How do you maintain your mac and drives?

[Kickin.da.speaker]

I've never bothered to defrag' or maintain my drives, so I know nothing about it.

I would like to know how you go about keeping your mac in shape, and your disks clean and error free?

[TAPKAE]

TechTool. TechTool. TechTool.

Never defragged? [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] Oh, you could be hating life any day now. Defrag is your friend. Get a TechTool disk from Micromat. Its a general utilities/diagnostic/fixit disk that tests and repairs a number of things, and defrag is one of the procedures. You gotta keep the data clean and tidy. I defrag once every 2 weeks or so. It makes the computer run better on account of it being able to find data in contiguous chunks. Not being defragged is like having to run errands all over town to get a bag of groceries--highly inefficient.

[silverlode]

Basically I just defrag when things seem sluggish. If you've never defragged and you've been using the drive for a year or more, I would highly recommend you do it. You may not notice any real-world improvement, but the drive will be working less, so there will be less wear and tear.

I don't back up my whole system, just files. In terms of PT, when I'm finished with a session I usually back it up to DVD, and then wipe it from my drive.

Silverlode.

[where02190]

If you have the drive space to back up and reinitialze, this is the fastest and most effective method.

You should have the space, as you should always back-up before ruinning any utility.

Just use the Apple drive utility and reinitialize the drive. It takes about a minute.

defrag apps take hours (depending on drive size) and can damage your files.

Hope this is helpful.

[pk_hat]

Does reinitialize work like formatting?
This is an interesting thread for those long time PC users new to Macs. Is there no way to defrag drives from within the OS, like on Windoze? So, let's say I want to just 'clean up' my system drive, is there any way to do so without deleting it's contents first, or simply put, what's the best way to do so? What does reinitialize do exactly, vs. rebuilding the desktop, or even a defrag?
(I also have a 120 gig partitioned in 3X60 if needed).

Thanks for clarification on this, much appreciated [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Kickin.da.speaker]

Thanks guys.

Where, I like your "handmade" approach, but how do you go about doing that on your System hard drive? I could back up my whole system onto my second drive, then re-initialize the system drive, and then what, just re-copy the whole back up to the system drive? Or re-install the OS?

[clutch]

that's right david,
just copy it all across and then all back.
The defrag will happen in the process of copying - it's just sorting the blocks of data into their correct places so the drive doesn't have to work so had too find the bits it needs.

[lcouri]

Mac geeks swear by Disk Warrior for optimizing. If you have an audio drive that is in use only when running the computer(then the file is left elsewhere) it's best to re initialize (quicker too).

[peter parker]

cool, while were on this subject.....

is it ok to work on 20 different songs/sessions at the same time......

meaning like in an album situation....what i did was named 20 different sessions (songs) at once......and now depending on the mood im in thats the song that i will work on that particular day.......so until they are all finished, i will just jump around from session to session until they all get done.........

deos anyone else do this? does it cause congestion to the hard drive......or will it handle ok.......once im all done with all the songs in few months i will obviously reinitialize the hard drive, but i was wondering if im causing too much strain by starting them all at the same time......and working on each session at different times......

cause the first song that i start on, might end up being the last song finished, so there will be a big jump for the hard drive when searching for the content.......it kind of sucks....

i just know that im not the type that can just work on one song at a time......like working on it until its done, then moving on to the next one...thats not for me......i need to let the song rest, work on something else, then come back and work on it some more some other day......

[pk_hat]

Originally posted by Kickin.da.speaker:
Thanks guys.

Where, I like your "handmade" approach, but how do you go about doing that on your System hard drive? I could back up my whole system onto my second drive, then re-initialize the system drive, and then what, just re-copy the whole back up to the system drive? Or re-install the OS?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">In other words, you back up the entire Macintosh HD (drag it's icon to the firewire drive), reinitialize and drag it back? I know I may sound silly, but I don't understand...

And one more thing (thanks for your patience), is there any way on Macs to completely uninstall a program and all it's components? Say you downloaded demos of stuff, trashed the application but upon doing a search, find a dozen related files in your system (prefs, extensions, stuff like that), how do you go about just uninstalling the whole thing, is this possible or do you have to manually send each related file to the trash?

thanks again!