A good simple defragging app?

[JesseJames]

Is there a good simple disk defragging application? I absolute refuse to buy any Norton products. I HATE them with a passion.

I don't really want to shell out the money for Techtool Pro either.
Is Diskwarrior any good?

 

[fayans]

Is there a good simple disk defragging application? I absolute refuse to buy any Norton products. I HATE them with a passion.

I don't really want to shell out the money for Techtool Pro either.
Is Diskwarrior any good?

Have you tried iDefrag?

 

[robbieduncan]

Is there a reason you want a defrag program? Is there a specific problem you are trying to fix? OSX defrags disks on the fly as it's going along.

 

[IJ Reilly]

You don't need to defragment OSX volumes. It's done automatically.

 

[onetwoxu]

i really like diskwarrior.. not sure if it is technically defragging, but it certainly speeds up my disks when i use it.

 

[erickkoch]

Just curious. I ran the demo of iDefrag and the graphic shows my drive is quite fragmented. Yet I've heard so many times that OS X automatically defrags anyway. Is the graphic designed to be misleading so you'll by the software?

 

[Cense]

Yes OS X does defrag on the fly, but it is very lacking. It doesn't defrag system files and other files that it doesn't have permission to move. So your system can get very fragmented and that will slow down your computer.

The auto defrag is nice but very lacking. It is good to defragg your system ever few months. more often if your installing and uninstalling alot of applications.

 

[mduser63]

OS X defrags on the fly, but only files that are 20 MB or smaller. Bigger files (like video, audio) don't get defragmented. For most people that doesn't matter, but for some people defragmenting occasionally might be a good idea.

 

[risc]

OS X doesn't defrag on the fly, it only moves small files when you actually open them. It isn't constantly moving files around.

 

[saunders45]

Diskwarrior is pretty cool. You'd be suprised how fragged (heh heh) your hard drive can get, especially when uploading copying and moving many large files. I jus installed FCP studio on my laptop and installed all the support files on my bus powered external. When i was done, it was 28% fragged. Also, it's pretty quick, and millions of times faster than windows defragger...

 

[bankshot]

Is Diskwarrior any good?

DiskWarrior doesn't do defragging, but it is simply awesome. Every OS X user should have it, and I think this is one app that Apple should definitely try to purchase and bundle with every Mac. It's saved my butt so many times, I can't count. Many times when Disk Utility just gives up, DiskWarrior comes in and saves the day. My hero!

As for defragging, I really don't think it's necessary these days. Back in the days of DOS or early days of Windows, with slow hard drives and poorly designed filesystems, it made a difference. These days with faster drives and much better filesystems, there's little if any benefit as far as I'm aware.

 

[Bern]

There is no reason to defrag in OS X and this Apple Knowledge Base Article explains why http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Here's why:
Hard disk capacity is generally much greater now than a few years ago. With more free space available, the file system doesn't need to fill up every "nook and cranny." Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus) avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space.

Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X Extended-formatted volumes. This allows a number of small allocations to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk.

Fragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to existing files, especially with resource forks. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files. This process is sometimes known as "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering."

Aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching means that minor fragmentation has less effect on perceived system performance.

For these reasons, there is little benefit to defragmenting.

 

[Makosuke]

Just curious. I ran the demo of iDefrag and the graphic shows my drive is quite fragmented. Yet I've heard so many times that OS X automatically defrags anyway. Is the graphic designed to be misleading so you'll by the software?

I'm guessing no, as I just downloaded the demo, and my startup disk (which gets HAMMERED on between my music library, dozens of random internet downloads, work, and BitTorrent) shows as less than 1% fragmented, though the freespace is a mess.

And if you put together that the OS has built-in defragging of small-ish files with the fact that it's moderately resistant to fragmentation to begin with, then you get a situation where the only people who really need to defrag are those moving big chunks of data (video, mostly) around a lot. I used to defrag religiously, but it just hasn't been much of an issue in more recent versions of OSX (if I was doing video capture I almost certainly would, though).

Two additional by-the-ways: Norton goes beyond just avoidance--they aren't even compatible with newer versions of OSX, so you couldn't use them even if you wanted to. Man, Norton was so good ten years ago before disintegrating completely. And the Windows defragger is a total mess. I'll stop short of calling it completely worthless, but any defragger that can't actually defragment a volume with plenty of free space after a half dozen leisurely passes ain't doing its job properly.