Mac maintenance

[Lee Berger]

I run the suite of tests in Tech Tool when I’m not busy. Tests hardware and software.
https://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=174&Itemid=85

Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[Kim Rowley] “I usually trash my media which is captured project by project and archive the data related to the final FCP project.”

Not only trash the media, but erase your media drives often, at least every three months if possible. Just trashing the media still leaves you with a fragmented drive, you want a good clean erase as often as possible.

Other than that I’ll run Repair Disk Permission and Disk Warrior from time to time to clean up my System Drive.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Kim Rowley]

Thanks Lee, thanks Walter. I’ll look into both of those suggestions.

Dual 2.7 GHz G5, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9650, Xserve RAID, AJA IO, 2 20″ Cinema Display, FCP 5.03, OS X10.4.3

[Matt Callac]

I run MacJanitor every monday first thing in the morning, As I tend to shut my machine down over the weekend.
-matt

[Matt Larson]

There is a program called “Maintenance” that I found on the Apple Downloads page that seems to work pretty well.

For the XRAID, I always “Condition Drive Array” when I have time (it takes about 24 hours and can but can be performed in the Background). You can select it from the RAID Admin Utility under “Utilities”. I always see a noticible performance increase afterwards.

[Lee Berger]

Matt,
I’ve run “condition drive array” as well and obtained improved performance. Do you know what it actually does? Is it defragmenting?

Lee

Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com

[Lee Berger]

Walter,
I agree with trashing and erasing periodically, but I have media from long term projects on my XServe RAID that I can’t trash. Would you recommend defragmentation as an option to full erase?

Lee

Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com

[Miodrag Ristic]

Kim,

It’s 21st century, we don’t defrag any more.
No wonder, there are so many people reporting drive failures:

“Defragmentation 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.”

I was told the same by Apple technician @ local Apple Centre two years ago.

Complete article:
https://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/fragmentation/

All that I do is repairing permitions, before & after every install.Occasional restart as well.
With hard drives common sense; do not move them
whilst working, unmount them before disconnecting and keep them cool.

Cheers

Mick

[Walter Biscardi]

[Miodrag Ristic] “”Defragmentation 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.”

Defragmentation while media is on the drives is not a good idea I agree, but you should erase the drives as often as possible to maintain the best possible performance from your media arrays. I believe many of the hard drive problems we see on these forums are because people simply don’t maintain their arrays by cleaning them from time to time.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Kim Rowley]

Thanks to Walter, Lee and all. I was unaware that it was good practice to unmount the drives before shutting down. I’ll start doing that tonight.
Cheers!

Dual 2.7 GHz G5, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9650, Xserve RAID, AJA IO, 2 20″ Cinema Display, FCP 5.03, OS X10.4.3