Does Apple Computer Fragment their hard disks?

Question

I have been unable to find a disk defragmentation tool in Mac OSX like there is in Windows. Does this mean the hard drives used in a Macintosh do not fragment? Or if they do, how does Mac OSX deal with the issue differently from Windows?

Answer 1

FAT, NTFS partition are vulnerable to fragmentation so that's why you need to defragment them once in a while. MAC on the other side is using Unix type partition, extf2,3 compatible. These type are not vulnerable to fragmentation! A defragmentation process is "prebuilt" in the filesystem in this case.

Answer 2

With any type of operating systems and with any type of filesystems disks do get fragmented. To really understand this, one will have to go back to how files are written and then erased.

However, Apple (which is based on BSD unix) and pretty much anything but Windows and DOS, this is not a big problem. OS (and the filesystem) use much effecient system to locate the next sector so the degredation of the performance is very small.

With very large UNIX systems with multi-tera-bytes of storage and 24/7 usage, it is pretty much impossible to defragment disks. It's the design by Microsoft that assumes the machines are for casual use that permitted such design that will require de-fragmentation.

Answer 3

It just doesn't need it. Just be happy that you don't have issues like Spyware, Viruses, Disk Cleanup and Defrag. Just empty your trash and do your backups.

Good luck and Happy Computing!

Answer 4

no. apple know how to make a good file structure. one that doesn't just dump files and delete chunks when unnessecary.

windows dumps the info. then deletes what you tell it to leaving big gaps. Thus defrag is needed.

Apple dumps the info, then deletes what you you tell it, but it moves the information along keeping it well organised.

Ish.