digi recommendation re speed disk

[Mark Manela]

The latest digidrive manual recommends Norton's Speed Disk in the pc section, but not in the mac section. Is there a problem with using Speed Disk on mac systems?

[DigiTechSupt]

The best way to defragment your drives is to back them up, re-initialize them, and then restore the data. The act of restoring the data defragments them.

Steve

[Mark Manela]

Originally posted by DigiTechSupt:
The best way to defragment your drives is to back them up, re-initialize them, and then restore the data. The act of restoring the data defragments them.

Steve

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thanks Steve

Does that include my Mac's HD? I have a severly fragmented HD on my g4. I know I cannot install OS X on it, but I thought I read somewhere that reinstalling system software on newer g4's can cause problems? (maybe it is a problem only if I install 9 and 10?) Looking back at the system requirements I don't see it now. Bottom line: can I reinitialize and reinstall system 9 software; then reinstall protools5.3 masterlist etc.?

Thanks again for the help!

[digz]

Hey Mark. I have a G4/400mhz myself as well as a Titanium500mhz laptop, and I have reinstalled my system software numerous times, mostly to change the partitioning scheme, and to change from HFS to HFS+ file structure. I am currently using OS 9.2.1 . I am using a Mixplus System. I would avoid the defragmenting programs if you can help it, as they seem to take too long and can sometimes result in Data loss and Corrupted Disk Drivers. If you want to clean up your main partition try this:
1. Back up all important documents and programs that do not require serial codes such as shareware/freeware. Also make sure you have the serial numbers of all Digi and Masterlist type stuff so you can reinstall.
2. Find your Mac OS disk and boot up from that. You have to restart and hold down the C key on the keyboard while starting up.
3. The OS cdrom is now considered the start up disk, allowing the Macs internal drive to be re-initialized.
4. Find the Drive Setup utility on the OS Disk and tell it to re-initialize your Hard Disk. You should probably tell it to use HFS+ as the formatting structure type.
5. If you have a pretty big drive, like a twenty gig and it is 7200rpm, I would suggest breaking it up into like 3 seperate partitions. I would make one partition of 4gig, and two more partitions of 8gigs each. This way you can record audio better on your disk and if you need to use Norton Speed disk in the future, you will only have to mess around with small partitions, and also leave your system software in tact. On the 4gig partition, only put system software on there. Dont record on this partition if at all possible. Drive Setup does the partitioning under the Initialization Options I believe. It is pretty easy to get through, with pictures and all.
This has been my method for my Macs internal drive maintenence for a while, and has caused no problems whatsoever.

[EthanMorse]

I've been using Norton Speed Disk for quite a while with no problems... On both my Mac system HD and my Audio drives.

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally posted by Mark Manela:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by DigiTechSupt:
The best way to defragment your drives is to back them up, re-initialize them, and then restore the data. The act of restoring the data defragments them.

Steve

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thanks Steve

Does that include my Mac's HD? I have a severly fragmented HD on my g4. I know I cannot install OS X on it, but I thought I read somewhere that reinstalling system software on newer g4's can cause problems? (maybe it is a problem only if I install 9 and 10?) Looking back at the system requirements I don't see it now. Bottom line: can I reinitialize and reinstall system 9 software; then reinstall protools5.3 masterlist etc.?

Thanks again for the help!<hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hi Mark,

Yes, as digz suggests, you can reinitialize your start-up drive using Apple's Drive Setup utility, and reinstall the OS. A few things that I would emphasize (a couple of which, digz already mentioned) are that before this procedure, you should:
1) Backup any data you need to restore and,
2) Remove any floppy-based authorizations from your hard drive (you will also need to re-authorize any challenge-response protected software after reinitializing, so make sure you have those codes available as well).

After reinitializing the drive, avoid just dragging and dropping your apps back onto the drive; it is better to reinstall fresh copies of the applications from the original install CDs.

Steve

[Mark Manela]

Thanks for the help.

[gandalf07]

If an audiophile was here, he could argue that he hears the difference between a fragmented disk and one that ins't.

Even worst, he can say which program you used to defragment the disk...

Seriously, Be careful with TechTool, when optimizing, he can delete the autorisations (It happened to me once before I knew it...) and challanges on harddrives. Thats why Norton is better, it doesn't touch autorisations.