norton utilities

[mersisblue]

I seen norton utilities for macs at sweet water for around 99.99 , was wondering if this is what most people use to defragment their hd 's or is there other choices as well , my g4 didn't come with any defraging soft ware and it's about time to defrag it so was wondering if you had any input

[lukakis]

Yeah, norton is what I use. I know there are a few other things out there. Those nuts at apple for one reason or other decided not to include any defragging software. Probably in bed with symantec or something, who knows...

[where02190]

If you have multiple drives/backups, simply reinitilaize the disc. It's the fastest and most complete defrag you can get. Takes about a minute, then simply copy back the data from backup.

regarding Norton, DO NOT INSTALL ON YOUR MAC!!!! There are major issues with Norton run from a mac drive. I have pesonally sen Norton run from disc destroy data beyond recovery. run norton only from the CD, do not install!!!!

FWIW, when reinitializing is not an option, we use DisckWarrior and Plus Optimizer, as good and safer IMHO.

[mersisblue]

lukis have also had problems installing norton and run only from disc ?

[crispin_glover]

Not to mention that if you want to optimize your hard drive you either need to run Speed Disk from the Norton Utilities CD or another hard drive anyway as you cannot optimize the disk that you are running from, another reason not to bother installing it.

[jmp]

I run Norton utils version 8 from the CD on my OS 10.2.8 dual 1.25 G4 with no problems. If your main HD has too many files, it will NOT defragment the drive. (Symantic is aware of this - something about the B-tree directory being too large - and are "investigating")

One thing you should be aware of:

Being curious about the difference between "optimizing" and "defragmenting", I emailed the tech people at the Road Warrior site. Road warrior DOES NOT defrag your files! It only "optimizes" your directory. Of course it does all the other disk recovery stuff too. As far as I can see, Norton Utilities V8 is the only OS 10 defragmenter out there.

If you do buy it and run it from the CD, remember to repair permissions using the Apple disk utility after its done.

Also, I agree that if you are through with a project and have your archival files safely put away, reinitializing the audio working disk is still the fastest way to go.

[where02190]

Road warrior DOES NOT defrag your files!

Correct, PlusOptimizer defrags.

[soundboy69]

Plus, as we all know, reinitializing is the best way to go.

[jmp]

Norton will defragment my main drive - the one where all the programs and plug-ins are stored. After loading, deleting, and reloading several demo programs, my main drive got pretty hosed up and I noticed a speed drop. I certainly don't want to reinitialize the main drive each time.

I looked at PlusOptimizer, but it didn't seem to be fully OS 10.2 compatible, based on their support page information. (My G4 only came with OS9 classic)

[Slim Shady]

Just seconding the fact that Norton has been known to destroy a few hard drives - if you must use it, run it only from the CD. There are far better disc maintenance programs out there, most have already been mentioned in this thread.