Any free defragmenting software?

I've heard of "iDefrag", but I think you may have to pay.

Make sure you have no power glitches when defragging, or you may lose your data.

I would say that you shouldn't need to defragment if you have 10GB of free space on your drive.

Barney's way is the best. When you clone every file is contiguous, clean as a whistle without using some third party utility trying to string little beads together.

EDit: You do know that Mac defrags "on the fly" files that are 20 MB and under (the ones that get fragmented the most)?

Eddie --

Welcome to Apple Discussions. I see you are newly registered here. Are you coming from a PC environment? If so, Macs really are "different." Let us know if you're new, because there are lots of tips we can pass along to you.

Overall, defragging is not normally necessary for Macs. Unless you're doing a lot of video or music editing.

You don't need any of that stuff. Macs don't need "cleaning" to remain fast, and in fact, those utilities can easily harm performance when misused. (And some of them are designed to be misused.)

To keep your Mac running smoothly, keep about 10% of the boot drive free. Be cautious about what third-party software you install, paying close attention to any performance issues that appear after installing something. Verify the hard drive using Disk Utility before installing any system updates. And back up frequently! That's about it.

It's very easy with Time Machine (which is built into the OS). Just turn on Time Machine in System Preferences, plug in an external hard drive, and you should be asked whether you want to use that drive for TM. (Warning: this will erase the drive, so don't do this if there's data on the drive!)

For more about backups, see my Mac Backup Guide, as well as Pondini's excellent Time Machine FAQ.

(Note that my pages contain links to other pages that promote my services, and this should not be taken as an endorsement of my services by Apple.)

I am likewise new here. I have had a Mac bk pro for just over 2 years I have never backed up my files because mainly I have not bothered to find out how to do it. My mac has becaome increasingly slower and different thigs seem to happen like longer to boot and freezing on certain occasions. I do edit video files quite a lot but I keep the finished product on external HD. So I have joined this board to hopefully learn how to take care of my bk a bit better.

Sure Macs need cleaning. Because the OSX does not move files bigger than 500MB when fragmented.

And in these time of day if you have movies then you can get easy files bigger than 500MB.

So defrag is need if you wanna use BootCamp and make new Partition.

Which is totally annoying that the OS does not have a Tool to this. And Backup is not the Solution for defrag.

(needs extra Hardware)

Well I will try Yasu and check if it helps to clean up the disk.

Rene Staeger wrote:

Sure Macs need cleaning. Because the OSX does not move files bigger than 500MB when fragmented.

Has the size been increased. I was only aware that it was 20MB or smaller.

Defrag software is mostly superfluous. Just Clone your drive, then clone it back. All defragmented and little to no chance of losing data. Who cares if it needs extra hardware, drives are cheap. You should have a backup drive regardless, so you already have the hardware.

Well I done it the radical way now... Just got myself a 2TB SSD drive and had no problem setting up the partition with Boodcamp now. So realy was the issue with the defragmentation. Realy is kind of weird Apple does not have a defrag Tool with in the Mac OS. Me I am constantly always in need of space and my HD are mostly full up to 90% or more (even on my Windows PC).

Sorry forgot to add that I did use the defrag Tool, but didn't work for me (either takes too long and I have no patience or it really didn't work)- Had to reboot in the special mode for the defragtool to have fool access... So i would say use time Machine make a backup and clean your Harddrive and reload your backup from Timemachine. Think it is the best, easiest and shortest way to do.

Switch 101:

http://www.apple.com/support/mac101

I would ditch CleanMyMac, and don't bother with the others.

I do, however, like YASU. I use it about 1-2x a year if things seemed bogged down.

Just clone your drive and reclone back.

Then, you get a good backup out of it also. Less waste of time than just defragging alone.

Use Time Machine, or third-party software, or if you don't mind reinstalling all your software as part of the restoration process, manually drag your home folder to the backup location.

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