Defragmenting Mac Book Pro

Defragmenting MacBook is not necessary all the time, because hard disk capacities are much larger now than few years ago, so the system doesn't have to fill every space on the hard disk, like it had to do some time ago. The information is stored in a clean and proper way and defragmenting can be done to reorder the spaces left after deleting files. Mac OS Extended formatting avoids filling in those spaces with new files, to have a optimized formula for the hard disk capacity. Mac OS X 10.2 and later versions include a delayed allocation for volumes with a Mac OS X Extended format (HFS Plus). HFS Plus or HFS+ is developed by Apple Inc. and it is a file system which replaces their simple Hierarchical File System (HFS) as the primary file system used on systems running Mac OS. This filesystem, during development had the codename Sequoia. HFS Plus was introduced with the January 19, 1998release of Mac OS 8.1.



Fragmentation was caused by addition of new files to the existing ones, and very often with resources forks. Having better caching and faster hard disks, many applications just rewrite the information each time they run. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther automatically defragments slow-growing files. This process is known as Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering. Minor fragmentation has less effect on system performance because of the aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching, so there is a little benefit to defragmenting.

If you need to optimize your hard disk performances and raise the quality of its functionality, you can defragment it in two ways:

You can back up the system and use the Disk Utility application which is located on your system install disk. This will erase the disk and re-install the operating system, but it's not recommended to use this option.

The alternative is to buy a non-Apple utility that can defragment your hard disk this without erasing the information stored on it.

But anyway, defragmenting your MacBook Pro is necessary only if has slowed down very much or if it presents more symtopms of needing it.

You can use defragmenting software to do this, like, for example, iDefrag. You can use it in the beginning to scan your hard drive and see if defragmentation is necessary and then proceed to the optimization. You can purchase it on Internet for no more than 30$ and then you can start cleaning your hard disk. At first, you have to create an iDefrag boot disk using their CD creator software, then you can boot to the CD and run iDefrag. You cannot boot from the sector you want to defragment, unless you use the simple/quick defragment algorithm, but sometimes a quick defragmentation is not what you need. after running iDefrag and scanning, you can start the real defragmentation process. You should run the compact algorithm to move everything to the front of the drive. Once it finishes, you can restart and boot again and the problem is solved. this software is a great program, very useful and I really recommend it for Mac OS users.

Apple as a developer doesn't provide all the necessary tools that serious developers need to operate daily, but finally the problems can be solved with third party solutions, so enjoy iDefrag and optimize your Mac! Defragmenting Mac Book Pro is easy if you have the proper tools.