Does Mac OSX have a cleanup utility like defraging in XP?

Question

Is there a way to keep OSX running fast?

Answer 1

There is no defrag utility built into OS X. There is no ''on the fly" defragging going on due to use of OS X. The choice of location of files made by the system when they are copied to a drive is very efficient so fragmentation is minimized but that is not the same as "defragging". Many people say OS X will automatically defrag but Apple has nothing to say about it and during the five years I worked for Apple we had no defrag utility and did not recommend it as a performance enhancer. Defragging is not needed for Mac formatted drives except in some instances of video editing in Final Cut Pro. Mac formatted hard drives simply do not suffer the fragmentation performance issues that are common to FAT and NTFS drives.

Personally, I have used OS X from day one and the system never seems to slow down unless I have some drive corruption or something weird in the login items.

Answer 2

It defrags on the fly, basically always running in the back ground. Disk utility is located in Harddrive > Applications> Utilities > Disk Utility.

ou can accomplish a bunch of maintenance tasks with Disk Utility when your computer is started from the Mac OS X 10.4 Install DVD. From the Utilities menu, choose Disk Utility to open it.

What can you do with Disk Utility?

You can test and repair many hard disk issues, including ones on your main drive. If you can't access a disk or you're getting disk errors when you use one, use Disk Utility. For more information, check out this document.

You can access disk images on a hard disk (if you can access the volume that they're on, of course).
Note: You can work with existing image files while started from the Tiger Install disc, but you won't be able to create new ones.

Want to erase or partition your hard disk into smaller volumes? No problem! See this document for the details. Important: You should back up important files and data before erasing or partitioning a drive. Doing so erases the hard disk (including things on your desktop). Note that you can't burn discs while started from the Install disc.

Answer 3

Download a free extension called OnyX.
It does alot of good things similar to defragging.
We run it every morning on the 5 macs where I work, because we add and remove so many customer files every day.