Defrag of Mac HD?

[0987123]

I have run Norton Utillities on My Mac and when tried to OPTIMAZE HD have message: The disc Machintosh HD cannot be optimised because it contains the System Software.
What that's meant? How can I do defrag of my HD because it says HD is severe fragmented.

 

[jimbopalmer]

I am most familier with Mac OS 9 and before, if you mac is on OS 9 or before, you may be able to place the OS CD in the drive and hold down C while you boot, the the HD will not be the boot drive and you can optimize it

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[jimoblak]

jimbopalmer's advice is good for OSX too.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[rrsub]

A Defrag of Unix type filesystems is highly unneccessary, specifically for journaling systems which OSX uses.

There is a white paper that I can't find that discusses what parameters OSX takes when it reads a file.

It's something like if a file is over X size and has X fragments, the file is 'optimized' at the point of execution.

 

[jimoblak]

Not all OSX drives are journaled and drives with large, quick access video files seem to like the occassional defrag.

But it is true that defrag is a minimal concern with OSX... such that it appears Symantec has discontinued development on SystemWorks for Mac.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?