how to do a disk defragment on a mac book

I need to defrag the data drive in my MBP (2 drives) to ensure I have contiguous space for writing large data files, i've cleared the drive of data, then want to do a format to clear everything and then copy back on the 5% of data I need on there initially to hoepfully give me a nicely defragged drive 🙂

Is it worth doing any other Disk Utility checks after the format ? Or does it not really matter with it not being the boot drive ?

To cartographerNick: i would like to take you serious, but reading you saying that 'defragging will save your drives from dying an early death...' makes it impossible.

I hope you do good bussiness with selling idefrag software.

it doesn't take a physic major to know that making a mechanical device move more causes it to degrade/ fail, die. Don't be butthurt because i called people like you out on being ignorant. Just educate yourself a bit more.

If I were selecting someone that needs education it would be you and not Bonimac. That is especially true when it comes to work with others.

In my book you would get an unsatisfactory mark on how well he works with others.

Allan

To cartographerNick: i'm educated enough as a Mac user to tell other Macuser that they don't have to buy / use defragmentation software.

For those few who would need to defragment their HD: Make a Time Machine back-up, or clone your disk (with superduper!), format the drive and install a fresh os X, copy TM back-up back or copy back the clone.

Free, fast en save.

That's it.

No specialised defragmentation software needed.

CartographerNick wrote:

It's absolutely helpful to defragment a mac disk,

OSX performs defragmentation for itself, it requires no help from ill conceived utilities. iDefrag itself is junk. Take some time and read the many many posters here who bought it and now regret wasting their money.

Do you work for Coriolis?

You state: Mac OSX has tools to copy to a clean external drive, boot off that drive, wipe your hard drive, and copy back.

My question is 2 fold..

1. when you say clean external drive you are suggesting a completely empty external drive?

2. I have an Imac with OSX, but it has slowed way down in recent months, it has 4GB of memory, 1.48GB of usalbe space but still very very slow, and crashing once a quarter as of late...I want to safely save all my data on my Mac, could I put it on my Macbook Air as the "external drive?" If so is there a detailed video or article on how to do this? **would backing up to Carbonite be a wise thing?**

I must concur with Csound about Carbonite being totally worthless when comes to backing up anything on an Apple that uses a database to store its data. I tested it with a test copy my data and discovered that it was not able to restore a fully functional copy of anything that was using a database.

Allan

Well I placed all that information of my last post in this User Tip, this way I can edit it if need be.

How to properly defrag a Mac's hard drive

How to safely defrag a Mac's hard drive

Mac defragments automatically and it is unecessary to do so. It will have no effect.

cmelbourne91 wrote:

defrags wont work on a mac, simply because it is not a computer.

😮

Really? Not a computer? What is it? A car? A coffee maker? A politician? I'm confused.

I like that one about a politician. 😁 Cute.

I like to see him dig himself out of that hole because he certainly come across as knowing nothing at all with that comment.

Allan

I meant the processing system is nothing like a computer, its not a PC, if you look through Mac history it has always been seperate from PC's. Dont be so narrow minded.

Here is a detaled rundown on what defragmenting does and doesn't do and when it is and isn't needed on a Mac:

http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html#6