Lowpez Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 Hola! I'm pretty new in mac world ...I would like to know wich cares should I take for keeping the HD clean and "healthy" I have a PBook 6,7 with 1,5 Gb RAm and basicaly I use it for audio With Logic Pro and an external LaCie Fw800. Should I get Coctail, Onix or any other?? What are the good things of these programs?? I sometimes do "repair permits" and "sfck" ..Tanhx for your advises Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockBottom Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 No: you don't need any of these pseudo-geek tools. They all duplicate what the system already does on its own, or when using the disk utility program; besides, some of their functions are potentialy dangerous when misused. If you're serious about maintenance, the only tool I know is TechTool from MicroMat, but I'm not sure you need this either. Mac OS X takes care of itself if you leave it running 24/7. There are tasks scheduled to run in the background that will do the house-keeping for you. If you turn your machine off, then it's your responsability to manually trigger the tasks that should normally have run in the middle of the previous night... But why bother? Ah! And another safety principle: always keep at least 10% of your drive free, so that the O.S. has room enough to move things around. It'll thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowpez Posted February 1, 2006 Author Share Posted February 1, 2006 I always switch it off, should I just leave it on a hole week or could you tell me what exactly should I do? ...sorry, I'm pretty new in mac and very interested in keep it right Muchas gracias for your help!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 the operating system does the repair suff and housekeeping at around 3am i believe. so leave it switched on over night -once a week/fortnight or something. (if u are not going to use one of these utilitiys such as coctail or onyx) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 Just leave your mac on if you're using it everyday. Turn it off at night maybe once a week or when you're not going to use it for more than 24Hr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockBottom Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 > the operating system does the repair suff and housekeeping at around 3am It depends: this is adjustable. Unix users generally don't care since they never turn their machines off. There are tasks to be performed on every day, some every week, and some others every month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 It depends: this is adjustable. Unix users generally don't care since they never turn their machines off. There are tasks to be performed on every day, some every week, and some others every month. By default, the tasks run at 3:15am and 5:30am. There are different 3rd party software you can use to manually run those tasks anytime you want. For more info, read http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107388 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabnetic Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 Just leave your mac on if you're using it everyday. Turn it off at night maybe once a week or when you're not going to use it for more than 24Hr. does this put undue strain -- or wear and tear, really-- on the processors? i've already had to drop a new processor in my g5 (without applecare) b/c of some fluke occurence and have been babying it ever since. i've yet to hear a definitive answer from apple on this one, but is it really BETTER to leave the g5 on more than not? i'm more inclined to believe you, david, if you say so... if this is the case, should i enable the "put hard disks to sleep" feature? what about my 2 external lacie drives? i don't want them to wear out either... ok enough questions from me! thanks in advance Tab Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 Turning your machine back on puts stress on the components. The stress is about the same as if you left the machine on for an extra 10 Hrs, so same thing. Kinda like your car: leaving it on will put stress on everything including the engine, just as turning your car on will. If for a short time, like at a red light, you'd rather not turn the car off. Same for your computer. All components inside a computer are designed to live for ever in computer time, meaning about 5 to 15 years. Who keeps a computer that long anyway? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plowman Posted February 1, 2006 Share Posted February 1, 2006 I recently downloaded "Cocktail," having heard so much positive Mac buzz. It allowed me to run a maintenance routine manually. The interface is quite friendly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowpez Posted February 2, 2006 Author Share Posted February 2, 2006 Muchas gracias!!, what about fsck, is it really important?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace of Dubs Posted February 2, 2006 Share Posted February 2, 2006 fsck is helpful. it can find problemsthat disk utility misses. I do it once a month myself. Another thing you may want to look into is a defragment utility. People talk about how OS X optimizes itself and never fragments the hard drive. Well maybe if you are just writing Word documents and surfing the net. But for us audio pros, fragmentation is a real problem. In just 3 months my drive has become "moderately fragmented" in 6 months the fragmentation is "severe" and I can feel the hit on my performance. This problem also wreaks havoc on your hardware and is one of the best known culprits for file corruption and drive failure! Most folks use DiskWarrior or TechTool pro. My fave utility for this is iDefrag http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockBottom Posted February 2, 2006 Share Posted February 2, 2006 DiskWarrior doesn't defrag the data on any volume: it only rebuilds directories. Coriolis' iDefrag is lean and fast, but in many cases it leaves small holes in between the files it defragments, so the next file that fills those holes will sure be fragmented. TechTool is the only one that does a perfect job, but it also takes more time... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Cardenas Posted February 2, 2006 Share Posted February 2, 2006 (edited) TechTool is the only one that does a perfect job, but it also takes more time... TechTool sucks Really! I have a lot of friends that have destroyed there drives with it. http://www.macupdate.com/reviews.php?id=4307 I would recommend DriveGenius if you want to defrag and DiskWarrior to Optimize. Edited February 2, 2006 by Eric Cardenas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockBottom Posted February 2, 2006 Share Posted February 2, 2006 > Turning your machine back on puts stress on the components. This is related to "thermal shock", as witnessed by the power-consumption meter when you turn on any appliance. Even an ordinary light-bulb lives longer if you never turn it off. Someone told be about how they had to replace a light-bulb in a prison in England, and found out it hadn't been replaced for 49 years: I'm not sure whether he was putting me on... But light-bulbs sure aren't what they used to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowpez Posted February 2, 2006 Author Share Posted February 2, 2006 gracias a todos, I think I will keep it without extra programs because it's working fine and i'm afraid to mess it up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 2, 2006 Share Posted February 2, 2006 You are right Lowpez, you don't need to run any of those programs unless you are starting to run into problems and are attempting to troubleshoot, or unless you always turn your computer off at night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dream Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 Hi all, I read just before someone mentioning that Disc Warrior doesn't defrag, it only optimizes. I used to use Disc Warrior on my old G4 OS9 system and I could swear that optimizing my drives defraged them. Was I wrong in thinking that? If so, what's the difference between optimize and defragment? I'm now on a G5 os 10.4.3 and Logic 7.1.1, but I'm still curious... Dream Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sondod Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 All this talk of leaving computers on has me wondering about something more practical. Sure it may wear the drive more turning it on, but does it cost more electicity than leaving the machine on those extra hours? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 i generally am not on my computer much at 3-5am, so ... i leave it on overnite once a week or sumthin, or if thats not possible - i run one of those programs, say, once a week. at all other times i just put it to sleep - which uses minimal power i believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 Hi all,I read just before someone mentioning that Disc Warrior doesn't defrag, it only optimizes. I used to use Disc Warrior on my old G4 OS9 system and I could swear that optimizing my drives defraged them. Was I wrong in thinking that? If so, what's the difference between optimize and defragment? I'm now on a G5 os 10.4.3 and Logic 7.1.1, but I'm still curious... Disk Warrior doesn't defragment hard drives, it rebuilds the directory file on your hard drive. Defragmenting isn't usually necessary with OS X (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sondod Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 at all other times i just put it to sleep - which uses minimal power i believe. But it can't run those process while asleep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 I recommend you never use the sleep mode on a mac, especially one that you use for music production. The sleep mode is the source of many erratic and unstable behaviors. Put your display to sleep if you want, but never put the hard drive or the computer to sleep. Leave it on or turn it off. That's my rule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sondod Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 Running the Processes Instructions From Apple: Advanced: Use the Terminal Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities). Type: sudo sh /etc/daily Optionally, for Mac OS X 10.2 or later, you can use: sudo periodic daily Tip: Typing "daily" runs tasks normally scheduled for a daily interval. Type "monthly" or "weekly" in place of "daily" to runs tasks scheduled for those intervals. Weekly tasks usually require a longer time to run than others. Press Return. Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return. Quit Terminal when the task is complete. I think I'm going to try to create an Automator task to do this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Cardenas Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 (edited) Defragmenting isn't usually necessary with OS X (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668). The thing is that Os X defrags all files that are smaller than 20MB but everything exeeding that is left untouched. So technically speeking your drive could need some help but it is more crucial when editing video then music. If it ain't broken don't try to fix it. Edited February 3, 2006 by Eric Cardenas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 More reading on defragmentation and OS X: http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/fragmentation/ If you don't want to read the whole article, here's the conclusion ConclusionDefragmentation on HFS+ volumes should not be necessary at all, or worthwhile, in most cases, because the system seems to do a very good job of avoiding/countering fragmentation .It is risky to defragment anyway: What if there's a power glitch? What if the system crashes? What if the defragmenting tool has a bug? What if you inadvertently reboot? In some cases, you could make the situation worse by defragmenting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 (edited) at all other times i just put it to sleep - which uses minimal power i believe. But it can't run those process while asleep. which is why ... i leave it on overnite once a week or sumthin, or if thats not possible - i run one of those programs, say, once a week. once a week being a bare minimum, in reality its more often. Edited February 3, 2006 by ~ j ~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 I recommend you never use the sleep mode on a mac, especially one that you use for music production. The sleep mode is the source of many erratic and unstable behaviors. Put your display to sleep if you want, but never put the hard drive or the computer to sleep. Leave it on or turn it off. That's my rule. in my 10 years or so with macs, ive never knowingly had any problem with or related to putting my computer to sleep. ever. horses for courses i guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 Well ~ j ~, you've been very lucky! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Cardenas Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 in my 10 years or so with macs, ive never knowingly had any problem with or related to putting my computer to sleep. ever. horses for courses i guess. What kind of audio interface are you using? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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