Do I have to defragment my hard drive when recording and editing audio?
If so , can i do it in Panther, or do I need a softwaret?

/Stefan

I Believe that both panther,and jaguar defrags itself...when the system
is'nt doing much.
I was thinking of putting "Norton System Works" on the system,and was told I don't need it.
Panther or Jaguar maintains itself !!!
Hope that answers your question.
Alan

There are people who believe strongly in both defragging and not defragging. There are pros and cons to both. When a computer writes date to disc, it usually fragments it anyways. I think the more important thing is to always have tons of free space on the drive you are recording to. Even better if the recording disc is separate from the OS drive.

Scott

DO NOT try to defrag a drive with an OSX system on it... especially 10.2 + 10.3 with Norton... it will just screw your system up and will probably be forced to reinstall it.

I wanted to defrag my laptop (OSX 10.3) and tried this and it rendered my latptop useless and had to reformat and reinstall everything .Then someone told me that Norton defrag was bad on OSX and I shouldn't use (after the fact).

just thought I would warn you

ideally you should get a seperate drive (without any apps on it) for recording audio to and then keep it defraged

I have norton's but not on my computer, it is in a draw where it belongs. I use Drive 10 and Techtool Pro. The reason you would want to defrag is so that your drive puts files together and runs more effectent, it also frees up more consecitive space so your audio can be writen faster to disk and in one location. Make sure you fix all disk and file problems before defraging. Repair permissions after. Defraging can help your computer run faster, I do not think OSX actualy defrags itself, I run Macjanitor a freeware program to make the computer do its maintenace on demand. It dose not do any defraging.
By far it is best to get a 2nd drive for audio. As I do video also i use 4 drives in my computer.

Hopefully I can shed some light on this.

1) If you are doing audio / video, use 2 or more partitions, 1 for OS and Apps, the other partition to capture to, save your projects, actually you can have 3 or more partitions, 1 for OSX / Apps, 1 for scratch capture, 1 for saving your projects to.

Why do this?

1) Avoid defragmentation (your scratch drive will get fragmented, but you can erase it after a while, and then no fragmentation.

2) Your files are separate from your OS and Apps

Why? so you can quickly and easily re-image your OS X / Apps and not worry about your saved audio / video files being erased, etc.

I have a OS 10.3.5 with MOTU DP 4.12, Final Cut Pro 4.5, and have it exaclty the way I want it, then take an image snapshot of this with Super Duper.

If the OS X or any apps get funky, I dont waste time playing detective for what's wrong, (although I could, being an Apple OS X engineer),

I simply re-image with Super Duper and wa la in 2 minutes I am back to where I was a day ago, 30 minutes or 5 minutes ago.

How does this relate to defragging, well the best defraging is to Reformat. Period.

OS X Disk Utility is the answer. So you get, no more fragmentation but also no more OS X.

Solution: Re-image with Super Duper, which erases and essentially defrags and is the best way to go period.

And a few words about Norton: It sucks, dump it, Symantec is killing the product off and thank goodness, it sucks and deserves to go.

Everytime I have installed Nort Utils on an OS X machine it develops problems.

Use OS X Disk Utility, it is rock solid and you can do anything with it including making exact clones of CD ROMs / DVD ROMS, even PC CD ROMS, bit by bit copies, etc.

And Disk Utility from what I understand will get even better in 10.4 Tiger.

Hope that helps.

jk

I use Techtool Pro on Panther to maintain and defrag my drives (both system and audio) and it works great.

I agree that Norton sucks but I DON'T agree that OSX either doesn't need defragging or defrags itself.

I've used Techtool Pro for years (from OS9 on) and can highly recomend it for both maintenance and problem solving

my $0.02...bjkiwi

I have not used superduper will have to look into it.

so many opinions so little time

This post has been edited by shaneblyth: Thu 2 Sep 2004, 05:26

all rite, hahaworld...
since u claim to be an "intelligent..." guy
let me ask u a question as how to solve a "simple" problem aite..

u running a mac osx or even classics if u still sitck to dat
running logic 5, n u would love to use reason as well..
but logic 5 is nt a rewire supported application..
do u noe wat is "rewire" by the way, i certainly hope so...!
so how do u go abt to sync both programs...?

well, seriously, i really dun mind if u cun solve this n wanna share with this intelligent wanabe swindler too yeah..
or juz anyone..?
so yeah hope to hear from ya soon..
muacchkkkkkk