"not enough contiguous free space" report in Disk Warrior

Hi AB
Its not free space thats the problem
i know dr smoke and do all the stuff there
it's contiguous free space - ie. not file fragmentation but 'drive' fragmentation.
the problem is that the free space is fragemented it's not 'contiguous'.

d

Hi
Yes you are right - disk warrior does complete the process despite reporting the lack of contiguous free space.
But it's the fact that it reports it that concerns me.

1. see this thread elsewhere which starts off discussing exactly this issue:
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread9705.html
"Danarchy" the thread poster describes pritty much the disk warrior messages i get.

2. this is the only ref i have come accross in apple discussions where Kenichi Watanbe makes the following reference to it in the 3rd post down :
"Mac OS X uses free space for it's virtual memory swap file. It works most efficiently if there is sufficient contiguous free space."

3.Here is a more opinionated view of the issue in Section 6 : Defragment A Hard Drive That Is Low On Free Contiguous Space
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

When i ran the SHOWVOLUMEFRAGMENTATION app it recommends it says that
88% of my all my disk fragments are below 1mb in size - which i think is alarming.
It still says, however, this is okay for office type work but not audio/visual work.

The whole subject is discussed generally in quite a confusing way with some talk very fuzzy and unclear and others very certain - but from what i can see above - i would need to address the contiguous free space issue and also address the fragmentation issue - it's just funny that all things apple are somehow ellusive on this point when it seems obvious to ask the question why when it obviously can matter where many creative people specifically use macs?

d

can i do with the disk utility restore tab what superduper does - ?
Is it the same thing ?

thanks
d

Hi
re: i did contact alsoft and they said what i mentioned above - that i needed to sort out the fragmentation of my disc's free space.

However i have resolved the issue this way:
1. I used ShowVolumeFragmentation free ware to see level of fragmentation.
2. I used idefrag to confirm the above results.
3. I used Superduper to clone internal boot to external drive- took about 70mins
4. I used idefrag on the clone on 'full defrag' option - about 3 hrs
5. I cloned back the clone to internal - about 70mins.

effortless

My final opinion about the whole thing is fragmented free space DOES crop up as an inhibitor of software processess, particually around the use of video, photography & audio creating software in general and maintenance programmes which utilize free space to complete their procedures.
To my mind, logically, it is better to compose some kind of defrag routine into your maintenance procedures if you use your mac in these areas. Superduper and idefrag have provided me with a good defrag procedure for my specific needs. I think each person's needs may be different and the topic 'defragmentation' hides different issues & is not so striaght forward on Macs.

point taken
: but the Superduper manual suggests that idefrag would be more thourough at defragging than that which occurs when making a clone with Superduper - hence me idefragging the clone as they recommend. Also i had the time to give.
: regards fragmented free disk space - as opposed to fragmented file pieces - they are not the same in that the gaps between the fragmented files or file-clusters may vary in size. In my case no fragmented free space available was greater than 1mb in size on inspection. ie the fragmented free space had fractured into hundreds of really tiny-weeny chunks throughout the drive - I've had my emac for 4 years and it's never been defragged & loads of video work - so perhaps thats why the free-space was so fragmented. This was why disk warrior and techtool deluxe could not complete - because the contiguous free space was non-existant - not even able to produce a 5mb chunk of contiguous free space - so problems arouse. I agree that maybe for the average user - general fragmented free space will have alot of varied sizes of contiguous chunks which are totally adequate - but in my case, i saw that even those had broken down to tiny bits.
d