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Carlo Medina · 02-18-2008, 12:57 PM

Most people say no. I can, from firsthand experience, tell you that there are certain circumstances when it's useful. Here was my experience:

1. HD was over 90% full
2. Perform a lot of write, modify and/or deletion of small to medium files (i.e. AAC files 8-15MB, video files 60-600MB)
3. Have a lot of programs which constantly upgrade (4 major browsers, Adobe CS3 premium, Office 2004, iWork 06 then 08, iLife 06 then 08, ProTools 7.0-7.3.1). I upgrade my programs to the latest versions all the time.

Towards the end my HD was just slow. Spinning beach ball all the time, the startup time which had been under 30 seconds now was well over a minute.

I loaded the trial version of iDefrag which showed massive fragmentation all over the HD.

I CCC'd to a larger HD, which now is about 60% full as opposed to 93% full. I watched the CCC process and how it copied the files, I can't swear 100% it went this way as I wasn't taking notes, but it seemed to copy system files first, then the program files, then the media/personal files.

When I installed and booted up on the new HD, it was an improvement as if I had just turned on the Mac for the first time. Booted in 25 seconds, no spinning beach balls, increased load performance all across the board (more than what could be accounted for even given the fact that my new HD was 7200rpm and my old one was 5400).

Ran iDefrag, and there was almost no fragmentation. So I can say that there is a condition where defragging will help, but it is pretty extreme compared to when it's needed in Windows.

02-18-2008, 12:57 PM	#11 of 39
Carlo Medina Member Location: Land of the Passion Bucket Join Date: Nov 1997 Local Time: 09:46 AM Local Date: 09-06-2008 Posts: 10,526	Re: Defrag on a Mac Most people say no. I can, from firsthand experience, tell you that there are certain circumstances when it's useful. Here was my experience: 1. HD was over 90% full 2. Perform a lot of write, modify and/or deletion of small to medium files (i.e. AAC files 8-15MB, video files 60-600MB) 3. Have a lot of programs which constantly upgrade (4 major browsers, Adobe CS3 premium, Office 2004, iWork 06 then 08, iLife 06 then 08, ProTools 7.0-7.3.1). I upgrade my programs to the latest versions all the time. Towards the end my HD was just slow. Spinning beach ball all the time, the startup time which had been under 30 seconds now was well over a minute. I loaded the trial version of iDefrag which showed massive fragmentation all over the HD. I CCC'd to a larger HD, which now is about 60% full as opposed to 93% full. I watched the CCC process and how it copied the files, I can't swear 100% it went this way as I wasn't taking notes, but it seemed to copy system files first, then the program files, then the media/personal files. When I installed and booted up on the new HD, it was an improvement as if I had just turned on the Mac for the first time. Booted in 25 seconds, no spinning beach balls, increased load performance all across the board (more than what could be accounted for even given the fact that my new HD was 7200rpm and my old one was 5400). Ran iDefrag, and there was almost no fragmentation. So I can say that there is a condition where defragging will help, but it is pretty extreme compared to when it's needed in Windows.