How to Defrag Mac's hard disk...

Hellow there miA***... ;)

First and foremost, I pray U r always safe and fine... Here is, in regards to maintaining a MacBook... Kindly read carefully the article I flaggerize here from support page of apple.

Products Affected

Mac OS 9.0, and earlier

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Fragmentation occurs when files are deleted and created. For example, suppose you create three files, then delete the second one. If you save a fourth file, which is larger than the size of the second file, the Macintosh file system may put a portion of the fourth file in the space occupied by the second file, and put the remainder after the third file. To access the entire file, the system has to look in two places.

The file system used on Macintosh computers is designed to work with a certain degree of fragmentation. This is normal and does not significantly affect performance for the majority of users. You should not need to frequently defragment the computer's hard disk.

In reality, however, the nature of the files, the nature of the work you are doing, the nature of random-access disk mechanisms, and the exact order in which the files are segmented can all have a bearing on the resulting performance. In general, there is not significant degradation of performance from normal use of your computer.
If you create and delete a large number of files, your hard disk may become fragmented to the point that you may see a slight slow-down of file system performance.

At this point you can either use third-party defragmenting software (see below), or back up your hard disk and use Apple Drive Setup to initialize the disk, then restore your files.

Warning: Reinitializing erases all the files on your hard disk. Make sure you have a complete backup because you will need to restore all your files once initialization is complete.

The defragmenting process generally results in a large amount of disk activity due to the amount of data being rearranged. Some disk defragmenting software packages also cannot completely recover if a critical portion of data on the hard disk should be in "transit" if the software fails. In this instance you may run the risk of losing that specific file, or all data on your hard drive.

You should keep a current backup of your hard disk, especially before using defragmentation software.

What third-party software can I use?

Apple does not endorse any single defragmenting utility, but you may wish to search for available third-party solutions in the Macintosh Products Guide (http://guide.apple.com/uscategories/productivity.lasso).

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1634

Here is an answer being posted in yahoo page regarding this issue...

I assume you are running MacOS X (10.x.x).

In most situations there is no real need to defragment (or "optimize" in Mac language). The reasons are explained in the Apple publication referenced below. Following is an excerpt from that publications:

"Do I need to optimize?

"You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Here's why:
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.

"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.

"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."

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

"For these reasons, there is little benefit to defragmenting."

But, if you feel you want to optimize the disk you have two options:

1. Back up your HD and use Disk Utility (which you can find on your system install disk) to erase the disk and re-install the operating system. I do not recommend this option.

2. Buy a non-Apple utility that can do this without erasing the HD.

Bottom line: unless your Macbook has slowed down significantly or shows other definite symptoms of needing to be defragmented, leave it alone.

Source(s):

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?… ("About disk optimization with Mac OS X" from Apple)

Source: yahoo.com

Here is another, or perhaps the main article regarding the need of optimization with MacBook...

About optimization and fragmentation

Disk optimization is a process in which the physical locations of files on a volume are "streamlined." Files and metadata are re-arranged in order to improve data access times and minimize time moving a hard drive's head.

Files can become "fragmented" over time as they are changed and saved and as the volume is filled, with different parts of a single file stored in different locations on a volume. The process of collecting file fragments and putting them "back together" is known as optimization. However, if a failure occurs during optimization, such as power loss, files could become damaged and need to be restored from a backup copy.

Products Affected

Mac OS X 10.0, Mac OS X 10.3, Mac OS X 10.2, Mac OS X 10.1, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.5

Do I need to optimize?

You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Here's why:

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

For these reasons, there is little benefit to defragmenting.

Note:Mac OS X systems use hundreds of thousands of small files, many of which are rarely accessed. Optimizing them can be a major effort for very little practical gain. There is also a chance that one of the files placed in the "hot band" for rapid reads during system startup might be moved during defragmentation, which would decrease performance.

If you think you might need to defragment

Try restarting first. It might help, and it's easy to do.

If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files (such as editing video, but see the Tip below if you use iMovie and Mac OS X 10.3), there's a chance the disks could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation, which can be performed with some third-party disk utilities.

Another option is to back up your important files, erase the hard disk, then reinstall Mac OS X and your backed up files.

Tip: If you use iMovie with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, and FileVault is enabled, performance issues can occur if your project is located in your encrypted home folder (including the desktop).

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1375

Here is a quick youtube video pertaining "Defragmentation":

Please don't smash the pc too... :D

Since Mac mentioned clearly "You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X..."

If the need to optimize the MacBook which has been caused by a particular web browser, is still required... Kindly consider this procedure:

For Google Chrome web browser:

• If the lagging still persists, kindly uninstall chrome and restart MacBook.
• After it loads back to Mac again, kindly reinstall chrome.
• Kindly double check the Home page that chrome is loading once it launches... Perhaps the home page is heavy, try setting the home page to www.google.com

Here is the youtube video for further preference configurations:

 

Please Take Care Always myL***... :-*MWUAH:-*

Kenny Loggins - Meet me halfway... :x:X:x ***BmMSSSYLI...