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Question from a PC User

T

triton

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 15, 2003
172
0
Hello,

I am moving to an Apple very soon - can't wait !

However, I was wondering if there are any optimizations that need to be made to OS X to keep it in top running form. For example, on a PC it's usually good to run DEFRAG or SCANDISK every now and then, so your operating system can continue to run smoothly. Is there somthing like this for the Mac? Does the operating system naturally slow down over time. I appreciate any help you can give me before I make the switch. Thank you!
 
You don't need to defrag your hard drive often, if ever. One thing that you should know is that OS X does some little system maintainance tasks every night--except if your computer is off or asleep at night, then they don't get done.

The solution to this is a program like Macaroni.

Good luck and welcome to the Mac world!
 
Interesting. So all I need to do is get this program and it solves all of my upkeeping tasks? No DEFRAG, SCANDISK or whatever else might need to be done? This one program takes care of it all?

Has anyone used it before? Does it keep your system running at the same speed? Forgive me if my questions seem naive. Thank you for all of your help (in advance).
 
my 2 cents...

as long as you do not install any "rogue" shareware or beta software from "unknown" companies, then you will not even need macaroni.

i still use and maintain peecees for work, so this is not a comment from a "mac uebergeek".

The Mac just works. Thanks for taking the plunge. ;)

should you have any problems, we here in macrumors and/ macbytes.com would surely be glad to help.

:D
 
If you're worried about it not being in top condition, you can run fsck (file system check), which is like Scandisk. There's also "repairing permissions", which you might hear a bit on these forums. You can also force the nightly, weekly and monthly maintenance with a couple of simple terminal commands - if you're not scared of the terminal :)

Edit: Regarding the terminal commands, it looks like Macaroni does this and more. I've always just used the terminal, why waste time downloading an app to do something for you, if you already know how to do it yourself? On the other hand, I waste heaps of time browsing up and down these forums all day :rolleyes:
 
Thanks people for all of your help. I feel especially welcome coming on board with Apple. I kind of wish I made the jump years ago.:mad:

All of this information helps. I just needed to know this before, so I can know how to keep my apple running smooth. Thank you all !
 
Once in a while it's smart to run Disc Utility and "Repair Disk Permissions".

The best thing with Mac is that you don't have to worry about all that adware or virus, cuz there aint no . . .
 
For the most part there's not much you have to do. Apple's updates usually Optimize the hard drive when they do an install.

Fragmentation is not as much of an issue with HFS+ as it is with FAT32 drives especially since the underlying OS is actually UNIX. Unix is used to having pieces of files on other MACHINES and Volumes not just on the same disk.

You'll see how different HFS+ is when you do your first "ERASE" or "PARTITION" it takes abt 3 seconds to set up a 60GB HD.

Don't worry to much abt doing anything to defrag or optimize, as I am also a switcher, I can vouch that it's not really that necessary.

FSCK is a good idea once in a while, I use MacJanitor to run the jobs that someone spoke about earlier in this post.

UNIX has jobs in it job scheduler (CRON) file that it is set to run in the early early AM. If your Mac is asleep or off those jobs don't get run. WIth MacJanitor you can run them on demand.

Make the switch as soon as you can... You'll be so happy you did.

MacBoyX
 
and don't ever ever ever ever ever ever use anything that includes the word Norton.
 
Originally posted by FredAkbar
You don't need to defrag your hard drive often, if ever. One thing that you should know is that OS X does some little system maintainance tasks every night--except if your computer is off or asleep at night, then they don't get done.

The solution to this is a program like Macaroni.

Good luck and welcome to the Mac world!
Click to expand...

You only need to defrag often if you lots of video/sound/image work, where you work with lots of different files. Even if you do, you don't need to defrag more than once a month.
 
Originally posted by Nermal
If you're worried about it not being in top condition, you can run fsck (file system check), which is like Scandisk. There's also "repairing permissions", which you might hear a bit on these forums. You can also force the nightly, weekly and monthly maintenance with a couple of simple terminal commands - if you're not scared of the terminal :)

Edit: Regarding the terminal commands, it looks like Macaroni does this and more. I've always just used the terminal, why waste time downloading an app to do something for you, if you already know how to do it yourself? On the other hand, I waste heaps of time browsing up and down these forums all day :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

What are these terminal commands?
 
I also recommend Disk Warrior 3 (when it comes out) to save your data if anything does go wrong ... Trust me .. it happens sometimes. (voice of experience) :)


Originally posted by MacBoyX
You'll see how different HFS+ is when you do your first "ERASE" or "PARTITION" it takes abt 3 seconds to set up a 60GB HD.

MacBoyX
Click to expand...

WOW .. I had to erase my 60GB HD a couple of days ago .. and it took 15 hours (!) (my hard drive has been acting up though .. I just got it replaced, and I had to format it because something went awry with my OS X boot files .. one of the main directories became corrupted) ... that would have been the perfect opportunity for Disk Warrior 3 ;)

[Edit: Disk Warrior 3 appears to be out already, but they're backordered.. or something like that]
 
Originally posted by triton
Does it keep your system running at the same speed?
Click to expand...

-triton

This is your second mention of this in this thread and I'm pretty sure that you are referring to Windows' habit of slowing down over time.

This is primarily due to the registry "haystacking" - or becoming a general mess. The primary function of the registry is to help windows keep track of all of the applications on the computer, as well as all of the .dll's, and how they interact with said application. This registry should, at any point in time, be an accurate picture as to the contents and functions of a Windows machine.

In a perfect world, as a user adds Applications, and deletes others, the installers and uninstallers update the registry, keeping it cuurent. However, this is not a perfect world and there are many mistaked made in applications' installers and uninstallers that cause a gradual "haystacking" of the registry. So eventually, the computer is trying to keep track of things entered in theregistry but no longer exist on the harddrive - defunct processes.

Macs don't have registries, or .dll's. Thus removing an entire level of complexity, including uninstallers - they're simply not necessary.

You don't have to worry about slowdown over time. :D
 
Ok, so how do you run FSCK? And besides this and Macaroni, is there anything else I should run, or need to know? Thanks Mac Heads, you guys kick !
 
Originally posted by triton
Ok, so how do you run FSCK? And besides this and Macaroni, is there anything else I should run, or need to know? Thanks Mac Heads, you guys kick !
Click to expand...

the may i do it, is you reboot holding apple-s, then when the command prompt is there, you type "sbin/fsck -y" or something like that, (it will show you what to type anywyas... then you do something else (Will be writin there too) and type reboot..

aethier
ps: sorry if im not to clear
 
when you boot up in single user mode, all you have to type is "fsck -y" , hit return, and watch it go. the only thing you need to know is that after it completes, you should run it again, because with some disk errors it will only fix the first error it comes across. you should run fsck -y until it comes up clean, then type "reboot"
this will pretty much take care of 95% of your disk troubles. except if you're me, and there's some stupid bad sector in my catalog file that makes my start up times take about 10 minutes on the white apple screen...when i have the time i;m gonna back everything up and reformat the drive
 
Originally posted by MacManDan
I also recommend Disk Warrior 3 (when it comes out) to save your data if anything does go wrong ... Trust me .. it happens sometimes. (voice of experience) :)




WOW .. I had to erase my 60GB HD a couple of days ago .. and it took 15 hours (!) (my hard drive has been acting up though .. I just got it replaced, and I had to format it because something went awry with my OS X boot files .. one of the main directories became corrupted) ... that would have been the perfect opportunity for Disk Warrior 3 ;)

[Edit: Disk Warrior 3 appears to be out already, but they're backordered.. or something like that]
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like you Zeroed Out your drive and not just "Erased" Zeroing out is more secure but not always necessary.

My example was without going in and selecting Zero Out.

MacBoyX
 
Originally posted by MacBoyX
Sounds to me like you Zeroed Out your drive and not just "Erased" Zeroing out is more secure but not always necessary.

My example was without going in and selecting Zero Out.

MacBoyX
Click to expand...

I actually did not zero out the hard drive. I had to boot from the OS X CD to access the Disk Util, and I just did a standard erase (unless standard erase from Jaguar CD disk utility includes zeoring out the hard drive, but I don't think so). It took 15 hours on the "setting up partition map" part of the process.
 
Originally posted by MacManDan
I actually did not zero out the hard drive. I had to boot from the OS X CD to access the Disk Util, and I just did a standard erase (unless standard erase from Jaguar CD disk utility includes zeoring out the hard drive, but I don't think so). It took 15 hours on the "setting up partition map" part of the process.
Click to expand...


Ok um...that's really odd... cause my 60gb firewire takes less than a minute...

Hmmm...oh well good luck next time.

MacBoyx
 
Re: Question from a PC User

Originally posted by triton
I am moving to an Apple very soon - can't wait !
Click to expand...

Boy am I jealous! I remember when I switched. It was great. I wish I could switch again, but alas, here I am -- switched. ;)

<bald-faced mac advocacy>
I think you'll find that this whole thread is about what you'll be doing 0.5% of your time. The other 99.5%? Well, that's what the rest of the threads are about...:D
</bald-faced mac advocacy>

In the interest of full disclosure, I repair disk permissions about once a month and run fsck whenever a software update requires that I restart -- and I doubt that's 1/200th of my computer time.
 
triton-

Welcome aboard. Glad to greet any switchers. I've been using OS X since 10.0.4 and it has only been improving-no problems at all. No comparison with anything Windows, but you abviously figured that out.
 
to get into single user mode, hold down the apple key and "s" when you first see the apple logo on startup. however, if you enable journaling on your hard drive (default in Panther :p but you can use an app like Cocktail to enable it) you don't need fsck unless you really want to do it :)
btw, just in case you don't know what journaling is:
from searchSecurity.com
A journaling file system is a fault-resilient file system in which data integrity is ensured because updates to directories and bitmaps are constantly written to a serial log on disk before the original disk log is updated. In the event of a system failure, a full journaling filesystem ensures that the data on the disk has been restored to its pre-crash configuration. It also recovers unsaved data and stores it in the location where it would have gone if the computer had not crashed, making it an important feature for mission-critical applications.
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by triton
Ok, so how do you run FSCK?
Click to expand...


You don't need to run FSCK. OS X automatically runs FSCK when you boot up.

You needed to run FSCK before Jaguar. That's old news. ;)
 
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