Enter please, DiskWarrior - mtcon

iDefrag is an optimization & defragmentation program which works on FILES. Disk Warrior, on the other hand, works on the disk's directory -it doesn't defrag or optimize disk files. By running Disk Warrior you have not been optimizing your disk, you've been repairing its directory. Unless you have many extremely large files or your disk is just about full, defragging & optimizing under OS X is mostly a waste of time & money. Besides, built into OS X are several mechanisms to automatically reduce file fragmentation. Keep Disk Warrior (it's a valuable save your bacon program) & forget about iDefrag.

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Thursday, March 01 2007 @ 09:14 PM PST

Defrag now more likely to be necessary - Soul of Wit

Valid comments, but keep in mind changing usage by many Mac users. Video files are not just for video professionals any more. Camcorder transfers, DVD rips and iTunes Store purchases are more and more common on the average user's HD. Files over 20MB are the "big" files which Apple's built-in anti-fragmentation functionality has problems with. I have one direcory with 40 files bigger than that, and I'm no video nut.

Also, a little fragmentation begats more fragmentation. It's definitely a snowball effect. Throw in a nearly-full HD and it's a noticeable problem (s-l-o-w.) The demo of this product will let you see if you have a problem. FYI: there are other well-known defragmentation products available for Macs. Hint: those of you who are TECHnically proficient will find this TOOL and PROcure it.

Oh, and there's disk optimization. Basically, files that run one after the other should be near each other on the HD. Mac OS runs the same files consecutively all the time. Everyday activities like running an incremental update (e.g.: 10.4.8 from 10.4.7) can play hacoc with optimization. Basic tasks take longer. No big files to blame, here.

1. Backup
2. Repair HD with Disk Warrior (if you need to do this kind of stuff, you need to pay for the one, true savior of disk kind)
3. Okay--you're cheap--at least, repair the disk from the built-in Disk Utility
4. Defragment/optimize
5. Did I mention that this will take a while? A long while?
6. Did I mention that booting from another HD (or CD/DVD) is required?
7. Did I mention that you could clone the disk (say, with SuperDuper!) or backup/manually copy files if you had another HD available?
8. Still, this is probably easier.

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Friday, March 02 2007 @ 04:20 PM PST

Enter please, DiskWarrior - mtcon

iDefrag is an optimization & defragmentation program which works on FILES. Disk Warrior, on the other hand, works on the disk's directory -it doesn't defrag or optimize disk files. By running Disk Warrior you have not been optimizing your disk, you've been repairing its directory. Unless you have many extremely large files or your disk is just about full, defragging & optimizing under OS X is mostly a waste of time & money. Besides, built into OS X are several mechanisms to automatically reduce file fragmentation. Keep Disk Warrior (it's a valuable save your bacon program) & forget about iDefrag.

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Thursday, March 01 2007 @ 09:15 PM PST