disk optimization--macintosh?

Question

Is it necessary to purchase a third party disk optimizer to optimize a hard drive on a Mac? I have a g4 desktop with 2/800 processors, i gb ram. I know that the Mac doesn't come with a disk tool, so I never thought it was necessary. When I install a new program or update, I get a message saying "optimizing hard drive" or something like that, so I assumed it cleaned up the hard drive automatically. Is this correct? If not, is there a freeware solution? I've had the computer since the g4's first came out, and it doesn't seem excessively slow like a windows machine would be. I reformatted when I installed panther (or whatever the last upgrade was), but that was a while ago. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

When you install a new program and it says it is optimizing the hard drive all that means is that it is linking the new program to the operating system so it can find it. It does not mean it is optimizing the entire disk.

That is called defragmenting a disk. As you write files to the hard drive sometimes it does not write the whole file in one chunk but in several pieces which the computer puts back together when the file is used. The "framenting" of the files can eventually slow down the computer as more and more files are fragmented.

I could not find any freeware that defragments hard drives so I'm afraid you would have to buy a commercial program to do this job. The two programs I know of that perform this task are TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior. Both also can help other problems that might arise on your hard drive so one of them would be a good program to have for defragmenting and other problems. However, if you don't notice a slow down in your computer opening files than there is no reason to hurry to buy one of these programs.