Copying data to new drive and back again to defrag?

[OftheSeven]

I got a new internal SATA 250gig HD in my G5, should I copy the contents of my "Recording Drive" into the new drive, then reformat my Recording Drive and place the contents back in it?

I heard this is a good way to defragment.

[WSVP]

I got a new internal SATA 250gig HD in my G5, should I copy the contents of my "Recording Drive" into the new drive, then reformat my Recording Drive and place the contents back in it?

I heard this is a good way to defragment.

While this will defrag you disk, it is very time consuming and only a temporary solution. The very nature of using a DAW will wind up fragmenting your drive. It would be an enormous task keeping your drive in a un-fragmented state as almost every action (except perhaps mixing) will result in files getting fragmented.

If you really need better drive performance there are basically 2 options.

1. 10,000 RPM SATA drive
2. Disk Array "Hardware Controller Based" << expensive

[OftheSeven]

Well, my drive performance isn't bad actually, I was just looking for some preventative measures since I have an empty drive available.

I guess my other question would be, is doing that enough or do I need to invest in some software solution?

[Frodo]

You learn something new every day. I had no idea Panther had some measure of auto-defragging built in. I suppose Tiger does, too?

Here's an interesting discussion/poll (submitted here only for the sake of curiosity):
http://www.macosxhints.com/polls/index. ... rag&aid=-1

Notice the poll results!!

I've always just used TechTool, but am I doing more harm than good?

[proximityeffect]

Tiger does optimize (defrag) at the end of installs, but this is only done on the Disk with the OS. Those of us with separate audio drives must use third party software. What do you guys use?

[Frodo]

TechTools on this end... but I confess I don't always know what TechTools is doing the way I did when Norton was the 'soup du jour'.