Fragmentation on Large Drives

- This month we answer a letter from a reader:
 

Dear Fred
I'm thinking about installing a 30-GIG drive in my Mac PPC, and someone told me to forget about defragmenting because it's no longer necessary with the higher capacity hard drives. Is this true_

Defragmenting Dellima

The answer to that is... well, er, uh, yes and no.
      No, the larger drives are no different from normal drives. They become fragmented and should be defragmented periodically.
      Yes, it's true that larger drive size means a longer time until your reach the end of the block chain. Usually that's when the need to defrag becomes critical. Once you reach the end, you're no longer writing to new disk sectors. The computer now has to go back and begin writing file segments to open spots left on the drive when you previously deleted files. Very bad -- particularly if you plan to burn cds or convert music to MP3s.
      However large drives offer the opportunity to deal with fragmentation in a new way. Since the large capacity drives have so much room you can defrag simply by moving the files. You no longer have to rely on reinitializations, long drive purges, tedious software programs, or guesswork diagrams. You simply copy the files to a new volume, and delete the old one. This is done by partitioning your hard drive. More on this in a moment.

Using Defrag Software

Many people rely on using a hard disk optimizer program like SymantecÍs Speed Disk, DiskExpress and TechTools. With these programs you don't need to reinitialize the drive. The software merely reads a block of files into RAM -- erases the section of the disk where they were, and then pastes them to a new location on the drive.
      The advantage of these programs is they do it all on their own. You don't need to help, and can go have lunch while they're running the operation. (Beware, they do store files in ram during the process, so if something goes wrong, you lose files.) The disadvantage is they're slow -- sometimes taking an hour or longer to defrag a relatively small volume -- and you can't do anything else while they're working.

The advantage of partitions

Here's a strategy using partitions you may want to adopt the next time you format your hard drive. I actually adopted this strategy a long time ago, even before voluminous drives. Not for the sake of defragmentation alone, but for a number of reasons including file management and backup.
      Partition your large drive into hard-coded sections which are recognized by the system as separate drives. Apple's Drive Setup utility has a little publicized feature that allows you to partition the hard drive and set the size of each partition. Just click on the "options" button once you're ready to reinitialize the drive.
      The strategy is to partition your drive into sections that are convenient for the type of back-up media you use. For instance, if you have CD-burning capabilities, partition out several 700 meg partitions. If you only use zips or other removable media, then fit the partitions to that media. Now you can defrag merely by moving your important data files into one of the partitions. Once there, you can back it up to the preferred media. Erase the partition it came from, and that partition is ready for the next backup/defrag.
      Remember too, that you really only have to back-up and defrag those files which you use often or make changes to. All your applications, fonts, and other resource or application files never become fragmented.
 

Stay on top of things and keep that Mac tidy. Today, it's not unusual to see 50, 80, and even 100 GB drives. I'm looking at a refurb G4 right now that has a 200 Gig drive. Most importantly however, is keeping that old Mac productive, up to date, and in the game!
 

Until next time, happy mousing.
 

 

If you have tips, tricks or questions you'd like to add to "This Old Mouse" just let me know.   Macintosh User Groups are invited to use this column in their newsletters, but Please read the "Read Me" first, okay!