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UncleSchnitty

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 26, 2007
851
14
I'm going to put in my 2¢ worth of input just because I'm bored. I have a lot of years of wasted time playing with defraggers and have learned that when dealing with the various popular file systems for Unix derivatives it's generally a waste of time. If you have modified and replaced so much data that it's actually causing a performance problem, there is a faster and safer alternative that won't overheat your drive (I have to assume we're discussing electro-mechanical spinners), or rely on the quality of the tool which sometimes proves to be not so great when working with many Terabytes, and may cause data loss.

I find it much more efficient to copy the data to a different drive, reformat the fragmented drive, then copy the data back. This is generally much faster, and gets mostly similar results. This also produces less wear to the actuator parts and less internal heat.

IMHO it's much better to use the copy method if you REALLY need to reduce data fragmentation.

If it's a system drive, a backup & restore can accomplish the same thing.
That was actually phrehdd's suggestion and it was a great idea, unfortunately I had already started the defrag when he suggested that.

One good thing about iDefrag is it does stop what its doing if it gets above a certain temp and resumes once it cools.

Im happy with the results of the defrag and it did fix performance issues so I guess either way works and I could have saved some time but results are results and I am very happy with my experience.
 

crjackson2134

macrumors 601
Mar 6, 2013
4,828
1,950
Charlotte, NC
I own and have throughly tested it as well. It does have the heat sensing feature and that's great when you can adjust the heat threshold profile for your exact drive, and when it works. With many people now moving to externally connected drives, just know that not all enclosures support reading the drives SMART data.

I like that app but it's painfully slow, and I don't use it seriously, but I did give it a whirl. Also, you should reboot your machine after using this particular app.

As long as you're happy, I'm happy. I just wanted to contribute. I have lost data from defraggers and ended up using the copy method anyway to restore from backup. The lightbulb went off when I realized restoring from backup was faster/safer and cut out he middle man.
 

UncleSchnitty

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 26, 2007
851
14
I own and have throughly tested it as well. It does have the heat sensing feature and that's great when you can adjust the heat threshold profile for your exact drive, and when it works. With many people now moving to externally connected drives, just know that not all enclosures support reading the drives SMART data.

I like that app but it's painfully slow, and I don't use it seriously, but I did give it a whirl. Also, you should reboot your machine after using this particular app.

As long as you're happy, I'm happy. I just wanted to contribute. I have lost data from defraggers and ended up using the copy method anyway to restore from backup. The lightbulb went off when I realized restoring from backup was faster/safer and cut out he middle man.

Oh it was slllllooooooowwww hah, and the lightbulb went off for me too when I read the backup idea. I had already started and was all in with seeing it threw.
This was also a internal on the MacPro so no external issues. When I can avoid it I keep all my "important" files on the internals, I have a paranoia ever since watching someones WD passport accidentally get unplugged when I was in film school and his entire year of work got corrupted.

The whole thing was good because in the 15 years I've been using macs I never ran a defrag because people always said "mac doesn't need it" well it did help and I probably could have saved myself the day and a half but ehh no harm no foul
 

crjackson2134

macrumors 601
Mar 6, 2013
4,828
1,950
Charlotte, NC
All file systems get some level of fragmentation from adding, deleting and modifying. It's the nature of the beast, but HPFS+, Ext3, Ext4, and some others are very robust, and simply don't need to be defragged very often or at all... Depending on particular usage of course.
 

UncleSchnitty

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 26, 2007
851
14
All file systems get some level of fragmentation from adding, deleting and modifying. It's the nature of the beast, but HPFS+, Ext3, Ext4, and some others are very robust, and simply don't need to be defragged very often or at all... Depending on particular usage of course.
This drive was my media drive that I rip my dvds and Blurays too one folder then its re organized when I get too it. Large files are added and deleted and moved regularly. Before defraging the chart looked like one of those colored bar charts when DNA tests get done, it was ugly. Definitely a drive that takes some abuse.
 

crjackson2134

macrumors 601
Mar 6, 2013
4,828
1,950
Charlotte, NC
I have a drive that I use to do the exact same thing, but it's not the playback drive. It's more of a scratch drive so the files are transient. Once ripping and/or transcoding is complete, I do a straight copy to the playback media drive. This eliminates (mostly) any fragmentation of the true media drive. I also sync the playback drive to a backup. The scratch drive is highly fragged all the time but it doesn't really matter so much. I occasionally reformat it for good measure.
 

UncleSchnitty

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 26, 2007
851
14
I have a drive that I use to do the exact same thing, but it's not the playback drive. It's more of a scratch drive so the files are transient. Once ripping and/or transcoding is complete, I do a straight copy to the playback media drive. This eliminates (mostly) any fragmentation of the true media drive. I also sync the playback drive to a backup. The scratch drive is highly fragged all the time but it doesn't really matter so much. I occasionally reformat it for good measure.

Another great idea hah thats why i ask questions here, the answers might be easy but I get a lot of good other ideas too.

Next up is figuring out how to keep trim enabled on my ssd, I just started a new thread in the Mavericks section. Always something
 
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