Product Version 9.0.0.0. Auslogics Disk Defrag Pro is the advanced version of Disk Defrag Free with extended functionality, including file placement and scheduling options. And another thing Mac OS X uses routine that will clump the smaller space in the hard disks into larger portions. And Mac OS X already performs its own defragmentation process which is known as “Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering.” This greatly reduces the chances of fragmenting the files. To Defrag Mac Or Not Defrag Mac.
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My Macintosh is handy when it comes to editing videos and images. I use it to create important documents too.
Lately, though, it has been showing performance issues. What do I do to enhance its performance? Do I need to do what they call defragmenting?
Lately, though, it has been showing performance issues. What do I do to enhance its performance? Do I need to do what they call defragmenting?
Don't Worry. I will teach you how to defrag a Mac and how to improve the performance of your Mac.
At this point in time, you might have noticed that your Mac is showing signs of performance issues.
And from your days with the Windows PC, you might have thought about defragging your Mac directly from the device. However, you will find that there is no utility or command that allows you to do this on a mac.
The File System of a Macintosh is formulated in a different way than that of Microsoft’s PC. Defragmentation on a Mac is done automatically.
But, when the need arises, you might need to defragment your Macbook every few years.
In this guide, we will tell you how to do a Mac defragmentation. We’ll tell you the pros and cons of doing the process. Alternatives to defragmentation will also be given in this article.
Here are the tips you’ll learn about in this post.
Article Guide Part 1. Is Mac Defragmentation Necessary?Part 2. When Is It Time For A Mac Defragmentation?Part 3. How To Execute A Mac Defragmentation?Part 4. Safety Issues of Doing Mac Defragmentation.Part 5. What is AlternativesTo Mac Defragmentation?Part 6. Tips To Speed Up Your Mac.Part 7. Conclusion.
Part 1. Is Mac Defragmentation Necessary?
Why do we need for defragment a Mac disk? Well, the process of defragmentation is used to boost the performance of a computer through the reorganization of your drive’s data.
https://smallbusinesskeen.weebly.com/phone-emulator-for-mac.html. The related pieces of data are grouped accordingly thus launching and running files and software takes a smaller amount of time.
A defragmentation of your Mac reorganizes data and puts it back in the right order. This results in the speeding up of a slow system. How to find word templates for mac.
Any Mac computer that runs the OS X version that is later than 10.2 usually doesn’t need defragmentation.
This is because the macOS and the OS X have built-in utilities that do the process of cleaning up fragmented files located on the hard drive.
Thus, it results in the elimination of the manual task of defragmenting.
However, for all rules, there are always exceptions. And in this case, sometimes we need a Mac defragmentation to enhance its performance.
Part 2. When Is It Time For A Mac Defragmentation?
When your hard drive contains less than 10% in free storage, macOS might experience problems with regards to automatic defragmentation.
This usually happens with multimedia professionals who store a lot of large files in software such as Photoshop, Final Cut, and Adobe Premiere.
If you have a lot of large movies that are over 1GB in size, you should think about relocating these files to an external hard drive or removing them completely.
Same goes for creative documents and audio files. Another option you can do is to defrag your Mac completely.
With regards to removing large, unimportant files from your Mac device, you can use a tool like iMyMac-Cleaner’s Mac Cleaner.
This tool can help boost performance by freeing your Mac of unnecessary files that might be slowing it down.
Here’s how to use it step-by-step:
Step 1: Download and Launch iMyMac-Cleaner on Your Mac
Download iMyMac’s Mac Cleaner. Launch the software. Once it opens you can view the System Status of your Mac on the main interface.
On the left side of the interface, click “System Junk.”
Step 2: Scanning System Junk
Click the “Scan” button to start scanning your entire Mac for unnecessary files. Once the process is complete, all junk files will be displayed to you.
The files will be displayed in various categories such as Application Cache, Mail Junk, System Cache, Photo Junks, System Logs, User Logs, and Trash Bin.
Step 3: Review and Select Items to Clean Up
Select a category to show the details of that particular classification. Choose the data or files you want to clean and then press the “Clean” button.
The software will ask if you are sure that you want to clean the selected data. Confirm the process if you are sure of it.
Step 4: Clean Up Mac System Junk is Done
Wait for the process to be complete. Once it is done, it will mark the files as Zero KB. Some files will not be marked as such since these are the auto-recreated folder.
Repeat steps 1 to 7. The difference is in step 3. You just have to choose “Mail Trash” OR “Large & Old Files” instead of “System Junk.”
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Part 3. How To Execute A Mac Defragmentation?
You should use a Mac defragmentation tool from a trusted third-party in order to execute this on your device.
However, before How to safely defrag a Mac's hard drive, you should back your data up. Once something bad happens, you can easily restore your files.
When selecting or looking for a defragmentation tool, you should check out its compatibility requirements.
Mac devices that run on operating systems older than the OS X version 10.2 are usually not compatible with the new types of defragmentation software. Thus, sometimes, it can be hard to find a useful tool.
Once you have found the program, install it on your device. Open the tool and carefully follow its instructions for Mac defragmentation.
The process will take a lot of time. Be patient and never move your device until the process is complete. Sometimes, you will need to restart your Mac device to complete the entire defragmentation process.
Part 4. Safety Issues of Doing Mac Defragmentation.
After reading all throughout this guide, you might be wondering if defragmentation will harm your hard disk drive (HDD).
Don’t worry though. It won’t. Disk defragmentation can actually be a good thing for your drive. HDDs usually fragment data into various pieces and stores it in various locations too.
Thus, reading a file with all the pieces in various locations can take some time.
Disk defragmentation arranges all these data and this will not cause harm to your HDD. It just results in your device’ performance boost.
Of course, extreme measures of boosting your Mac’s performance is not advisable. Defragmentation is always a safe process IF done properly.
However, if your Mac comes with an SSD, you should NEVER do a defragmentation. SSDs are different from HDDs and they also operate differently.
Solid state drives maintain themselves with automatic processes. Thus, a defragmentation of an SSD is not recommended.
A defragmentation process could also hurt your solid state drive. It is because it uses flash memory that has a finite lifespan.
Its cycles of reading and writing data are limited. With defragmentation, the process reads data and writes it to another location.
If you defrag solid state drives, it will read and write thousands of times and reduces the lifespan of the drive.
Part 5. What is AlternativesTo Mac Defragmentation?
Defrag Equivalent For Mac
When your Mac is running slow, sometimes you don’t need a Mac defragmentation. There are other alternatives you can try. Below are some of them:
One troubleshooting method for Mac devices is repairing disk permissions. What are permissions? These are settings of files that affect the ability to write, read, and execute a specific file.
If these permissions are not correctly set, the software that utilizes the file might not run properly.
The Disk Utility can be used to repair startup disk file permissions on OS X Yosemite (and other earlier versions). However, on OS X El Capitan, automatic protection of disk permissions are done. Thus, verifying them with Disk Utility is unnecessary.
So how do you repair your Mac device startup disk? Here are the steps for Mac optimization:
Step 1 - Launch Disk Utility.
Step 2 - Select your specific startup disk.
Step 3 - Select the tab called “First Aid.”
Step 4 - In order to check out permissions, press “Verify Disk Permissions.”
Step 5 - In order to repair permissions, you should press “Repair Disk Permissions.”
Part 6. Tips To Speed Up Your Mac.
How do you improve your Mac’s speed or performance?
1 - Software Updates.
You should update your macOS software to the latest version. Usually, the newer versions perform better comparatively. System updates include bug fixes and performance optimization that could speed up your device.
2 - Remove Unnecessary Data.
It is best to have at least 25% of free space in your Mac. This gives your Mac enough space to perform background tasks.
It also provides an ample amount of space for caches, temporary files, and virtual memory. Use iMyMac’s Mac Cleaner to remove unnecessary files.
3 - Stop Automatic Program Launches.
When you turn your Mac device on, there are a lot of programs that might be running or launching simultaneously. Others even run in the background making you unaware of its existence.
You can stop multiple apps from running by going to “System Preferences.” Then, select “Users & Groups” and then selecting “Login Items.”
It will list down applications that launch during your Mac’s startup. Switch off the applications that you don’t need.
Part 7. Conclusion.
Once you experience performance issues, you need to do multiple things to boost your Mac’s performance. Defragmenting your Mac can be a great way to speed up its performance.
Although, you should only do this for HDDs and not for SSDs. You can also use iMyMac’s Mac Cleaner to clean up unnecessary files. Finally, you should always strive to take care of your Mac by following our tips above.
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Free DownloadAug 30,2019 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
At some point, it is common that your system becomes slow. Whether you have the latest Mac system or an old one, experiencing performance issues are common. Most of the people know how to defrag Windows system but Mac File system isn’t designed like Windows. Thus, if you feel like you need to defrag Mac, then you still have some other options.
Here, we will discuss in detail how you defrag a Mac and why do you need it. Along with the process, we will also look for some alternatives to defragging.
Part 1. Overview of Defragmenting Mac
Defragment is the process where scattered files from the storage are organized. It erases the gaps from the files and stores them as a single whole part in the same location. In simple words, defragging Mac hard drive moves everything in order and fills the holes which exist while using the files. Ultimately, defragmentation saves time to search and read the files thereby improving the performance of your system.
Do You Need to Defrag Mac?
In general, Mac doesn’t need defragmentation. It is due to the fact that the Mac OS X version after 10.2 has a different file system than Windows. Apple uses the HFS+ format which has a special function of Hot File Adaptive Clustering. This function works merely to automatically prevent fragmentation in the drive in the first place. As a result, there is not much need to defrag MacBook manually.
It is rare but maybe at some point, you might need it. Once in a few years, you might have to defrag Mac during the update, upgrade, installation, or reinstallation of some software.
When to Defrag MacBook Pro?
The one and only exception when you surely need to defrag MacBook Pro is when the storage space is left only 10%. Once that much storage space is occupied, the Mac OS won’t be able to perform automatic defragmentation. Thus, you will have to consider either removing extra and useless files or expanding the storage so that your Mac system performance won’t decline.
So, either you have to go through defragmentation or you remove some of the big files from your Mac.
Part 2. How to Defragment Mac?
This is a matter of concern as there is not a particular tool on the Mac system that can tell you how to defrag a MacBook. But you can rely on third party tools for that if you want to. Here, we are providing you top listed tools for defragmenting in case you need them.
Solution 1. MacKeeper:
This tool is specially designed so that the performance of your Mac system can be improved significantly. Even though it is popular for its cleaning features of removing unused and redundant files, it can also help to defrag Mac computer.
The performance improvement features make sure that the disk is fragmented to maximize the space. As a result, Mac works better. This tools also have other useful features like restore, undelete, backup, and remote tracking too in case your Mac gets stolen.
Solution 2. iDefrag:
For Mac OS defragment disk, you can rely on iDefrag to work efficiently. It is a useful tool to defrag and optimize your computer. You just have to reboot your computer and the software will provide you options to defrag the system. With this software, you will be able to defrag the whole drive easily. It can even perform selective defragmentation. Along with this, the software is simple, organized, and improved so you don’t have to struggle to learn how to operate it.
Solution 3. DiskTools Pro:
Pc Defragmenter Free Download
One of the best tools that can tell you how to defrag MacBook Pro is DiskTools Pro. The software has three main features, i.e. defrag, backup, and repair. This software makes the repair and maintenance of Mac system easy and fast. There is a bundle of tools for other tasks too which include creating a bootable disk, fixing bad sectors, test disk integrity, analyze drive capacity, and so much more.
There are lots of other tools too which can help you to defrag Mac as quickly as possible so you don’t have to compromise with your work.
Part 3. Some Facts About Defragging Mac
Free mmorpg games for mac. If you are experiencing performance issues with your Mac and you are considering defragging Mac, then you should know a few facts about it. Here, we are giving you proper knowledge and facts to begin:
- Keep in mind that only hard drives require defragging. If your Mac has a Solid State Drive, then there is no need of defragging Mac.
- There is no need to defrag Mac regularly. The OS X already writes the small files in one batch so that you don’t have to put in efforts for defragmentation.
- Hard drives work fast at the beginning of the drive and slow down as the data is written to the bottom. Data don’t take up the available space and it creates several hols which causes a delay in booting or loading of programs.
- Over the years of using Mac, the system slows down with addition and reduction in data. And the OS X upgrades and normal operation makes the data less optimized. Therefore, the defragging Mac becomes important.
- The Mac OS gathers a group of small files dynamically and then combines them in a large space. The automatic process of writing files defragments the files in a proper manner.
- Mac’s HFS+ File system make sure that the recently freed file space is not used on the disk. Therefore, the system looks for the larger free area which is present on the drive. Thus, there is no room left to defrag apple Mac just so your files fit into the available space.
- Even when you open a file, the Mac system checks the storage to verify if the files are fragmented or not. In case it is, the OS automatically defrag Mac files.
Part 4. Alternative Way to Defrag Mac
![Software Software](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126085268/783132901.png)
If yourMac has performance issues, then instead of using defrag tools for Mac you can try out the alternative ways. Here are some methods that would optimize Mac and make sure that is works efficiently.
Method 1. Install Latest Updates of Your MacOS:
The latest update will provide stability, better performance, and security to your Mac. It will not only update the installed software but optimize the system to work in an improved way without a Mac defragging software.
- Open System Preferences from the Apple Menu and tap on the Software Update option to check for updates.
- If the update is available, click on the Update Now option to install it. You can take a look at the specifics of the updates.
Once the software is fully updated, make sure that the applications are updated too.
Method 2. Clean Unnecessary and Big Files:
By deleting the files which are big and useless, you can improve the performance of your system. This way you don’t have to worry about defragging Mac drive. Follow the steps below to delete extra files.
- Open the drive that you want to search and open the search window.
- Click on the “+” icon at the bottom of the Save button and customize the file size that you want to search. You can tell Mac to look for files using the “Greater Than” column to find the files which occupy the maximum space.
- Once the results are listed on the screen, you can select the files which you don’t need. Right click on the file to move it to trash or click on the Trash icon in the Dock. And make sure that you empty the trash too
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Method 3. Boot Mac in Safe Mode:
Another way to eliminate the performance issue and avoiding defragmentation on Mac is booting the system in Safe Mode. This way, no additional application will run automatically and it will erase the cache files too.
- Restart your Mac and immediately press and hold the Shift key until the Apple logo appears on the screen.
- You can release the Shift key when you see the login window. You might have to log in two times, once to unlock the startup disk and second to log in to the Finder.
Safe mode will erase the cache or directory issue as you start up and you’ll have enough space left on your Mac. To exit the safe mode, you only have to restart Mac without pressing any additional key.
Part 5. More Tips to Speed Up Mac:
As you clean up the Mac, the need for Mac OS defrag will decrease and the system will start running smoothly. It is likely that your system will work fine now. But here are some additional tips that will speed up Mac:
- Update Software regularly as most of the issues happen due to the use of outdated software. The system update will also fix bugs and other reasons that are declining Mac performance.
- Prevent Programs from Launching Automatically when you turn on Mac. There are lots of apps which run in the background. So, you need to filter the list to free up resources to make sure that no extra space is occupied by them.
- Offload old data which is stored on online servers or external drives to make up space for new files.
- Clear Regularly: Apart from the system, you have to clean the Trash too. Even though the files are deleted from Mac, space is occupied by the trash. So, you’ll have to empty the trash more frequently.
- Upgrade RAM: This solution won’t help you to prevent fragmentation but it will improve the system performance.
Conclusion
So, now when anyone asks you can you defrag a Mac, you know that you can say yes. With every detail you have now, you can easily resolve performance issues with your Mac. And if somehow during cleanup or defragging Mac with third-party tools, the data gets deleted, then Recoverit Data Recovery can help you to retrieve the deleted files. Share the guide with your friends and family to let them know that there are easy ways of keeping up the Mac system.
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