Are there routine maintenance tasks that should be performed on the OS to ensure top performance?

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Level 1

28 points

Are there routine maintenance tasks that should be performed on the OS to ensure top performance?

I changed to using Macs 5 years ago and we have an iMac, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro. All have operated well for the most part. I was remembering previously using the Windows OS and performing maintenance tasks like defragging and others. That brought to mind as to whether there are any routine maintenance tasks that should be performed on the Mac OS to ensure the best performance?

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 8GB RAM

Posted on May 23, 2012 6:52 AM

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Answer 1

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Barry Hemphill

Level 8

40,456 points

May 23, 2012 7:09 AM in response to mwheelerk

Hello:

You might get differing comments, but from my perspective, the answer is definitely no.

OS X "defrags" files of less than 20 mb on the fly. "Routine" maintenance operations are run automatically in the background.

I would definitely avoid third party "cleaning" routines. I must admit I have a powerful third party utility, but I only have it as a backstop in case I have a problem. 😀

Barry

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Answer 2

May 23, 2012 8:17 AM in response to mwheelerk

Hi there,

I find OnyX a good general tool, not just for routine maintenance but for more specialised tasks such as secure trash delete. Make sure you download the version for your OS version.

But I agree with Barry, Mac OS is great at running it's own maintenance.

Regards

Lawrence

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Answer 3

Roman S.

Level 1

40 points

May 23, 2012 8:27 AM in response to mwheelerk

I would definitely advise against any third-party clean utilities or protection utilities (since we're talking about maintanance). One thing to maybe help out your browsing is to delete your caches every once in a while, but I've only found that useful once every couple of months although I surf quite a lot.

Caches are deleted if you boot your computer in Safe Boot mode by powering a computer on and holding down Shift right after the chime. And then restarting the computer into normal mode, just through that all caches on the computer are deleted.

But overall with Macs, I think it's better to not touch it if it's not broken 😉

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