Any Ongoing Maintenance Required?

[SB123]

As a recent PC convert, I'm wondering if there is anything I need to do on a monthly/quarterly basis to keep the iMac running as optimally as possible?

Is there anything equivalent to a "disk defragment" or "disk cleanup"? Anything else I should know about?

Thanks.

 

[MacDawg]

Defragmentation is not necessary except in very unusual or extreme cases because of how OS X handles files

You can use something like Onyx, but really the OS X maintenance scripts that run automatically take care of most things

Just enjoy... and have a good backup strategy (and store your original discs somewhere)

 

[SB123]

Thanks for the quick reply.

You say have a good backup plan. I have a 1T external hardrive and use Time Machine to backup every hour. Is that good enough or should I be doing more?

 

[MacDawg]

Thanks for the quick reply.

You say have a good backup plan. I have a 1T external hardrive and use Time Machine to backup every hour. Is that good enough or should I be doing more?

Excellent!

I also have a clone scheduled every night with Carbon Copy Cloner that gives me a bootable backup

Only you can decide how much protection is appropriate for you
But a TM backup is awesome... too many people have nothing!

 

[mulo]

unless you keep it on 24/7 typing the following in terminal every once in a while will also clean it up a tad

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

 

[Hellhammer]

Thanks for the quick reply.

You say have a good backup plan. I have a 1T external hardrive and use Time Machine to backup every hour. Is that good enough or should I be doing more?

That protects you against HD failure and is enough in most cases. If you have some very valuable data (e.g. pics of your kids) that is not saved on anywhere else, then you might want to pickup another 1TB HD and use it as offsite backup and keep the HD in a car, workplace, relative's house etc. A single HD protects against HD failure but it does not protect you from fire or theft

 

[mulo]

That protects you against HD failure and is enough in most cases. If you have some very valuable data (e.g. pics of your kids) that is not saved on anywhere else, then you might want to pickup another 1TB HD and use it as offsite backup and keep the HD in a car, workplace, relative's house etc. A single HD protects against HD failure but it does not protect you from fire or theft

i'm sure dropbox would suffice for that? or mobileme if he has that.

 

[MacDawg]

i'm sure dropbox would suffice for that? or mobileme if he has that.

Depends on the size of the data and it can take a while to upload

unless you keep it on 24/7 typing the following in terminal every once in a while will also clean it up a tad

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

I think the scripts will run now when you turn your Mac back on without it having to be on 24/7

Someone will confirm or correct me I'm sure

 

[Hellhammer]

i'm sure dropbox would suffice for that? or mobileme if he has that.

Depends. Online storage is much more expensive and a lot slower. If OP has lots of data that he finds valuable, a secondary external HD will be cheaper and probably easier way as well. I find DropBox to be great for documents and stuff but I wouldn't start uploading thousands of several MB photos.

 

[SB123]

That protects you against HD failure and is enough in most cases. If you have some very valuable data (e.g. pics of your kids) that is not saved on anywhere else, then you might want to pickup another 1TB HD and use it as offsite backup and keep the HD in a car, workplace, relative's house etc. A single HD protects against HD failure but it does not protect you from fire or theft

makes sense

 

[Andeavor]

Keep an eye on any unnecessary emails and RSS messages. I do a periodic wipe out in Mac mail to keep things run smoothly.

 

[thepominlaw]

Depends. Online storage is much more expensive and a lot slower. If OP has lots of data that he finds valuable, a secondary external HD will be cheaper and probably easier way as well. I find DropBox to be great for documents and stuff but I wouldn't start uploading thousands of several MB photos.

I use Crashplan+ 155Gb backup started in September - Finished yesterday!!

After being bitten by the HD failure issue i backup to 2 seperate 1Tb HDDS, a 250Gb HDD and DVD-R (for photos and docs)

OTT i know but once bitten and all that

 

[John T]

I think the scripts will run now when you turn your Mac back on without it having to be on 24/7

Someone will confirm or correct me I'm sure

Yes, the daily, weekly and monthly scripts run automatically. I used to use Onyx to run these scripts until I noticed that it was reporting that they had already run.

 

[Hellhammer]

I use Crashplan+ 155Gb backup started in September - Finished yesterday!!

After being bitten by the HD failure issue i backup to 2 seperate 1Tb HDDS, a 250Gb HDD and DVD-R (for photos and docs)

OTT i know but once bitten and all that

IMO the more paranoid you are, the better. Data is so precious nowadays

 

[JRoDDz]

Macs have a way of taking care of themselves. The only thing I would do is keep the intake vents clean by vacuuming them periodically. Dust kills electronics.

 

[CrAkD]

i was going to make a thread like this. 99% of the time my computer runs fine but once and awhile ill get the spinning beach ball and safari will crash. I installed click2flash and that has seemed to fix it. but im curious if theres anything else I could do.

 

[Phil A.]

I use Crashplan+ 155Gb backup started in September - Finished yesterday!!

After being bitten by the HD failure issue i backup to 2 seperate 1Tb HDDS, a 250Gb HDD and DVD-R (for photos and docs)

OTT i know but once bitten and all that

Crashplan is awesome value for money - unlimited data from unlimited machines for $12 a month can't be beaten. On the subject of backups, I am a firm believer that you can't have too many of them:

My backup strategy is as follows:
1) Time machine backup of everything on my machine to a 2TB drive
2) iTunes library also duplicated by home sharing to another machine that runs as a media server
3) All my photos and documents are backed up to CrashPlan
4) All my development projects are source controlled in subversion which runs on a dedicated miniserver from Memset (i.e. hosted in a data centre)
5) The subversion server is also backed up using CrashPlan

This means I have multiple copies of everything, and everything except my iTunes library is also backed up offsite. The only reason I don't backup my iTunes library offsite is the size of it - 700GB would take forever to get offsite and as I'm in the UK, I can't easily send Crashplan a seed backup

 

[Rhobes]

Yes, the daily, weekly and monthly scripts run automatically. I used to use Onyx to run these scripts until I noticed that it was reporting that they had already run.

Will this still work if your system is in sleep mode? I heard someone state that sleep mode can stop it from running, and the maintenance is scheduled to run at night & that's when mine is usually in sleep mode.

 

[MacDawg]

Will this still work if your system is in sleep mode? I heard someone state that sleep mode can stop it from running, and the maintenance is scheduled to run at night & that's when mine is usually in sleep mode.

They will run once it wakes up

 

[Hellhammer]

i was going to make a thread like this. 99% of the time my computer runs fine but once and awhile ill get the spinning beach ball and safari will crash. I installed click2flash and that has seemed to fix it. but im curious if theres anything else I could do.

That's pretty normal. If you have any other plug-ins, you could try removing them as in most cases, a browser crash is caused by a plug-in (usually Flash).

 

[rkaufmann87]

unless you keep it on 24/7 typing the following in terminal every once in a while will also clean it up a tad

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

That is outdated information and is not incorrect. If a user turns off their machine at night when it's turn the scheduled maintenance routines will automatically run.

 

[Rhobes]

That is outdated information and is not incorrect. If a user turns off their machine at night when it's turn the scheduled maintenance routines will automatically run.

You would think that Apple would mention this information somewhere in the quick start-up or somewhere obvious to people. I started many threads and searched many times & always found the same, lots want to know what they can do to maintain there machine but don't know and always get conflicting info. I'm sure that all stems from people talking about different models etc.
That would probably be a good idea for someone to pursue & make into a sticky for the Forum. Model & Maintenance.

 

[lotones]

That is outdated information and is not incorrect. If a user turns off their machine at night when it's turn the scheduled maintenance routines will automatically run.

You would think that Apple would mention this information somewhere in the quick start-up or somewhere obvious to people. I started many threads and searched many times & always found the same, lots want to know what they can do to maintain there machine but don't know and always get conflicting info. I'm sure that all stems from people talking about different models etc.
That would probably be a good idea for someone to pursue & make into a sticky for the Forum. Model & Maintenance.

Seriously, huh? That's the first I've heard of it, though I've always wondered why it wouldn't just run the scripts on startup. Good to know.

And I agree, if true this should be common knowledge by now. Apple could even call it a "feature" of OS X.

btw, thanks MacDawg for jogging my memory about OnyX. There's a lot more to it than I thought. Well worth the "cost"... lol

 

[MacDawg]

Seriously, huh? That's the first I've heard of it, though I've always wondered why it wouldn't just run the scripts on startup. Good to know.

And I agree, if true this should be common knowledge by now. Apple could even call it a "feature" of OS X.

btw, thanks MacDawg for jogging my memory about OnyX. There's a lot more to it than I thought. Well worth the "cost"... lol

This is a feature for Snow Leopard 10.6
For Tiger 10.4 and Leopard 10.5 it is different

You can read about the differences here:

Mac OS X: About background maintenance tasks

In Mac OS X v10.6 and later, background maintenance tasks that do not run when the computer is asleep are run after it wakes from sleep mode.

For 10.4 and 10.5...

The tasks are scheduled for 03:15 to 05:30 in your computer's local time zone. This is described further in "Mac OS X: Unexplained Disk Activity Produced by 'find' Process." These tasks do not run if the computer is shut down or in sleep mode. If the tasks do not run, it is possible that certain log files (such as system.log) may become very large in Mac OS X v10.5 or earlier.