Defragmenting HD caused 50% increased performance.. at LEAST

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Mon Jul 25, 2011 3:04 pm

.

I don't know why, but the only computer I had never defragmented is my "office work" MacBook Pro.
It's an early Intel model, so it's not the fastest there is. Also, my HD is encrypted, which makes performance take a hit. I only have 1 GB of RAM. Add to this that a couple of months ago I re-arranged most of my file system, and I must've deleted or moved around 100 GB worth of info.

During the last 6 months or so, the computer performance started to diminish little by little, so it was not obvious. I got used to this at the same pace, and started getting more annoyed every week.
Yesterday I was doing a photo collage, and it was just impossible to work like this... just selecting a photo made the disk spin like crazy. Every time I opened something it took for ever. Even a stupid new Safari window would take up to 15-20 seconds to open... <sigh>.

And then it came to me... NO WONDER! The disk was so fragmented it was looking for bits and pieces of files all over the slow encrypted disk.
When I opened iDefrag, I laughed out loud when I saw its estimation. There were holes and red sectors all over the place. I had never seen something so bad!

It took the computer like 4-5 hours to finish... but man, is it ROCKING NOW!
It almost feels like a fast computer. A totally dramatic difference.
Conservatively, I estimate that this made a 50% increase in overall performance. Opening apps now doesn't take for ever, and the Menu Meters' disk usage meter doesn't show constant disk access for "no reason" anymore.

I never let my studio machines get that fragmented, of course. Maybe that's why I underestimated the benefits of defragmenting my Laptop.

I was going to buy more RAM for it, but I shouldn't throw money away for a vintage computer... vintage according to Apple

At least it will serve me much faster now, until I can't wait to try Lion and buy a new laptop

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:03 am

I have heard repeatedly that it's not necessary to defrag a hard drive running OS X, but I don't believe it. I even read something from Apple once saying that for audio and video professionals defragging "may" be beneficial. I'm a fanatic about defragging. I defrag my boot drive about once a month. It may be overkill, but I've never run into the problem you've described and I like it that way.

Phil

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:42 am

So, what's the safest app for analysis and de-fragging?

Thanks...

Buzzy

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:53 am

Safest? I really don't know. What I can tell you is that I've been using iDefrag for years without a hitch.

Phil

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:59 am

.

+1.

That's the one I use too, and I love it. Coriolis also makes iPartition, and I recommend it too.

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 8:40 am

Thanks.

I'll check it out.

Buzzy

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 9:10 am

Hey Buzz, I notice you have a MacPro. If you have a free HD bay, you can make good use of it by installing a cheap drive just for things like degragging. I have a Western Digital drive that cost 40 bucks that I keep in bay 4. I clone by boot drive there and it acts as my boot drive backup and I also boot from it when I want to defrag my actual boot drive. I keep a second OS on a partition there that I use for testing updates as well. Forty bucks well invested:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136098" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ok, so it went up a couple bucks since I got one.

Phil

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 9:11 am

Phil O wrote:Hey Buzz, I notice you have a MacPro. If you have a free HD bay, you can make good use of it by installing a cheap drive just for things like degragging. I have a Western Digital drive that cost 40 bucks that I keep in bay 4. I clone by boot drive there and it acts as my boot drive backup and I also boot from it when I want to defrag my actual boot drive. I keep a second OS on a partition there that I use for testing updates as well. Forty bucks well invested:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136098" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ok, so it went up a couple bucks since I got one.

Phil

I do have 1 free bay. Thanks for the tip!

Buzzy

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 9:45 am

Phil O wrote: I clone by boot drive there and it acts as my boot drive backup and I also boot from it when I want to defrag my actual boot drive. I keep a second OS on a partition there that I use for testing updates as well.

Hey, Phil.

Is there a particular reason you choose to defrag your system disk from another disk?

Is it faster or safer?

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 11:54 am

FMiguelez wrote:
Phil O wrote: I clone by boot drive there and it acts as my boot drive backup and I also boot from it when I want to defrag my actual boot drive. I keep a second OS on a partition there that I use for testing updates as well.
Hey, Phil.

Is there a particular reason you choose to defrag your system disk from another disk?

Is it faster or safer?

It used to be that you HAD to do this. I also use iDefrag (although not recently and your post is changing my mind about that), and until recently I don't think defragging the volume you booted from was supported. I do the same thing. I have a partition on a separate physical drive I call "Utility Boot Partition" and it is a bootable partition with just a basic system and utilities like iDefrag, Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner and Disk Warrior on it. Also enough empty space since iDefrag uses swap files on the disc it boots from during defragging... at least I think that's how it works... and more free space helps it work better.

Your post reminded me though to do this. It takes a good deal of time on my system, so I start it before going to bed. I think I'll do this tonight.

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:03 pm

.

Yeah, it takes a while.

Looking at the progress of those tinny sectors and how files move is hypnotic

I think you are right in saying this feature of being able to defrag the same volume one booted from is recent.
I could see this clearly because iDefrag gets into this special "mode", where nothing else is available, so it locks one down.

BTW, YOU (James) were the one who recommended Coriolis to me a while ago (you recommended iPartition, which works great!). That's when I discovered iDefrag

Also, I've read that the OS automatically sort of defragments the system volume as needed. Don't remember the details, but I think that applied to smaller files only. But deleting many huge picture/audio/video files is another story, it seems.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:33 pm

I use TechTool Pro. Most of their tools are somewhat useless, IMO but it is a commercially supported program. I do not trust my data to sharware or freeware - ever.

TTP also can create a boot partition where I store my diagnostic and recovery tools. You can also create such a partition on your Time Machine drive - if connected directly and not over the network. Boot into the partition or other drive and work from there.

Many say that de-fragging is unnecessary but streaming data applications that use audio and/or video do benefit. I do it maybe once a year, no reason to do it more often. It took 10 hours to de-frag a 600G on a 1T drive on my iMac when I did it last month. My G5 would have taked 10-20 hours to do the same thing.

amergin · Post by **amergin** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:38 pm

The serious fragmentation was more than likely due to the encryption on your drive. You might also find that using a separate partition for audio is a faster option. When you feel you need to defrag it copy all the files over to another drive, reformat, then copy them back. This will more than likely be a lot faster than iDefrag (unless they've improved their defrag times considerably in the past couple of years). OSX does defrag in the background and will look after the system stuff for you.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:38 pm

mikehalloran wrote:I use TechTool Pro. Most of their tools are somewhat useless, IMO but it is a commercially supported program. I do not trust my data to sharware or freeware - ever.

IDefrag I believe is commercial software. I've used it numerous times without incident, FWIW.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:58 pm

>IDefrag I believe is commercial software.<

I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't. Sorry.
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is just that, in such a conversation as this, non-commercial software is likely to come up. That is what prompted my remark.

AlSoft used to have a really nice de-fragger that worked in the background on your boot drive. They promised an upgrade for OS 8, then 9. When X came out, they said it wasn't necessary.

OS X does not optimize the data, it tries to optimize the Directory which, supposedly renders de-fragging unnecessary. I have had a number of Apple engineers and AlSoft explain this to me. Sorry but a 50MB audio or .5G video file streams much more easily when the drive head and cache aren't working so hard to keep it in line.

So I agree that most users do not need to de-frag. I also believe that we would be nuts not to now and then.

MOTUnation.com