is MacKeeper any good?

Hi James ...

No. Do not install MacKeeper. You do not need third party so called cleaning utilties on a Mac. They can cause far more harm than good.

Your Mac runs system maintenance for you.

Mac OS X: About background maintenance tasks

As Carolyn says you don't need it nor want it. It's very invasive not to mention difficult to remove. If you need maintenance I suggest the following guide:

Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance

For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. Drive Genius provides additional tools not found in Disk Warrior. Versions 1.5.1 and later are Intel Mac compatible.

OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or Lion and should not be installed.

OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems. For more about malware see Macintosh Virus Guide.

I would also recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX 2.4.3, or Cocktail 5.1.1 that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc.

For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. There is no confirmation that this version also works with Lion.

When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.

Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):

Carbon Copy Cloner

Data Backup

Deja Vu

SuperDuper!

SyncTwoFolders

Synk Pro

Synk Standard

Tri-Backup

Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.

Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.

Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.

Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.

I read the info on maintenance tasks you posted. However it does not say, wether these tasks do run at all, if your computer isn't on during 3.15 to 5 AM, which in my case is what's happening most of the time. Is there a simple way to manually start these tasks?

OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, orAnacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or Lion and should not be installed.

From my initial post. Did you read it?

Not sure if this will get a reply a year later, but here goes... But didn't see mention of Disk Warrior in this thread.

I've been aware of Apple's building repair and security now too for malware abilities. Has Windos copies this yet? :)

I used to use Disk Warrior to do what it does for those that don't now: rebuild your directory which DW recommends after a crash even tho in OSX rare, but also if you alter your directory a lot, like removing lots, or adding lots of files.

As a semi tech savvy person, it sounded good and resonable and the results report usually show damaged files that needed repair.

Now whether the same exact maintenance can (and should) be done with Disk Utility, I don't know enough to know.

Bottom line: I never noticed any improvement or problem after running DW, which should be my hint.

But anyone with more knowlegsr the I know pros or cons using DW on Lion and Mountain Lion?

Thanks

Steven

It is not true that the mac needs to be on at the times the 3 maintenance scripts run. They will run as needed when the computer is started or wakes.

There is a script widget you can install that will tell you when scripts were last run.

Having come from Linux, I wondered how Apple's Berkeley UNIX would need such software. Don't really know how I got it on my machine in the first place! Of course, new to OS X and Apple there was a learning curve (don't yet know if I will benefit from learning AppleScript but have 2 books on it), but pretty much settled-in now (having dumped Mail for Thunderbird) with my Logitech Performance Mouse MX and the keyboard configured to my liking,,, :-)

For years I've been recommending Linux or Apple - depending on your budget!!! NEVER Windows!

thanks for the eye opener