Defragmenting Mac OSX

Hello!

I am a new user to Mac. I recently purchased an iBook G3 from a family member.

On my PC I have a copy of Norton Systemworks and I defragment my hard drive on a regular basis.

My "new" iBook hapens to have Norton Systemworks installed too, but I dont know how to defragment de Hard drive since I dont know how to dismout my principal hard drive. I tried from the Disk tool in Utilities but did not work.

Any Idea how to defragment my hard drive with NSW or is there any other software solution o this?

Please help.

#232449

tech tool pro does this quite well, imo.

#232455

In order to use any disk utilities on the system drive, you must boot from a different disk. Booting to a different partition will not work either.

If your copy of Norton System Works is legit, you should have the install CD that came with it. Boot up from that disk and then run the utilities from there.

#232456

A very nice program for creating a bootable CD for Mac OSX.

BootCD on VersionTracker.

#232474

I've never defragged my mac

#232499

is it that important?

#232502

You don't need to defrag OS X. It does it itself on a regular basis. Also, uninstall norton from your mac as it is know to do more harm than good.

#232508

i always wondered why they sold stuff like that for macs like virus software when i hear there are no virus's for macs?

#232509

Yes, HFS+ doesn't fragment unless it gets REALLY full and it needs to. So unless you're always moving around huge files on a full drive, you're fine.

And all UNIX systems include a disk check utility that defragments. It's called fsck. I wouldn't run it on a mounted partition though (if you have to - boot to single user mode).

Why then are there commercial defragmenters and antiviruses? Because people can make money.

#232512

i always wondered why they sold stuff like that for macs like virus software when i hear there are no virus's for macs?

Well, there are. According to a study a few years back, there are about 70k viruses on circulation, of which Mac-related ones make up 1% of it. And of the 700 viruses, about 550 are Windows-related (from using windows-based software). There are no virus on Mac OS X at that time of writing.

So, there are actually some out there on the Mac platform too. Just rare.

#232627

Actualy, there are plenty of viruses out there for OS X and it's very old BSD sub system.

The statement that there are no viruses written for OS X at this time is false.

SH/Renepo and several variants, MacOS.MW2004.Trojan, MP3Concept and so on.

These are all targeted specificaly for OS X.

And there is almost an equal amount of spyware written for OS X as there is for the Windows platform.

Also, Norton and a few other companies that make AV software and defrag tools, also do spyware cleaning and spam filtering and so on, but yes, they are there to make a buck or two as well. What company isn't in it for a profit. But they do it for a reason, there is a real need for these tools.

The HFS+ filesystem does need to be defraged occasionaly. Not nearly as often as NTFS, but it does still need to be done.

#232633

serving 115gb of files on a 120gb drive, i certainly need to defrag every few months, mac or no mac.

#232645

Actualy, there are plenty of viruses out there for OS X and it's very old BSD sub system.
The statement that there are no viruses written for OS X at this time is false. [...]

I was referring to the time of writing for that particular article while I read about... and that was actually a few years back when OS X was still new and budding.

But yes, viruses are emerging, and it's inevitable that such happens. So whatever it is, I guess one should never assume the 'invulnerable' attitude thinking that 'this will never happen to me', and find an excuse not to take any precautions.

#232646

@Silencedge - Sorry, the way your post was worded, I got the wrong impression.

I usualy place "" around the text when I'm quoting from another article or post.

#232744

Anyway, my point being that there are no self-replicating/spreading viruses for macOS. I couldn't see any in the Symantec lists.

Also, if you want to keep OS X defragged & tidy, use OnyX and run the daily/weekly/monthly housekeeping scripts all at once. These are scripts which run a collection of disk housekeeping utilities and rotate the system logs etc.

#232748

@Silencedge - Sorry, the way your post was worded, I got the wrong impression.
I usualy place "" around the text when I'm quoting from another article or post.

That's fine.

If it can be misread, then I might really need to reword it.

(Which I hope I already has. :confused: )

#232786

Actualy, there are plenty of viruses out there for OS X and it's very old BSD sub system.
The statement that there are no viruses written for OS X at this time is false.
SH/Renepo and several variants, MacOS.MW2004.Trojan, MP3Concept and so on.
These are all targeted specificaly for OS X.
And there is almost an equal amount of spyware written for OS X as there is for the Windows platform.
Also, Norton and a few other companies that make AV software and defrag tools, also do spyware cleaning and spam filtering and so on, but yes, they are there to make a buck or two as well. What company isn't in it for a profit. But they do it for a reason, there is a real need for these tools.
The HFS+ filesystem does need to be defraged occasionaly. Not nearly as often as NTFS, but it does still need to be done.

1) That, personally, sounds like near-Troll-like BS. There are no viruses for Mac OS X.

2) Whilst BSD's origins are old, it's updated far more than frequently than the likes of NT. In fact, every Mac OS X point release (10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4) has/will updated BSD.

3) Opener/Renepo is NOT A VIRUS. If you're going to call that a virus, you might as well say:

"OMG opening terminal and typing:

sudo rm -Rf /

Is a virus!!!"

In fact, to quote piracy on another forum: 'This is really, really old and nothing at all to worry about. It's a *script*. It needs to be installed by someone with admin/root or physical access! (OR, the user has to be *tricked* into installing it via other means.) There is NO method of propagation, spread, or infection. There is no automated means to install it. It's not even a rootkit. In fact, it's the opposite of a conventional rootkit, since this doesn't obtain root access, it actually *requires* root access in order to be used!

All in all, nothing very interesting here. A nifty script? Yes. But that's about it.'

4) I love how you forgot to mention: MacOS.MW2004.Trojan and MP3Concept are the same thing. Both are "hiding" (and that's a very, very vague word for it) as another thing. By changing their icon and adding an extension. High tech stuff. Saying that either/both are viruses is just stupid, because both require you to download and manually launch them. Both do not propagate/spread to other macs. Whilst the former is, by definition, a trojan; it still requires you to manually download and launch for ill effects. I just made an AppleScript, put an RTF document icon on it, hid it's extension and then added ".rtf"! Oh my god it's MacOS.esXXISuperVirus.Trojan!

Sidenote: There are half a dozen applications that 'check' any downloads (specified folder(s)) for this kind of thing.

5) Excuse me, since when can you make a broad statement like 'OS X has as much spyware as Windows' without ANY evidence to back you up? In fact, it's so amusingly ludicrous I won't bother arguing.

#233006

1). Only blind fools believe that crap.

A Trojan IS a form of Virus, it depends on wether it can replicate or not.

Opener/Renepo is NOT A VIRUS. If you're going to call that a virus, you might as well say:

"OMG opening terminal and typing:
sudo rm -Rf /
Is a virus!!!"

"OMG opening a Windows command prompt and typing format c: /u /q -y

Is a Virus!!!"

Same difference.

It's all in HOW the command get's executed, not WHAT is actualy executed.

It's already been proven that Renepo can be embedded into a legitimate installer and run WITHOUT the knowledge of the end user.

No one has chosen to do so, but CERT labs has already proven it can be done.

And Apples only solution to most of it's security problems is to release another version of it's OS and make the customer PAY for it. From 10.1 to 10.3, there have been no MAJOR improvments that have warranted the need for a customer to PAY for a ficticious "upgrade". There have been some nice enhancements and some feature improvements, but that's about it really. Oh and a TON of security fixes. Which should be free.

MacOS.MW2004.Trojan and MP3Concept are the same thing.

Not true.

MP3Concept was never released in the wild. It was a proof of concept virus/trojan that was created to prove that OS X was in fact vulnerable.

MP3Concept is a proof-of-concept Trojan horse that is targeted at the Mac OS X platform. As this is written, this threat has not been reported "in the wild."

The proof-of-concept program does not contain any malicious payload, such as viral code, ability to email itself, or perform destructive functions like deleting files. This program only contains code to display a message and play a .mp3 file of a man laughing.

Also Known As: MAC.Amphimix, MP3Virus.Gen [intego], MAC_MP3CONCEPT.A [Trend]

Type: Trojan Horse
Infection Length: 88,121 bytes

Systems Affected: Macintosh
Systems Not Affected: Linux, Microsoft IIS, OS/2, UNIX, Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows XP

As for the Spyware comment... do you use the internet? Obviously you do. A tracking cookie is the most widely used form of form of spyware. So unless you have disabled cookies from whatever browser you have chosen to use, you are vulnerable.

Edit: Also most, not all, but most Linux vulnerabilites affect OS X as well.

Second edit:

2) Whilst BSD's origins are old, it's updated far more than frequently than the likes of NT. In fact, every Mac OS X point release (10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4) has/will updated BSD.

Not entirely true and not entirely false either. OS X point releases update very little if any, of the BSD core code base. NT core components get re-written or updated just about every month... their called hotfixes and service packs. Most OS X updates have nothing to do with the Mach kernal and very little to do with the BSD components. Most are for Apples own libraries.

#233027

well, continuing the off-topic madness, i haven't run any antivirus or adaware type software on my mac since i bought it 7 months ago and i'm doing perfectly fine here. in the near term at least the threat of viruses is more or less insignificant.

Now, the topic is Defragmenting Mac OS X, gentlemen.

#233090

Not entirely true and not entirely false either. OS X point releases update very little if any, of the BSD core code base. NT core components get re-written or updated just about every month... their called hotfixes and service packs. Most OS X updates have nothing to do with the Mach kernal and very little to do with the BSD components. Most are for Apples own libraries.

Actually, The lowlevel system libraries, kernel, etc all get updated each OSX release. This is much more frequent than NT. For example, Tiger is much more 64bit. This required updating the kernel and system libs. There's also a whole new graphics API. This is rather lowlevel. Here's some of the visible changes done to the kernel, including some massive SMP updates (FreeBSD5 completely rewrote SMP): http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/unix.html

In previous releases, HFS+ was updated to allow for all the nifty stuff Spotlight now takes advantage of. NTFS hasn't had any major updates since it came out (though I'd have to say HFS+ has been playing catchup in some ways). Each release also sees a relatively major update to the kernel. Just check the OpenDarwin website for the changelogs. Each OSX update also updates userlevel libs (most of which were from a BSD) like OpenSSL, Java, Perl, LibC, X, GCC, etc. Panther (and Tiger) brought many updates from FreeBSD5, which was a big change compared to FreeBSD4.

NT on the other hand has had little more than bugfixes since 2000. How can you say NT core components get rewritten every month? MS pretty much only releases bug fixes (that's what hotfixes are). XP SP2 contains some backported features, but that is rare.

In fact, up until XP SP2, MS had the specific policy of "only bugfixes in service packs". They changed that because of Longhorn delays.

Just read the actual changelogs. Unlike Windows, they're all there, source included.

EDIT

Edit: Also most, not all, but most Linux vulnerabilites affect OS X as well.

OSX contains no Linux code (it would be illegal, as Mach isn't GPL), so that's impossible.

#233110

You're mixing things up a bit, Apple did not update the FreeBSD code base, they incorporated updates that were made to it. Your reference to FreeBSD4 vs. FreeBSD5 for example. Apple did not make those changes. In my post I was making a reference to Apple specific libraries, in other words, things that will only function on a piece of Apple specific hardware.

Let me rephrase the Linux part a bit, they share some of the same open source components. As you mentioned above, OpenSSL, Java, Perl, LibC, X, GCC, etc. These are not specific to BSD or OS X or Linux. Open SSL has had it's fair share of bugs and so has many other shared libraries that are open source. I guess when I made the reference to Linux code, I meant to say the libraries that are shared among most *nix based OS.

NTFS has had a few updates since it's initial release, primarily in SP4 for NT4.Then a few major additions when Windows 2000 came out to accomodate Active Directory security features.

As for the NT core code, you contradict yourself... if tweaking and then recompiling a library in OS X is considered an update to core code, how is that different from applying a hot fix to an NT system file. Same thing... different method of implementation. The original file is altered/updated... hence it's new.

Bug fixes in NT and OS X point releases... same difference. They are both implementing bug fixes and in the case of SP2, feature enhancements.

Back on topic... Defraging an HFS+ partition on a fairly regular basis may not be required as often as NTFS, but it's still needs to be done.

#233190

You're mixing things up a bit, Apple did not update the FreeBSD code base, they incorporated updates that were made to it. Your reference to FreeBSD4 vs. FreeBSD5 for example. Apple did not make those changes. In my post I was making a reference to Apple specific libraries, in other words, things that will only function on a piece of Apple specific hardware.
Let me rephrase the Linux part a bit, they share some of the same open source components. As you mentioned above, OpenSSL, Java, Perl, LibC, X, GCC, etc. These are not specific to BSD or OS X or Linux. Open SSL has had it's fair share of bugs and so has many other shared libraries that are open source. I guess when I made the reference to Linux code, I meant to say the libraries that are shared among most *nix based OS.

NTFS has had a few updates since it's initial release, primarily in SP4 for NT4.Then a few major additions when Windows 2000 came out to accomodate Active Directory security features.

As for the NT core code, you contradict yourself... if tweaking and then recompiling a library in OS X is considered an update to core code, how is that different from applying a hot fix to an NT system file. Same thing... different method of implementation. The original file is altered/updated... hence it's new.

Bug fixes in NT and OS X point releases... same difference. They are both implementing bug fixes and in the case of SP2, feature enhancements.

I don't think you were referring to whether Apple wrote the actual new code, or not. We were discussing whether OSX point releases contained significant new features. This is true for both non-Apple code (the BSD code) and Apple code. I gave you a long list of major improvements that both Apple and OSS developers have done to OSX. I fail to see why it matters if it was in house. New features are present for OSX users. XP SP2 is a new trend, like I said. MS almost never adds new features. Of course, OSX charges for the new features, but that wasn't part of the discussion. Besides that, Apple has contributed code to BSD, KHTML, and other OSS projects. They do give back.

As for FreeBSD5 changes, you think Apple could just copy and paste the code in? It requires a large amount of work to fit all the new changes in. Apple has its own in house kernel with BSD stuff hacked in, so they don't just sync with the FreeBSD tree.

How you can say a hotfix and an OSX point release are the same thing is beyond me. There are HUNDREDS of new features in each OSX release (many of which are very tangible, and not marketing speak). You can probably name 10 new additions to XP since it's been out, maybe two or three being major. You can't spin that away.

I never once said Apple simply recompiled for new fixes and tweaks. I said the opposite actually. Along with doing that, there are MANY new features, speed improvements, etc. Of course, it's not really a fair comparison, because OSX includes many many more things than Windows.

I'm done arguing this. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Back on topic... Defraging an HFS+ partition on a fairly regular basis may not be required as often as NTFS, but it's still needs to be done.

You keep saying that, but offer no proof. Here is a man who did very extensive tests and found the opposite. His conclusion was that HFS+ should never have to be defragmented. Can you contradict his data:

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/fragmentation/

#233194

I don't need to contradict the data... the author of the article you reference has already made it clear.

Note that I do not intend to make any claims regarding the fragmentation-resistance of HFS+. I have sampled too few a volume to generalize my "results". This discussion is more illustrative than empirical, wherein I am only suggesting a tool/method that you could use to gauge your own volumes' situation.

While his findings are impressive to say the least, even he agrees that there is insufficient data to make an absolute conclusion. Any good researcher would never rely on a sample size that small to make the type of statement you are claiming to be fact. And your interpretation of his conclusions are contrary to what he wrote.

You make it absolute... he does not.

Conclusion
Defragmentation on HFS+ volumes should not be necessary at all, or worthwhile, in most cases, because the system seems to do a very good job of avoiding/countering fragmentation.

Did you actualy read it or skim it? I'm thinking the latter.

His tests are also not using proper research methodolgy. There is no control group available to be used as a baseline comparison. It was a random sampling of which the sample pool was to small to even be useful.

It's a nice start though.

I analyzed five HFS+ volumes, on four computers, each used by a different person. Again, this is too small a sample to generalize from, and is only meant to be illustrative. The usage characteristics of the volumes are as follows:
iBook -- Used everyday by a non-technical/non-power user, for browsing, email, messaging, music, occasional word processing and graphics work.
PB15 -- Used everyday by a technical/power-user at work, for browsing, email, messaging, development, ...
PB17 -- Used by me everyday at home, for browsing, email, messaging, music, word processing, graphics work, movie editing, development, ...
G5 -- Used everyday by a technical/power-user at home, for similar purposes as PB17.
G5 Ext -- An external drive connected to the G5; holds music, movies, backup, ...
Each computer has a 6+ months old Mac OS X "Panther" installation.

If he were to hit say a major university and was able to sample at least 80% of the Mac's running 10.3 only and then group based on type of system, disk capacity of each system and then what the system was used for, then he might obtain a good enough sample pool.

Notice only one of the four systems would really be considered to be heavily used.

#233208

He showed 4 OSX systems that didn't fragment at all. Every OSX system I've used hasn't fragmented.

Can you provide ANY evidence that OSX systems do fragment? Of course his data doesn't prove beyond a doubt, but just saying his experiment could have been better doesn't make it wrong.

His conclusion says the same thing I paraphrased. HFS+ should not fragment. I also said previously that it could fragment if the disk was full and you were moving big files. But that's very rare, and not smart to do anyway.

So you saying, "they do too" without providing even anecdotal evidence is illogical. You haven't even criticized his research methodology, just that his sample size was too small. Fragmentation isn't a random thing. An FS either fragments or it doesn't. Unless he has 4 really strange computers, the fragmentation results should generalize well. But feel free to show evidence to the contrary. Does your Mac have fragmentation? fsck or that man's tools will tell you if it's fragmented. Show the output if it fragmented.

#233369

I have just run the hfsdebug tool on my PowerBook and got very similar results to those found in the PB15 example. I then moved my saved mpeg movie files (~1GB each, 5 files) to random points around my file system several times then back to their original location (not sure if this is a valid test, but hey ho...) and the results were pretty much the same as before.

#233381