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Although Puran Defrag is a tool within a larger software suite, you don’t have to download the entire suite unless you want to. You can control the program manually or schedule it to run automatically either for a single time or on a recurring basis. Apple supplies a handy application for working with hard drives called Disk Utility.If you open up Disk Utility, you’ll notice that it doesn’t include a tool for defragmenting any of the drives connected to your Mac.The reason for this perceived oversight is that a Mac running any version of OS X later than 10.2 does not need to be defragmented. TechTool Pro 5 is a universal tool for Mac performance optimization, which has a defragmentation option as well. TechTool Pro 5 costs $ 98. TechTool Pro 5 costs $ 98. Please note, never use these programs on a Mac with an SSD. The tool comes with pre-defined layouts for the files in Mac OS X that the developers have identified as the most universally applicable for increased performance (the best speed for the greatest.

Apple supplies a handy application for working with hard drives called Disk Utility. If you open up Disk Utility, you’ll notice that it doesn’t include a tool for defragmenting any of the drives connected to your Mac. The reason for this perceived oversight is that a Mac running any version of OS X later than 10.2 does not need to be defragmented. OS X, as well as macOS, have their own built-in safeguards that prevent files from becoming fragmented in the first place.

The Mac's HFS+ file system tries not to use recently freed file space on a disk. Instead, it looks for larger free areas already present on the drive, thereby avoiding fragmenting files just to fit them into available space.
The Mac OS dynamically gathers groups of small files and combines them into larger areas on your disk automatically. The process of writing the files to a new larger location defragments all of the files in the group.
OS X and MacOS implement Hot File Adaptive Clustering, which monitors frequently-accessed files that do not get changed (read-only), and then moves these often-accessed files to a special hot zone on the startup drive. In the process of moving these files, OS X defragments them and then stores them in the area of the drive that has the fastest access.
When you open a file, the Mac checks to see if it is highly fragmented (more than 8 fragments). If it is, the operating system will automatically defragment the file.

The result of all these safeguards is that the Mac rarely, if ever, needs to have its disk space defragmented. The only real exception to this is when your hard drive has less than 10 percent free space. At that point, the Mac operating system is unable to perform its automatic defragmentation routines, and you should consider either removing files or expanding your disk storage size.

Is There Any Reason Not to Defragment My Mac's Drive?

As we mentioned above, you probably don’t need to defragment your drives, because your Mac takes care of that for you. However, there are some types of tasks that can benefit from defragmented drives; specifically, when working with real-time or near real-time data acquisition or manipulation. Think video or audio recording and editing, complex scientific data acquisition, or working with time-sensitive data.

This only applies to standard hard drives. If you’re using an SSD, or a Fusion drive, its data should never be defragmented, as doing so can lead to writing amplification, a common cause of premature failure of the SSD. SSDs have a finite number of writes that can be performed. You can think of it as the memory location within the SSD becoming brittle with age. Each write to a memory location increases the age of the cell.

Because flash-based storage requires the memory locations to be erased before new data can be written to them, the process of defragging an SSD can lead to multiple write cycles, causing excessive wear on the SSD.

Will Defragmenting Harm My Drive?

As we mentioned, defragmenting an SSD or any flash-based storage device (this includes Fusion-based drives that use a small SSD/flash device along with a standard hard drive) can lead to premature failure by increasing the amount of wear (writing and reading of storage cells). In the case of a hard drive, one that uses a mechanical rotating platter, there's no significant chance of damage to the hard drive, or to your Mac, simply by performing a defrag. The only negative comes in the time it takes to perform the defragmentation.

What If I Decide That I Do Indeed Need to Defragment?

There are third-party utilities available that can defragment your Mac's drives. One of our favorites for this task is Drive Genius 4.

Drive Genius 4 does a lot more than offer the ability to defragment a Mac's drive; it includes the ability to monitor drive health as well as repair most drive problems.

Active3 years ago

Does windows need to be defragmented regularly?

Why does MacOS not have a Defragmentation utility?

Please teach a detailed person

Bruce McLeod

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ffffffffffff

4 Answers

I think the best answer for this comes straight from this apple support KB

About optimization and fragmentation

Disk optimization is a process in which the physical locations of files on a volume are 'streamlined.' Files and metadata are re-arranged in order to improve data access times and minimize time moving a hard drive's head.

Files can become 'fragmented' over time as they are changed and saved and as the volume is filled, with different parts of a single file stored in different locations on a volume. The process of collecting file fragments and putting them 'back together' is known as optimization. However, if a failure occurs during optimization, such as power loss, files could become damaged and need to be restored from a backup copy.

Do I need to optimize?

You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Here's why:

Hard disk capacity is generally much greater now than a few years ago. With more free space available, the file system doesn't need to fill up every 'nook and cranny.' Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus) avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space.
Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X Extended-formatted volumes. This allows a number of small allocations to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk.
Fragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to existing files, especially with resource forks. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files. This process is sometimes known as 'Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering.'
Aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching means that minor fragmentation has less effect on perceived system performance.

Bruce McLeodBruce McLeod

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I suggest also taking a look at Server Fault's answers as well:

My answer on Server fault fits here as well :

It's a bit of a yes, no answer. Useful in certain circumstances but it's less of an issue than it was with FAT or regular HFS. All filesystems will fragment but newer ones are more resistant to fragmenting so badly.

Speaking for Mac OS X specifically HFS+ does a decent enough job of trying to keep things from being fragmented compared to older systems but it still happens just not on the same scale. The OS itself also defrags 'small' (20MB or smaller) files on the fly since 10.3 (Panther).

Fragmenting still happens and you can see performance drop because of it, especially in video editing systems or a workflow that requires the ability to read or write large files quickly to the disk. For your standa

Defrag Tool For Mac