Optimizing vs defragmenting

[Rick Averill]

I recently got DiskWarrior to maintain my hard drive. I've heard the term "optimizing" used interchangeably with "defragmenting", but I suspect what DW calls optimizing is something else entirely. For one thing, the operation doesn't take very long, which is not consistent with my experience. Can any of you good people set me straight on this?

And if DiskWarrior doesn't defrag, can anyone recommend a good program that does, preferably without breaking the bank?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375

[Frodo]

You know-- Apple wants to assert the lack of necessity with this because OSX has been "all that" since 10.2.

I'll grant that OSX has been smart in this regard, but so little info comes in for those of us using DAWs and video where defragmenting is equivocal to flossing each morning.

Neither am I too confident about anything Apple is boasting these days with respect to 10.2. If there were specific info on 10.4 and 10.5, I'd feel a lot better.

I don't defrag every morning, but then--- I haven't done any DAW work since May. (In other words, I'm having a killer summer. )

I think the Apple docs most often speak to those who are not doing what we're doing, being a relatively small percentage of their 5-10%+ market share.

--If your biggest concern is downloading mp3's or has anything to do with iPhone apps, you're probably not dealing with 88.2 audio.

As "iToys" increases in popularity, I'm seeing a "little" less emphasis on Pro Apps and DAWs. If info on DP updates have been scant to non-existent, consider that significant info on the *famed* Logic 8 has been strangely rare over the past year or so... say whatever you wanna about the coming Snow Leopard and all associated with it: things have been more or less in a coma--- more like a caterpillar waiting for the September release of Snow Leopard before it's ready to dare spread its wings.

In any case, I'm growing increasingly suspicious about certain implications of Apple's OSX support docs. There's so much going on with iPhone and ITunes that troubleshooting appears to have its limits. 10.2 is not 10.4, despite their idealistic similarities.

I will go further to say that those using DAWs (like "we" ) are more OSX-savvy than your average iPhone/iTunes geek. I'm just getting the sense that Apple's general troubleshooting docs are decreasingly focused on "we". Case in point? The "billions" of iPhone app download Apple is quite proud of now.

Billions. I smell hamburgers for some reason.

[Klaus]

If at some point you need to resize the partition, you will have to defrag...
I use iPartition to resize, and alongside comes iDefrag lite for free
If I'm tracking 24 ch onto the internal ( sep. partition ) of my Mac mini, I defrag before recording
to be on the safe side...

Take care

Klaus

[Rick Averill]

So then optimization and defragging are the same thing then? DiskWarrior does defrag?

[Klaus]

As far as I know DiskWarrior only cares about directory, not the actual files...

Klaus

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Defragmentation is connecting fragmented files into a continuous file. Optimization is placing similar files within the same proximity. Both can be done simultaneously and if you are going to do that it makes sense to do both. You can have files defragmented on a drive that is not optimized. I guess in theory you can have a optimized drive that is still fragmented.

The benefit in defragging is how much stress you cause you drive heads. If they have to look in various areas to find parts of the same file they will put stress on the location motors and access time can suffer. The benefit of optimization is having hard drive space available, so when you write to disk there will be enough contiguous space to write the file in a non-fragmented way. Programs that do this will usually do both at once.

I have not performed these processes on my Macs since OS X. On slower machines, I have had problems with large files (2+ hour stereo silent film scores that HAD TO be played back in one pass while playing a large, 2+ hour Quicktime movie the whole time- for example). Since Apple claims this is not necessary I never thought I needed to. In the current example, I was on a G5 running 800 MHz and the solution was to add a second HD and split the file (R on one drive; L on another). But the process of copying one side of the file to another, new drive probably created a non-fragmented file and allowed the heads to do their thing.

With 2TB of drive space, I don't feel much need to defrag and optimize. There is also the danger of data loss. OTOH, since the critical files for us DAW types are audio and video and since I have those in backed up partitions, I'll certainly give it a shot now that I've read Frodo's comments. I'm using Drive Genius and it comes with a warning that the process could result in data loss. Also, when I would defrag with Norton in OS 9 and earlier, I did see an improvement in performance.

[Phil O]

If at some point you need to resize the partition, you will have to defrag...
I use iPartition to resize, and alongside comes iDefrag for free

I got iDefrag by itself. I think it was around 30 bucks. I use it after major installs or about once every couple of months, whichever comes first. Be prepared, though. On a big drive it can take a few hours.

Phil

[Rick Averill]

I got iDefrag by itself. I think it was around 30 bucks. I use it after major installs or about once every couple of months, whichever comes first. Be prepared, though. On a big drive it can take a few hours.
Phil

Thanks for the input. After a little investigation, I think I have decided that this is what I'm going to do. I don't need to resize any partitions. A few hours is what I'd expect defragging to take.

[cuttime]

I used to be a firm believer in defragging. I used DriveGenius. Somewhere around 10.4.10, my drives started to develop errors after the defrag process, but I was always able to repair them. The last time I used it, my system drive developed errors that even DiskWarrior coudn't fix, which led to a complete formatting and re-install. Thank goodness for SuperDuper. I now am convinced that the slight performance gained is not lasting, and definitely not worth the hassle. If you must defrag, why not copy the contents of the drive to another, and then back?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

If you must defrag, why not copy the contents of the drive to another, and then back?

Indeed. And given the price of hard drives, it makes sense. Not only that, but you end up with a backup disk in case of emergencies.

Defrag scares me for the exact reasons cuttime mentions. ANYTHING can happen in such a process.

[mhschmieder]

In my experience, copying takes less time than defragmenting anyway.

Thanks for the reminder, as I don't want to risk losing any files. It could be that the one or two times I defragmented are the cause of the few audio files that went missing after revisiting old projects.