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A friend of mine who recently switched from a PC to an iBook asked me about some advice he’d received on a user group forum: “I also asked about disk defrag/optimizing. They advised against this procedure, but said one should reinitialize once a year.” I don’t think this is very helpful counsel. While the benefits of defragmenting are debatable, reinitializing one’s hard drive annually, at least in the absence of problems, would be overkill. My friend is running OS 9, and my advice would be to only reinitialize if there is an objective reason to do so. Of course, one should keep an up to date backup -- preferably two -- of important files. As for defragmenting and optimizing drives, I do that once in a while. I’ve never noticed a really tangible increase in performance after a defrag, but it seems to make theoretical good sense, and I hope that it might make the drive last a bit longer, because the hard disk’s head must move to each fragment and read each one separately which presumably results in more wear on the mechanism. Fragmentation is when files are stored in fragments on your drive rather than in contiguous segments, as they are when you first install software and data on a freshly formatted drive. As files are deleted, replaced, and modified, free blocks of spare are opened up non-contiguously and the OS then tries to use them up efficiently by writing parts of new files in the empty spaces. When the Mac OS file system saves a file, it looks for a free space large enough to hold the entire file. If there aren’t any, it finds the largest free space available, then the next largest, and so on, in an effort to reduce fragmentation as much as possible.However inevitably some files end up being fragmented. A fragmented file takes more time for the drive head to read than a contiguously stored one, and the disk directory necessarly becomes more complex, raising the potential for problems there. If you suffer a disk crash, disk recovery software will have a harder time recovering badly fragmented files than unfragmented files, simply because there are more pieces to track down. I’ve heard it asserted that OS X tends to fragment hard drives faster than the Classic OS did. Others say that OS X does a better job of dealing with disk fragmentation than the old Mac OS did. According to Apple’s Knowledge Base article on the topic:
Apple does not endorse any single defragmenting utility, but you can check out available third-party solutions in the Macintosh Products Guide: Two that I have used are the Speed Disk utility in Norton’s suite of disk tools, and AlSoft’s Plus Optimizer. Micromat’s Drive 10 and Tech Tool Pro can also defrag disks. The way Speed Disk, which is the one I’ve used most, works, is to read large portions of file data into RAM, then erase sections of the disk gradually, and rewrite the data in an orderly fashion in file contiguous blocks from the top level on down. Defragmenting utilities can also “optimize” file storage on your drive, positioning similar files, such as all the operating system files, physically next to one another. Today’s optimizer programs are very reliable and incorporate safety protocols to gurad against data loss. However, nothing is foolproof, and If you’re going to optimize your disk, be sure to check the disk first with a program like Apple’s Disk First Aid or Disk Utility or a third party program like Disk Warrior or Norton Disk Doctor. A damaged disk could cause the optimizer to crash when it runs across corrupted data or data in a completely unexpected place. It’s also a good idea to do a back up of your files before defragging oe optimizing. In summary, there’s nothing wrong with defragging and optimizing hard drives, and if you have a badly fragmented drive it will probably speed things up a bit and enhance data security, but the process is time consuming, and the gains are not thatsubstantial in most cases. It’s not something you should have anxiety about. There’s also no harm in reformatting a drive once in a while, but that’s *really* tine-consuming, and it’s something I would never bother to do unless there were a more compelling reason than file fragmentation. You can find out more about defrag/optimization utilities at these URLs: http://www.symantec.com/ nu/ nu_ mac/ http://www.alsoft.com/ DiskWarrior/ Subject: RE: Richard’s reply to David Meyer’s comment From David Meyer Charles, Richard Dalziel-Sharpe would seem to have a good point - if I had said what he suggests I said. Few businesses would appreciate knowing that their web site was turning away 10% of their customers. They would change design firms or managers in a hurry. But . . . that isn’t what I said. Sure, SOME web sites test for browser compatibility and turn some users away. I agree with Richard that this is a bit of a problem. Often the rebuffed user’s only point of contact regarding such treatment is the web team that decided to go this route - likely to save money and/or time. This means the heads of the company involved never hears that a tenth of the potential market has been pointedly snubbed. But, that’s not what I said. My comments were directed at testing. My company tells you “This site will work correctly with (browser X.N through Y.M) and (browser Z.O). We cannot be held responsible (blah . . . blah).” And most browsers will do a credible job of rendering the site properly even if they are not on the list. They test the listed browsers rigorously to insure that those browsers - and they cover well over 90% of the queries from Windows machines - work exactly according to design. They don’t TEST for Mac usage, but a (slight?) majority of Mac visitors use IE or Netscape of recent enough vintage to do the job. My wife only tests for Mac compatibility, using IE, Netscape and Safari. Why? It’s all she has. As important, her site is mainly text with very few cute coding tricks anywhere. One exception is the tag. Pure HTML 4, it works in recent IE and Netscape versions but not in Safari - not that I haven’t mentioned this. At least it doesn’t LOOK broken, it just doesn’t work. Since 95% or more of her visitors use some version of IE or Netscape, and since it’s only a minor navigational aid, we don’t worry much about it. But, she doesn’t TEST for such things. I may test them from my work PC, otherwise, not. Nobody can test every combination. You maximize the benefit from your budget and hope for the best. Dave Meyer
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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