To optimize or not to optimize. That is the ?

[Timeline]

I have recently gone through a bout of "musical data" where the music seems to stop when I move projects from one drive to another. I have DW (Disk Warrior) and Tech Tool Pro.

In this case I had to transfer some VI Content like Hypersonic and VSL to other drives to balance the data. When I did this Hypersonic, only being a couple of gigabytes, turned my projects into SLOW OVERLOADING crash machines. The only way to correct this was to use DW to redo all the drives and I'm not quite sure if my scsi's made it back for some reason.

One other thing. It seems that if you load a drive to within ten GB's of the max data it also slows down regardless of optimization. So ...

Any thoughts?

[Phil O]

I don't pretend to know what Apple does with it's built in optimization, but some say there's no need to optimize with system 10. However, I use Tech Tool Pro to optimize my drives on a regular basis. I also use the "Directory Maintenance" feature. (maintenance first, optimization second) After optimization things always feel a little snappier. I don't know if it's my imagination or it's real, but at least it makes me feel good...

...and gives me the chance to use the word "snapper."

And because I don't leave my machines on 24/7 I use the "sudo periodic daily weekly monthly" command in Terminal -probably about once a month, or whenever I think of it.

Phil

[Timeline]

Hi Phil, Yea Snappier...

Well after moving some VI content around it was disaster the other day and Tech Tool pro didn't cut it. After using DW though things smoothed out as mentioned previously. The fact that elaborate Apple disk paths,(mapping) seem to be involved on hard drives makes me think your right and messing at all with these files is a big mistake but then again, what are we to do. Things move because we have to clear and make space for newer projects. It baffles me to think we would have to reformat a drive and replace everything to get back speed and uniformity.

[midiw]

Any thoughts?

Just a thought here:


After moving files from one drive to another and running DW and TTPro 4.5 have you "repaired permissions" ( Applications>>Utilities>>DiskUtilities ) ?

Excuse me if you are well aware of taking this important step.

Walter

[Timeline]

oh yea. tried that first

[sdemott]

Any thoughts?

Just a thought here:


After moving files from one drive to another and running DW and TTPro 4.5 have you "repaired permissions" ( Applications>>Utilities>>DiskUtilities ) ?

Excuse me if you are well aware of taking this important step.

Walter

Repairing Permissions has absolutely no effect on document/file permissions. The only functions repairing permissions performs is [1] to look at an installer BOM (Bill Of Materials - called 'receipts' in Apple parlance) file and make sure that the installed files match the expected permissions as set in the BOM and [2] to (attempt to) set default permissions to files that exist in standard directories basd on the OS BOM (/Applications, /Library, ~/Library). But this is largely dependent upon the files themselves allowing their permissions to be changed. Adobe is famous for installing files that are locked to Disk Utility. So, the long and short of it is, no BOM or a poorly constructed installer and Repairing Permissions does nothing. It is also completely useless for files in any of the other directories (~/Documents, ~/Movies, ~/Music, ~/Pictures) as well as being unable to touch /Volumes (which means it ignores all mounted storage devices that aren't a (possible) startup device (menaing it must have an OS installed).

It may be more beneficial to repair the disk itself to be sure there are no header errors. With hard drives getting cheaper & cheaper, their integrity is typically less than optimal...especially as they age or hen they are subject to heavy use. In fact, recent studies show that the MTBF (mean time before failure) rating on most hard drives these days is a maximum not a minimum as they used to be.

As far as the built-in defrag scheme that Apple uses, it only addresses files *under* 2MB and at that only the most recently opened files (a list of which are kept in a hidden file called '.hotfiles.btree'). The main point was to auto defrag small system files (BSD uses tons of them) to keep the OS running smooth and fast.

As far as the question to defrag or not...I'd say it's a personal preference. I prefer not to. I see it as unnecessary wear and tear on the drive and prefer to buy a good external enclosure that I can swap out the hard drive at regular intervals. I use an eSATA enclosure from WeibeTech. I can swap a drive in about 10 minutes (2 screws and 2 internal connections).

HTH

[Timeline]

Thanks for the reply. Good info.