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Defraging a MAC?

The Cabl3 GuyThe Cabl3 Guy Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
Noticing that things are getting a little sluggish on my mini. I mean two hours to render two minutes of video? That can't be right...

Now I need to defrag this sucker but I can't seem to find the right utility. Panther doesn't seem to come with one & my copy of Norton System Works doesn't do the trick either. Any suggestions?

Comments

  • David of MacDavid of Mac Elite Ranger Ca
    [url=http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/]Diskwarrior[/url] is a fine program for repairing your harddrive directory (much better than the disgrace that's been made of Norton in the past few years.)

    I'm not sure of any full-fledged defragmentation programs, but I found a website with an interesting discussion on how Mac OS X deals with it. [url]http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/fragmentation/[/url]

    In a nutshell[quote]Poor Man's Defragmentation
    As we have seen, an HFS+ volume seems to resist fragmentation rather well on Mac OS X 10.3.x, and I don't envisio fragmentation to be a problem bad enough to require proactive remedies (such as a defragmenting tool)

    hfsdebu can list all fragmented files (forks) on a volume, and can also sort them based on the number of extents each has. Although it would depend on a number of factors (such as a file's size, free space on the volume, and so on), if you simply moved (as a backup) a file with a highly fragmented fork to a new name, and copied it to the original name, the new copy might have lesser, or even no fragmentation, which you may check using hfsdebug. Please understand that I do not recommend that you do this! If you are really bent upon defragmenting your HFS+ volume, a more appropriate way would be to write your own defragmentation tool. The Carbon File Manager has functions that let you allocate contiguous space on a volume.[/quote]
  • Peter vonFrostaPeter vonFrosta Trainee
    Never, I repeat, NEVER defrag a HFS+ drive with Diskwarrior or this norton tool. It causes dataloss in many times!
    At macuser.de we get many newbies who still think in windows terms and do this defrag regulary. It isn't needed (HFS+ tries to not fragmentise data) and those tools are not reliable.

    1. Your mac need a hole lot of ram. The standard 256 MB are not enough. Buy more, I would suggest at leat 512 MB, best if you go about 1 Gig.
    2. Read this: [url]http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668[/url]
    3. Let your mini run during the night (especially about 3-4 o'clock) so that the maintenance scripts can run (prebinding etc.).
  • The Cabl3 GuyThe Cabl3 Guy Elite Ranger
    YEah im not so hot about putting another $175 into it for a gig of ram...I already have 512.

    Remember it is a G4 I'm working with.
  • sleepy_shadowsleepy_shadow Ranger
    Might you be running any background services... which you previously weren't running?

    Because I noticed my Linux laptop growing slow... until I realized I had forgotten to deactivate:

    -- One instance of MySQL
    -- One instance of PostgreSQL
    -- One instance of Apache HTTPD
    -- Useless Samba daemon
    -- Useless NFS daemon
    -- Useless NFS locking daemon
    -- SSH server

    Result: deactivated them, rebooted for good measure (not needed, but I have the habit anyway)... and gee... video encoding moves 30% faster. :)
  • David of MacDavid of Mac Elite Ranger Ca
    To find out, go into your Utilities folder (inside the Applications folder) and open the "Activity Monitor."

    On the pop-up menu at the top, make sure it's set to "My Processes" so you don't accidentally shut down something vital to your computer's operation.

    Set it to sort by "% CPU" and see if there isn't anything there that's running that doesn't look legitimate.
  • Peter vonFrostaPeter vonFrosta Trainee
    Did you install Konfabulator recently? This thing uses a high amount of cpu and ram.
    Or if you are using tiger, deactivate all widgets.
  • The Cabl3 GuyThe Cabl3 Guy Elite Ranger
    no, no, no, and no...

    It doesn't appear to be the ram I still have 48 megs free...

    CPU wise it uses 85% of available resources eveything else looks essential...

    However it took 30 mins today to render a 3 min clip but that was without editing or effects. Don't have time to look at it now.
  • SanfamSanfam I like clocks.
    Your 512MB is just barely adequate. with 48mb free, you're leaving no room for applications to "breathe" as needed. Get that extra RAM and you'll notice a drastic improvement.
  • The Cabl3 GuyThe Cabl3 Guy Elite Ranger
    what about the 212 megs of INACTIVE ram?
  • David of MacDavid of Mac Elite Ranger Ca
    [quote]From [url=http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010613140025184]A detailed look at memory usage in OS X[/url]

    [b]Summary of the terms "wired", "active", "inactive", "used", "free", excerpted from the link above:

    Wired = memory allocated that shouldn't/can't be swapped/paged out (ie its locked into memory -- possibly portions of the OS code for example).

    Active = allocated memory that has been accessed during last N seconds.

    Inactive = allocated memory that hasn't been accessed during last N Secs (quite likely to be first candidates for being swapped/paged out if memory being demanded). [I always think of Inactive memory as the memory used by caches]

    Used = Wired + Active + Inactive

    Free = memory that isn't allocated to any process or the kernel.[/b]
    [/quote]

    Also of interest.

    [url]http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?p=2573608[/url]

    [url]http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918[/url]
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