a 5400 rpm drive to a 7200 rpm drive, you WILL notice the difference. Also, buy more RAM. Anything less than a Gigabyte of RAM can slow OS X down.

Finally, fsck your system. That's right, I said FSCK YOUR SYSTEM! Hold down Apple-S when you boot to go into single user mode. You'll see a bunch of text. Follow the directions to run a file system consistency check ("/sbin/fsck -y"), repeat until it reports the system as ok, and OS X will check and repair it's file system. I believe it already does this during the startup process, but doing manually lets you know if anything is repaired, and you can repeat until it's done. There you go, no need for TechTool or Norton, you just repaired your file system for FREE!

Think about it. OS X is based on Darwin, which is based on Unix, which is open source software. Anything Unix needs to run properly is developed by the open source community. So if Unix actually needed an optimization utility (in addition to the on-the-fly defrag capability), it would have it! But it doesn't have it. That's because it doesn't need it. Neither does OS X.

If you still want to buy a defrag/optimization utility, then check out this link:
http://www.csicop.org/sb/9812/snakeoil.html

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Friday, April 07 2006 @ 12:26 PM PDT

Finally, some sanity - Gennx30

if your drive gets to be about 80% full there may some a use for this tool; as your free blocks get scattered; But it is also said that the Directories like to be in one contiguous space and it ithey cant be, it may overwrite itself-but then you'd be better off to starrt cleaning out your HD or buying a bigger one,

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Saturday, April 08 2006 @ 05:05 PM PDT

Where? - Alastair_Houghton_882

Right on! OS X defrags file fragments under 20 MB in size. Fragments larger than 20 MB just don't measurably slow modern drives and operating systems down.

In your expert opinion as someone trolling on VersionTracker, perhaps. Sadly neither of those statements in entirely correct. OS X only defragments files under 20MB in size on the root volume, only if it's journaled, and even then there are files it won't touch. And it simply isn't true that fragmentation doesn't slow down modern drives or operating systems. Seek times are still measured in milliseconds, and haven't improved at anything like the same rate as the data rates for a linear read. Plus you are assuming that the problem is necessarily with individual files, when in fact a large part of the slowdown these days is to do with the positioning of files relative to one another.

I would challenge anyone in a blind test to detect any differences in the speed of OS X after running a defragging and optimization utility. If anything, the system will slow down due to disruption of the system's "hot zone" on the disk.

Our defragmenter fully supports the hot zone, and will even clear out files mistakenly placed there by other products. So this doesn't apply to iDefrag. We've also used it on our own machines, so we have seen for ourselves that it can improve performance in at least some cases. We do agree that there's very little point in defragmenting if you're a light user; you'll probably waste more time defragging your disk than you'd ever get back. But that isn't true for everyone and sometimes performance can be impacted to an extent that becomes irritating (though this normally takes some time).

I was going to write a longer and more detailed reply (for instance pointing out that, contrary to your assertion, UNIX is not Open Source, although FreeBSD and Linux certainly are, and Darwin certainly was). But I think I can sum most of it up by politely requesting that if you're going to post remarks that might appear to others to be authoritative, you should check your facts to make sure that they are accurate. Much of what you have written is either (a) your opinion, (b) speculation or (c) fiction; this isn't entirely your fault, as there are a lot of unreliable sources of information out on the Internet, but it would be better if you didn't add one to their number.

(I do agree, by the way, that fsck_hfs is a good tool; indeed, we've actually added an option to run it to iDefrag, which is useful for those customers running our product from a bootable CD. That part of your post was good advice, though sometimes you can find that fsck_hfs can't fix something and in those cases some of the third-party tools might be better. For our money, we recommend Alsoft DiskWarrior, but only if Disk Utility, or fsck_hfs, which is what it uses, cannot repair the disk itself.)

My final remark is that I and my company take exception to your implication that we are selling "snake oil". We are an ethical company and would not be selling our products if we did not feel that they were useful. We also try to provide potential customers with a balanced and sensible explanation of the problem iDefrag is trying to solve, so that they can evaluate for themselves whether or not it is likely to be of use to them. Your remarks are neither balanced nor accurate and do nothing to help a potential customer come to any decision on the matter.

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Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 09:16 AM PDT

Finally, some sanity - Ilgaz

reading your comment history, seeing you give 1 star to every single product you COMMENTED about, I maybe sure who you are.

That is not a good hobby. You are hurting commercial products/businesses and potential people who would see great benefits of the product itself.

I have seen (one word!) amazing results on my brothers 12" PowerBook, on my quad G5, I see results such has less noise from HD, a better responsive desktop too.

I still wonder why I give $25 yearly to read these trolls. Yes,that maybe my problem.

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Friday, April 28 2006 @ 01:33 PM PDT

You don't need defrag software for Mac OS X - riccc

All I know is one time I tried to run DiskWarrior and it told me my disk didn't have enough contiguous free space to run. I pulled out my old copy of Norton Utilities and ran Disk Defrag and I was OK again. There were 10 Gb free but the largest block was 150 Mb. I believe this computer was running 10.3.9.

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Friday, April 07 2006 @ 02:02 PM PDT

It never ceases to amaze me - Alastair_Houghton_882

It never ceases to amaze me how many "experts" there are on this topic, nor, for that matter, how many of them are just quoting what they have heard from other similar people elsewhere without putting any thought into it and without any actual knowledge of the subject.

I'm not going to argue with you on here about it; we have already explained our position on our website as well as in some previous posts on this topic. If you would like to have a discussion about this topic, please go somewhere else and do it (I suggest MacSlash); we already have plenty of posts exactly the same as yours on here and adding a few more doesn't help anybody decide anything.

The only other thing I will add is that we have seen significant performance improvements after using our product. If we didn't think it was useful, we wouldn't be selling it.

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Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 08:23 AM PDT

You don't need defrag software for Mac OS X - MatrixPT

Obviously the people who say we don't need defrag software for our Mac OS X computers have not much of an idea what they are talking about.

Have you ever tried to perform data recovery on a crashed hard drive when all the documents are split into twenty pieces or more, or tried to recover a deleted movie file which is split into 300+ pieces? Impossible. However, if you have a whole bunch of files that are regularly defragmented, they are VERY EASY to recover. If all the data is in one continuous block, it can simply be recovered byte-for-byte. This is great for very important files which are stored on laptops and in the field. If some idiot tells me 'Well if those files are so important why aren't they backed up regularly?' have you ever tried backing up an 8GB DV movie when you're in the field? Probably not. It isn't always practical to keep multiple hard drives when you are travelling, but keeping a well defragged hard drive can make data recovery a breeze if something goes wrong.

Defragmenting files on a disk image before it is copied to a CD or DVD speeds things up ENORMOUSLY. If a file is split up into pieces on a CD or DVD it can make accessing files on that disc horribly time-consuming.

To the people who keep insisting that all files under 20MB are automatically defragmented by OSX - GREAT for you, but who deals with 20MB files anymore? The smallest file I have dealt with today is 140MB. Considerably bigger than 20MB. When I transfer this from a server it will probably become fragmented simply because it will take a while to transfer, and the file system is also writing other files to other parts of the hard drive.

Microsoft Entourage stores all email in a single database file. Every checked to see how many fragments yours is split up into? Try doing a word search on a fragmented Entourage database compared to a contiguous one. There is a huge difference, plus you may notice that your hard drive is almost silent instead of going clickety-clack while it searches all over the place for things.

Try playing three or four concurrently running QuickTime movies from the hard drive at the same time when all the files are split into 300 or so fragments each, then try it again when they are all nicely defragmented and loaded into contiguous space. Wow, on try number two this WORKS. However try number one is a bit choppy. Hmmm.

I wish people would stop commenting on things they know nothing about. If somebody goes to the trouble of making a great product like this there is obviously a need for it. Go back to iPhoto for your photos (while we use Photoshop and GraphicConverter) and iMovie for your home videos (while we use Final Cut Pro.)

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Tuesday, May 02 2006 @ 11:47 AM PDT

Various reasons why defragmenting is a GREAT IDEA - MatrixPT

Obviously the people who say we don't need defrag software for our Mac OS X computers have not much of an idea what they are talking about.

Have you ever tried to perform data recovery on a crashed hard drive when all the documents are split into twenty pieces or more, or tried to recover a deleted movie file which is split into 300+ pieces? Impossible. However, if you have a whole bunch of files that are regularly defragmented, they are VERY EASY to recover. If all the data is in one continuous block, it can simply be recovered byte-for-byte. This is great for very important files which are stored on laptops and in the field. If some idiot tells me 'Well if those files are so important why aren't they backed up regularly?' have you ever tried backing up an 8GB DV movie when you're in the field? Probably not. It isn't always practical to keep multiple hard drives when you are travelling, but keeping a well defragged hard drive can make data recovery a breeze if something goes wrong.

Defragmenting files on a disk image before it is copied to a CD or DVD speeds things up ENORMOUSLY. If a file is split up into pieces on a CD or DVD it can make accessing files on that disc horribly time-consuming.

To the people who keep insisting that all files under 20MB are automatically defragmented by OSX - GREAT for you, but who deals with 20MB files anymore? The smallest file I have dealt with today is 140MB. Considerably bigger than 20MB. When I transfer this from a server it will probably become fragmented simply because it will take a while to transfer, and the file system is also writing other files to other parts of the hard drive.

Microsoft Entourage stores all email in a single database file. Every checked to see how many fragments yours is split up into? Try doing a word search on a fragmented Entourage database compared to a contiguous one. There is a huge difference, plus you may notice that your hard drive is almost silent instead of going clickety-clack while it searches all over the place for things.

Try playing three or four concurrently running QuickTime movies from the hard drive at the same time when all the files are split into 300 or so fragments each, then try it again when they are all nicely defragmented and loaded into contiguous space. Wow, on try number two this WORKS. However try number one is a bit choppy. Hmmm.

I wish people would stop commenting on things they know nothing about. If somebody goes to the trouble of making a great product like this there is obviously a need for it. Go back to iPhoto for your photos (while we use Photoshop and GraphicConverter) and iMovie for your home videos (while we use Final Cut Pro.)

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Tuesday, May 02 2006 @ 11:48 AM PDT