Does Mac OS need defrag?

[cheez]

Hey ya.

I just got a new MacBook pro laptop and I love it.

I am guessing it's got Mac OS 10.x? You call it Lion or something?...

Does it need a defrag?? How do I go about doing it.^_^

please help!

 

[Tegeril]

So for whatever reason, this article no longer exists, but it should help explain how OS X handles fragmentation. There are select circumstances when you would want to actually defragment (using a tool like Drive Genius), one of which is before creating a bootcamp partition, others are mentioned in the article.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...agment&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari

 

[cheez]

So for whatever reason, this article no longer exists, but it should help explain how OS X handles fragmentation. There are select circumstances when you would want to actually defragment (using a tool like Drive Genius), one of which is before creating a bootcamp partition, others are mentioned in the article.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...agment&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari

Thanks for the awesome info. That is so cool.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

I remember the one time I had to actually do a defrag, was when I was trying to put Windows on my MBP. Other than that, I quite enjoy not having to defrag and letting the OS do it for me.

 

[daws91]

I never did it till now and am still running pretty good. So you shouldn't have to worry about it for at least the first two years.

 

[Tyranicus]

So for whatever reason, this article no longer exists.

Actually, it does still exist. For the last month or so, Apple's knowledge base articles have not worked when you link directly to them. If you refresh the error page, it does load.

 

[umrigar]

http://speedup-mac.blogspot.com/2011/08/do-we-need-to-defrag-mac-lion-hard.html

Its also important to note that although the Mac OS X is too smart to handle the fragmented files but its limited to 20 MB only. If a user want to defrag a file larger than 20 MB, he must use a third party Mac application like Stellar defrag drive to defrag his Mac disk or any particular Mac file.

 

[HFS+]

no it dosent and here is why
HFS+ automatically defrags files under 20mb that meet certain conditions (i dont remember what they are)

It has delayed allocation which combines writes all in one and the filesystem will know the exact size needed to allocate the file

HFS+ also has hot file zone which defragments files that are constantly accessed.

HFS+ also does not allocate files in small gaps like NTFS does, instead HFS+ tends to allocate files in big free space gaps.

 

[Tyranicus]

no it dosent and here is why
HFS+ automatically defrags files under 20mb that meet certain conditions (i dont remember what they are)

It has delayed allocation which combines writes all in one and the filesystem will know the exact size needed to allocate the file

HFS+ also has hot file zone which defragments files that are constantly accessed.

HFS+ also does not allocate files in small gaps like NTFS does, instead HFS+ tends to allocate files in big free space gaps.

Yeah, you will generally not see performance degradation from fragmented files in OS X because the files are not actually fragmented. The only time you would need to truly defragment is if you need to repartition the drive.