Re: Defrag software for OS X and Digtal Hybrids

contactscott wrote:

Defragmenting is not often needed for OSX. For further information read
Apple's technical article 25668 about why:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668 (In some cases
defraging a HD with OSX can actually decrease performance.)

I'm gonna call bullshit on that article. As a Mac user myself, I hope
those who stalwartly defend the Mac will understand and appreciate that
I am not taking a dig at the computer, just at Apple's published
reasons why one should not defragment, which could be tragically
deceptive to the unawares.

Their reasons are as follows:

1. "Hard disk capacity is generally much greater now than a few years
ago. With more free space available, the file system doesn't need to
fill up every "nook and cranny." Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus)
avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid
prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space."

While it's nice that they make efforts to avoid reusing space from
deleted files "as much as possible", they themselves infer that this
point is reliant on one not using the drive to near-capacity. The idea
that we are all sitting around with 10, 20, or 30 extra gigs unused on
our drives is not exactly applicable to many people out there (myself
included -- I have certainly found ways to fill internal Powerbook
30-50 GB drives and even external 200 GB drives). They are basically
saying, "You don't need to worry about defragmentation just so long as
a reasonable percentage of your drive is unused". That's not so for
many, and hardly intuitive to those who haven't done the homework.

2. "Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X
Extended-formatted volumes. This allows a number of small allocations
to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk."

Great, but for some of us (for example, production mixers moving 3-5 GB
on and off a drive per shoot day) we can't count on grouping of small
files since some of the files are big.

3. "Fragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to
existing files, especially with resource forks. With faster hard drives
and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format,
many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X
10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files.
This process is sometimes known as "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering."

This is a legitimate point but it does not address the simple everyday
process of adding and deleting new files, which inherently causes
fragmentation in and out of itself.

4. "Aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching means that minor
fragmentation has less effect on perceived system performance."

"Perceived" system performance sounds fishy to me. Maybe I'm alone in
that, but that's my .02.

Regards,

Noah Timan

.

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