How can you defrag a mac

Macs are known for being ahead of the curve when it comes to necessary functions like antivirus measures and file organization, so defragmentation is actually a process your Mac is already doing automatically. Besides using an advanced file storage system that is less prone to fragmenting, files that are prone to fragmentation are automatically defragged by Mac OS X However, there are some limitations to the built-in features and specific scenarios where you would benefit from defragging your MacBook.

For example, defragging become more useful the fuller your drive is due to the distribution of space. Additionally, macOS only defrags files smaller than 20 MB so depending on your line of work, your larger files could be creating problems. You can learn more here. So while the need to defrag a Mac is fairly rare, it is still a useful process and could potentially help improve your workflow.

Since you need a third-party tool to defragment a MacBook Pro, we decided to highlight Drive Genius , a well-reputed computer cleaning tool with an efficient defragging feature. It will take some time and it's a very worthwhile step as failing sectors take longer to read from than perfect ones. OnyX cleans out the caches and lets them rebuild. You will solve your Bootcamp partition formatting problem, your bad sectors problem, your defrag problems, corrupt or bloated caches and your optimization problems all in one batch.

Also have a working bootable backup in the process which is loads safer than a live defrag. Your Application's will be written to the "hot zone" the fastest part of the drive. They will load as fast as possible.

Your OS X system files will be written next, followed last by your User account data last which tends to grow, expand and contact, suffer with more changes so the defragmentation that occurs will occur at the end and into the slower sections of the hard drive, not where Applications and System are. I don't know how effective it is as I haven't used it. See this and perhaps it will assist in narrowing down the cause.

Communities Get Support. But before choosing and installing the app, make sure to back up your data. You can use Time Machine, iCloud, Dropbox, or any other external storage at hand for this purpose.

When choosing the defragmentation app, pay special attention to the compatibility requirements. Macs running operating systems older than OS X Give the process plenty of time to complete without moving your computer anywhere until the defragmentation is finished. As you already know, disk defragmentation can greatly speed up the traditional hard drive. And it may take quite a time to read the file with its pieces situated in different places.

And while it is not advisable to turn to such extreme measures, defragmenting a hard drive disk is a safe procedure if, of course, performed accurately. The process described above is applied only to the hard drives. If you have a newer Mac with SSD solid-state drive , you should never defrag its data. SSDs operate in a different way to a traditional HDD and already have a built-in automatic maintenance process. Furthermore, all defragmentation attempts can even hurt your SSD.

Flash memory used by a solid-state drive has a finite lifespan because of the limited write and read cycles. And disk defragmentation is a process of reading the data from one place and writing it to another. So if you defrag SSD, you will perform thousands of write operations each time on the drive. It can speed up the degradation of a solid-state drive and lead to its wear and tear. The steps for checking how much storage is available on an HDD, follow these basic steps:. As previously stated, SSDs should not be defragmented.

Newer OS X versions can run into capacity problems, especially if you chew up GBs of space with video files, photos, or files created editing software or other applications that require a ton of data. If that happens, peruse saved files and applications and delete whatever you no longer need.

Start with multimedia files, like videos, that take up more storage space. Another solution is to add capacity by upgrading storage—including possibly to an SSD. Unless a Mac runs on OS X However, if you are running out of storage space, upgrading from an HDD to an SSD is a simple way to boost speed, add capacity, and enhance security for a Mac.