question on defragmenting

[vargelis]

hello
i am new to mac and just started using a rather old iBook, that is unusually slow, especially when saving word documents or loading internet pages with paswords (ie my email log in).
so im wondering if mac is similar to windows and if there is a "defragmenting" process i can run to help the overall speed of the machine.
Plus a slight inconvienece, all the programs and operating systems on the computer are French- and my technical computer term vocabulary in French is not quite fluent.... so the more details the better chance ill have of doing whaterver...

 

[MacDawg]

My understanding is that OSX doesn't need defragmentation like Windows... but that seems to be an ongoing debate around here.

A search on "defragmentation" will give you a whole host of threads discussing the pros and cons in OSX

Woof, Woof – Dawg

 

[Veldek]

My understanding is that OSX doesn't need defragmentation like Windows... but that seems to be an ongoing debate around here.

A search on "defragmentation" will give you a whole host of threads discussing the pros and cons in OSX

Woof, Woof – Dawg

That is, if he uses OS X, which he doesn't explicitly say. Some more info would be good in this case.

 

[MacDawg]

That is, if he uses OS X, which he doesn't explicitly say. Some more info would be good in this case.

Good point, he does say a "rather old iBook" which could imply OS 9.x, which would benefit from defragmentation. Thanks for correcting me

I guess I just live in an OSX world now, my wife tells me all of the time I'm in a different world.

Woof, Woof – Dawg

 

[witness]

Surely disk fragmentation is an issue for any OS unless OS X is continually defragmenting in the background?

 

[grapes911]

Surely disk fragmentation is an issue for any OS unless OS X is continually defragmenting in the background?

Correct and almost Correct. It doesn't continually defrag, rather it defrags when files are accessed. It only does files under 20 MB.

 

[witness]

Correct and almost Correct. It doesn't continually defrag, rather it defrags when files are accessed. It only does files under 20 MB.

So what can you do about the larger files?

 

[superbovine]

hello
i am new to mac and just started using a rather old iBook, that is unusually slow, especially when saving word documents or loading internet pages with paswords (ie my email log in).
so im wondering if mac is similar to windows and if there is a "defragmenting" process i can run to help the overall speed of the machine.
Plus a slight inconvienece, all the programs and operating systems on the computer are French- and my technical computer term vocabulary in French is not quite fluent.... so the more details the better chance ill have of doing whaterver...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

 

[grapes911]

So what can you do about the larger files?

Don't worry about them.

 

[witness]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

I like the bit where it says:

Another option is to back up your important files, erase the hard disk, then reinstall Mac OS X and your backed up files.

I guess that would work