Recently there has been a debate regarding defragging Mac OS X and its disk optimization as an effective way for repairing disk permissions. Apple Company are even confident that defrag Mac OS X is not needed because the system already has its own optimization tool. According to the company you only need to defrag your system if you already have large files and your hard disk is already low. What makes defragmentation different from disk optimization?
In case your system already have large files it is necessary that you create backup of all your important files and applications. Then you can re-install your Mac operating system and restore your backup files back to the system. This is quite a time consuming activity but eventually will make your Mac system to run faster in accessing your large files. You can also use other utilities that will create a clone of your startup drive and then you can format the hard drive and restore the files back again. This is quite a faster remedy.
Mac Os X Defrag
Fragmentation is the process of splitting your files into multiple parts and storing it to different locations on the hard drive. However, files can be access easily in just one lump rather that seeking into two or three segments. This will more likely cause your system to slow down instead. The file systems are composed of different portions of free space that are separated from each other. When the hard drives is full of data then the file system will used smaller disk space instead and will result to split files into smaller chunks and then distribute it to different locations on the disk. This is already fragmentation process.
However Mac OS X’s HFS+ the file system is already protected from fragmentation this is because the file system under Mac will not used the space recently freed as much as possible and look for other areas where to store the files and other information. And another thing Mac OS X uses routine that will clump the smaller space in the hard disks into larger portions. And Mac OS X already performs its own defragmentation process which is known as “Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering.” This greatly reduces the chances of fragmenting the files.
To Defrag Mac Or Not Defrag Mac
On the other hand, disk optimization is quite a different process form defragmentation. This deals with the organization of related files into logical groups in order to improve the performance of the system rather than splitting it into multiple chunks across the hard disk. Some of the common utility that performs disk optimization is the iDefrag that alters the arrangement of files in the hard disk in order to enhance its performance. This comes with pre-defined layouts that works for Mac OS X. This will eventually improve the performance of your system in the process.
Some Mac users are often confused if they need to defrag their Mac OS X? Mac users already enjoy the benefits of using their Mac OS X because it is already built in with utility that performs automatic defragmentation process. However, most users would rather use the disk optimization process because it will enhance the performance of their system rather than defragmenting their files.
May 6, 2011 at 5:34 am
Its true that you need to defrag your Mac if your hard drive is almost full. But now a days, the size of Mac disk is large enough to hold users data.
Defragmentation is needed in machines prior to Mac OSX. The Mac OSX are advanced enough to manage its data and optimize Mac drive.
March 6, 2012 at 7:07 am
Out of many Mac defragmenting tools Stellar drive defrag is the fastest and most reliable Mac software.