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From: clvrmnky <clvrmnky@coldmail.com.invalid>
Subject: Re: Need OS X Defragging app suggestions
References: <burrhead-79C7CF.01585920052003@newsrelay.netins.net> <210520030508031788%ajanta@no.spam> 
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 13:16:19 -0400

Ajanta wrote:

> Joe & Dianne Mahan <burrhead@wccta.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I guess my first question would be: Is defragging really necessary for 
>>OS X (10.2.6 in my case)? And if so, what utility would you suggest?
> 
> 
> having a new computer and mostly unutilized HD, I haven't thought about
> this yet, but I too would be interested in the answer. Free or cheap
> are most desirable. Can't we do this with one of the Apple cd's that
> come with the osx? What about "disk aid"?

Fragmentation of blocks is something that most modern filesystems take 
into consideration.  Many filesystems already do a fair amount of 
defragmenting, where "a fair amount" means "try to do utilize contiguous 
blocks as much as possible, and plan to have large contiguous blocks 
available when possible".  Of course, a filesystem has other things to 
do, and has to trade-off the desire for alocating contiguous blocks 
(when it makes sense to do so) with other things.

I don't know if HFS+ does this, however.

The net result is that, on these filesystems, there is little or no 
application-level process needed to maintain reasonable amounts of 
contiguous free space and/or contiguous use of blocks.

 From my (brief) survey of HFS+, it would seem that the maintainance of 
free space by the user is unnecessary.  In fact, it looks like HFS 
volumes deliberately interleave file allocation blocks to reduce head 
travel on todays larger capacity drives.  It also seems to maintain free 
space so it makes more efficient use of this space.

My feelings are that, until proven otherwise, defragging utils for HFS+ 
volumes are unnecessary, and any reports of improved performance 
(however one measures this) are either minimal or apocryphal.

Reasonable arguments to the contrary welcome.

-- jdv

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