Defragging and Mac OSX

[Fredrik Harreschou]

Hi!

What are your opinions and tools when it comes to defragging in Mac OSX? I have read different things and want to know if you are defragging your video raids under OSX?

Thanks,
Fredrik

[Gunleik Groven]

I know that NRK does it on the relevant files on the rides with big block-size after mediamanage/conform, before online.

But not on the full RAID/SAN

[Fredrik Harreschou]

Do you know what SW they are using?

[Gunleik Groven]

Nope.
Can find out, but they're all @ IBC...

[Fredrik Harreschou]

Takk!

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Don't bother with defrag on RAID volumes or SAN nodes, waste of time. A proper defragmentation requires direct block and sector access to each drive and that is masked through RAID controllers -- as the RAID controllers need their data in specific locations to relate what spans between drives.

Personally, I've found defrags to be worthless over the years. Made sense back in the days of one or two single drives on desktop systems to help smooth out performance. Systems and drives are much more efficient and consistent these days.

Once a year, I completely wipe the system/apps drive of any system I use regularly and do a fresh install. Over the past year or so, that's been easy to justify with the release of Snow Leopard and Windows7.