Can A Mac Laptop Be Defragmented?

[GTP Dave]

How does one go about defragmenting a Mac laptop?

[Carl0s2]

The newer OSX versions are supposed to defrag themselves...

File system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't know how well it works though, or how you would check it.

[N/A]

My understanding is they defrag themselves just by rebooting it since OS9.

[Hentaikid]

Yeah if it's anything like linux it just defrags itself as it goes along

[slaxxx]

It's done automatically and HFS+, OS X's file system, doesn't need to be defragged as often as something like FAT32. Apple even suggest not defragmenting.

But you can force the process manually using something like iDefrag. I think if you ran it, you'd see the drive wasn't very fragmented unless it was nearly full or something and running an earlier version of OS X.

[GTP Dave]

ok, lemme explain ..have a powerbook G4 vthat about 4 years old... how to improve performance..its slow S COLD DOG SHIT

[gzone]

I have a MacBook...and from what I understand the system is based on BSD-Unix, you should not have to preform any disk defraging in the normal course of use. But you could go out and buy a disk utility just for peace of mind.

[slaxxx]

Originally Posted by GTP Dave

ok, lemme explain ..have a powerbook G4 vthat about 4 years old... how to improve performance..its slow S COLD DOG SHIT

Open activity monitor and see if a process is eating ram/cpu. If that's not the issue, then go into /Applications/Utilities and run disk utility. Click 'repair permissions' and let it run...might take 20 mins but let it do its thing.

Might also want to try Onyx if that doesn't speed things up OnyX 1.9.4b3 - MacUpdate

[N/A]

I haven't been using Macs for many years but you can try disabling extensions that you do not use in the Extension Manager. Should be quite a few there.

I'm pretty anal about things like that actually, on my PC now I've only have 22 processes running. It used to be 18 but my girl has hooked it up with her mp3 player and instant messenger shit.

I just saw few days ago in another forum I go to someone has more than 70 processes running.

[slaxxx]

Originally Posted by N/A

I haven't been using Macs for many years but you can try disabling extensions that you do not use in the Extension Manager. Should be quite a few there.

I'm pretty anal about things like that actually, on my PC now I've only have 22 processes running. It used to be 18 but my girl has hooked it up with her mp3 player and instant messenger shit.

I just saw few days ago in another forum I go to someone has more than 70 processes running.

There's no extensions manager on OS X...that was OS 9 and below.

[Mihx]

Originally Posted by N/A

...

I just saw few days ago in another forum I go to someone has more than 70 processes running.

Amateur! I've got 84 processes running in Vista right now (only 44 are showing up in the processes list in the task manager - four of which are actual applications, so I'm assuming it's counting services as processes in the total number as well).

I used to care about things like trimming down the number of processes and other more or less effective optimization tricks - but the fact is that the only ones of those 84 processes using any noticable CPU time are the applications, and I've got plenty of free RAM available as well.
Most of the Vista/XP "optimization" guides I've seen, tend to sacrifice functionality (often quite heavily) for almost microscopic performance gains that are utterly unnecessary on a decent computer, unless you're trying to eg. squeeze out the last few frames per second from a heavily demanding game.

Oh, but back on topic - as others already have said, the MacOS filesystem doesn't get fragmented, does it? Don't know about the filesystem, but the OS is otherwise based on Unix/Linux/BSD or something, isn't it?

[MountainGoat]

Defragging a Mac??? Don't do it!

There are applications out there to defrag the Mac, idefrag being one, but here is a rub... Most of the time after defragging a Mac will actually run slower!

For the most part, as said above in a few posts, that Mac OSX will defrag itself.

Grab OnyX like Slaxx recommended, or SpringClean, and tidy out your hard drive. (You could even strip the Intel code out of the newer apps, so you only have the PPC code in programmes too).

I didn't believe that the defrag would slow a machine down, so I copied my OSX disk to an external, ran benchmarks, defragged, and ran benchmarks again... I took about a 20% hit on performance on most things...

[Donkey]

Install a Linux on it

[MountainGoat]

Originally Posted by Donkey

Install a Linux on it

Bad Donkey, Bad!!! If we wanted machines with Linux, then we'd have bought or built Windows type machines!

[Donkey]

Originally Posted by MountainGoat

Bad Donkey, Bad!!! If we wanted machines with Linux, then we'd have bought or built Windows type machines!

Naaa, there is no Windows-type machine. PCs are built for Linux, Macs are Linux machines in disguise!!

[gzone]

Originally Posted by Donkey

Install a Linux on it

Do you know what is needed for Ubuntu Linux? I would do it...PM me if you Have the time.

MS Windblows.