Defragmenting HFS+ Journaled drives

Question

Defragmenting HFS+ Journaled drives

I understand the concept of not needing to defrag the drive with the OSX system on it.

However, what about defragmenting drives that, for example, only contain audio or video data ??

That was/is absolutely essential with OS 9. I have a music studio and do that from time to time on my OS 9 partitions.

Now I use OSX for most of my music production but still save the audio files to a separate drive upon which I use an "old" version of Nortons Speed disk to defrag. Those drive are in HFS+ format but are not journaled.

I have just purchaed a WD My Studio 500 Gb external firewire drive which comes pre-formated as HFS+ Journaled.

Now I seem to recall that my Nortons (OS9) version should not be used to defrag HFS+ Journaled drives.

Does anyone know if that is true?

If it is true, can anyone suggest an OSX defrag software or comment as to whether or not it is needed for audio and video data on HFS+ journaled drives.

cheers

Murray

G4 Digital Audio Mac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Mar 13, 2008 6:57 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 13, 2008 7:59 PM in response to Murray Campbell

*"can anyone suggest an OSX defrag software "*

iDefrag

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Answer 2

Limnos

Level 10

428,507 points

Mar 13, 2008 8:15 PM in response to Murray Campbell

Apple KBase article [About disk optimization with Mac OS X|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668]

Two different view about defragmentation:

[Optimizing Disks Is a Waste of Time|http://db.tidbits.com/article/7254]

[Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance|http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html#Anchor-31774]

There is a difference between defragmentation and optimizing. Defrag. makes files occupy contiguous space, optimizing puts things in a specific order. Techtool has a defragmentation feature. idefrag mentioned by another poster also does optimizing.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Mar 13, 2008 8:30 PM in response to Murray Campbell

Since Panther OS X defrags files under 20 MBs on the fly regardless of where they are stored. There's a world of difference between OS 9 and OS X. Comparing them in any way is a mistake.

The easiest, quickest, and safest way to "defrag" is to get an external Firewire drive. Use Disk Utility's Restore option or any backup utility that can make a bootable clone such as Carbon Copy Cloner, Super Duper!, Synchronize! Pro X, etc. and clone your drive to the external drive. Boot from the external drive, erase your internal hard drive, then clone the system back. The result will be a fully defragmented drive with no risk of lost or corrupted data.

Defragging would only matter if you store very large files that are frequently changed. Large files that are essentially left unchanged do not need defragging. Furthermore modern hard drives are very fast. The benefits from defragging are hardly worth the time and effort and risk.

You cannot use Norton Utilities with OS X. Norton Utilities is not compatible, is unsupported by Symantec, and is no longer produced or upgraded. Using it will more than likely damage your hard drive.

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Answer 4

Mar 15, 2008 1:59 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks for the reply Kappy

I would never use Nortons on my drive partition with OSX 10.4.11 on it.

But as long as I boot from my drive with OS 9.2.2 on it Nortons works fine for defragging all the other drives/partitions/

cheers

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Answer 5

Mar 15, 2008 4:34 AM in response to Murray Campbell

Hi

Drive Genius:

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php

Tony

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Answer 6

Mar 15, 2008 6:26 AM in response to Antonio Rocco

Thanks Tony.

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Answer 7

Limnos

Level 10

428,507 points

Mar 15, 2008 8:30 AM in response to Murray Campbell

I would definitely NOT use Norton for defragmenting an OSX drive, even if booted under OS9.

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Answer 8

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Mar 15, 2008 8:46 AM in response to Murray Campbell

Even using it in OS 9 is a problem because Norton Utilities treats the entire drive, not just OS 9. What you are doing is begging for a terrible problem. There are safer ways to defrag as I've already described.

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