Re: defragging HDs?

In article kurt.r.todoroff-F9C3CD.16220312092009@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Kurt R.
Todoroff at kurt.r.todoroff@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 9/12/09 4:22 PM:

In article <doug-732BCC.10313211092009@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Doug Jantzer <doug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

....
....

If you use an external hard drive to backup your internal drive, you can
also use it to defragment the fragmented files on your internal hard
drive.

I use SuperDuper! to create a scheduled bootable clone backup of my
internal hard drive to an external Firewire hard drive every day. ...
About once each year, I boot
from the external drive, format the internal drive, and then restore
everything from the external drive to the internal drive. This has the
additional benefit of defragmenting any fragmented files files that
originally resided on the internal drive.

Another approach is to assume that the OS files and the application
files are not fragmented. This leaves only your data files. ...
....

... copy all of the contents of the home folder to
the"xxxxx" or "don't delete me" folder. Then delete the contents from
your home folder. Then move the copies of the home folder contents back
to the home folder.
....
....

I hate it when posters state that hard drive entry level prices are
quite low. If you don't have the money, then entry level pricing is
irrelevant. Here is one way to partially alleviate the price conundrum.
Suppose that your internal hard drive capacity is 500GB. Suppose that
you use 65GB of the hard drive. Suppose that your anticipated storage
growth over the next year or two years will be less than 20GB or 30GB.
Purchase a 100GB external hard drive for next to nothing. Download
SuperDuper!. Make your daily backups to the external hard drive. Then
boot from it from time to time, and restore your backup data to the
newly formatted internal drive. Kill two birds with one stone for a
very low price.


What's the difference between/avantage of this last way (SD!'ing your data
files to a small external drive, and then restoring the data from that
drive) and the "... copy all of the contents of the home folder to
the"xxxxx"... folder. Then delete the contents from your home folder. Then
move the copies of the home folder contents back to the home folder."? Or
even simply restoring the same data from your larger, SD! Drive (the one
that has a complete clone of your internal drive)?

--
iMac (24", 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 320 GB HDD) ? OS X (10.5.7)

.

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