Defragging harddrives

Hello everyone out there. I was wondering if the mac can defrag harddrives with the software it comes with or do I have to purchase it seperate? Does anyone have any suggestions in regards to that software and if so about how much does it cost? Thanks a bunch
ERV

882/3328
Hi ERV,
Have a read of my view too, in addition to these excellent replies:
Defragmentation is taken care of automatically in Mac OS X (except for files bigger than 20MB), as well as best possible location of the files on the hard disk, on-the-fly as they are used by an application. Using a defragmenter defeats this constant and active arrangement.
- Mac OS X maintenance is pretty much almost completely automated.
Most of the "maintenance software" commands are safe and harmless -be careful with the System ones though- but they are becoming more and more redundant and useless, at each new version of Mac OS X.
More than maintaining, it is about preventing file corruption, that doesn't happen too often anyway.
(PANTHER)
All You Have To Do:
- Back up.
- Keep enough free space on the boot volume (10-15% is fine).
- "Repair Permissions" with Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder), after you used Software Update or after you used an Apple application installer.
- Run the three nightly Periodic tasks (AKA "cron scripts") - once or twice a month is fine. (Cocktail, OnyX, TinkerToolSystem, Yasu...)
More Prudent:
Before an OS Update or Upgrade,
- Disconnect all periphericals.
- Run a "Disk Repair" with Disk Utility from the install DVD. Verify HD's S.M.A.R.T. status in the meantime.
- Much better: rebuild Directory with DiskWarrior.
- You can also clean all (each user separately) account's User, Browsers and Fonts caches (Cocktail, OnyX, TinkerToolSystem, Yasu...), and
- Check for corrupted Preferences (Preferential Treatment).
--> Do not unnecessarily clean the system and kernel caches.
Software:
In theory we should not need any extra utility, as we already have Terminal and Disk Utility.
But some small applications like Yasu, TinkerTool System, OnyX or Cocktail for example, offer a nice, friendly GUI to many useful Terminal commands.
File defragmentation is not really needed in OS X
— Even (very rarely needed) free space defragmentation is more risky than a simple (and quite fast since Tiger) OS reinstallation —
but DiskWarrior has a very good approach of rebuilding the Directory.
- Read the Readme and Help files, and do not run a task if you don't know what it does.
- Do not install an application before you know how to uninstall it.
(example Anacron or Macaroni: they work well but redundant and about uninstall (???), or some Microsoft software that too often gets us used to unnecessarily give our admin password...)
- Software Updates: no hurry! Do not download too much at a time, install the OS updates separately, and note that there is (in menu Update) an option "Update and Keep Package" that can fit to your backup strategy.
(TIGER)
All You Have To Do:
- Back up.
- Keep enough free space on the boot volume (10-15% is fine).
- "Repair Permissions" with Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder), after you used Software Update or after you used an Apple application installer.
- Run the three nightly Periodic tasks (AKA "cron scripts") — once a month is fine — as they are not yet completely automated (still the same "sleep delay" behaviour in 10.4.6). (Cocktail, OnyX, TinkerToolSystem, Yasu...)
--> See also this excellent website:
(The X Lab) Maintaining Mac OS X
Good maintenance!
Axl

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Why does PPro CS3 hang at File- Import?

My PPro CS3 was working fine until today. Then I tried importing a file into a new project, File->Import and pPro hangs. It does not open a file browser, it does not even close the File dropdown, it does not repaint any part of the client window. The X (Close) at the top right of the enclosing window does not push. Only the Task Manager will blow it away, and that only after about 10-15 seconds.
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Not sure if you found the answers you're looking for, but my first question would be; what exactly are you trying to import? Assuming you've tried all the standard rederick...re-installing software, corrupted files, defragging harddrives, etc., I'd be looking at the file you're trying to import. CS3 being an older product, isn't quite up to snuff with many of the newer technologies. I ran into similar issues when trying to import files from my Sony camcorder because the little Sony uses mp3 for the audio files...Premiere CS3 doesn't recognise mp3's. Likewise if you're trying to import a Quicktime format (.mov) and don't actually have Quicktime installed, that can cause problems. I suspect the same would be true if trying to import from something like one of those idiot "smart phones" (Galaxy, iPhone, etc). If this should be the case, save the files to be imported to your harddrive first then try converting the files to something a bit more conventional...an standard AVI for example. FFcoder for example will convert just about anything to just about anything else and it's freeware to boot.   THEN try importing it into Premiere...you get the idea.
If that don't do it, ya also may wish to take a look at that XP Service Pack 3...I've had problems with that on another machine. It was on my music studio's DAW so Premiere wasn't involved, but sp3 created ALL KINDS OF PROBLEMS on that system...had to dump the whole install and stop the updates at sp2 in order to get everything working again (at the risk of sounding rather paranoid, I'm starting to suspect that the folks at MicroSoft are starting to hose these updates deliberately in order to force people to upgrade to Windows 7 or 8 since they're discontinuing support for XP/XP64 soon).
Hope this helps!

How do you defrag a harddrive?

How do you defrag a harddrive?

From idefrag help:
Why Defragment?
It has often been asserted that defragmentation (or disk optimization) is not a good idea on systems using Apple’s HFS+ filesystem. The main reasons given for this historically have been:
HFS+ is very much better at keeping files defragmented than many other commodity filesystems.
Advanced features in recent versions of HFS+ can easily be disrupted by a defragmentation tool that does not support them, resulting in decreased performance.
There is a risk associated with defragmentation.
Whilst these arguments are certainly valid, they are not the whole story. For one thing, iDefrag, unlike most other disk defragmentation tools, fully supports the most recent features of HFS+, namely the metadata zone (or “hot band”) and the adaptive hot file clustering support added in Mac OS X 10.3. Not only does it avoid disrupting them, but it is capable of fixing disruption caused by other software by moving files into or out of the metadata zone as appropriate.
Sensible arguments for occasional optimization of your disk include:
HFS+ is not very good at keeping free space contiguous, which can, in turn, lead to large files becoming very fragmented, and can also cause problems for the virtual memory subsystem on Mac OS X.
Older versions of the Mac OS are not themselves aware of the metadata zone policy, and may disrupt its performance.
HFS+ uses B-Tree index files to hold information about the filesystem. If a large number of files are placed on a disk, the filesystem may have to enlarge these B-Tree structures; however, there is no built-in mechanism to shrink them again once the files are deleted, so the space taken up by these files has been lost.
Whilst HFS+ is good at keeping individual files defragmented, mechanisms like Software Update may result in files that are components of the same piece of software being scattered across the disk, leading to increased start-up times, both for Mac OS X itself and for applications software. This is a form of fragmentation that is typically overlooked.
Defragmenting disk images can be helpful, particularly if they are to be placed onto a CD/DVD, as seeks on CD/DVD discs are particularly expensive.
Some specific usage patterns may cause fragmentation despite the features of HFS+ that are designed to avoid it.
We do not recommend very frequent optimization of your disk; optimizing a disk can take a substantial amount of time, particularly with larger disks, far outweighing the benefits that are likely to be obtained by (say) a weekly optimization regime.
Optimization may make more sense, however, following large software updates, or on an occasional basis if you notice decreased performance and lots of hard disk seeking on system start-up or when starting an application.

What is a good defragmenting software for the mac, and what is the price ranges if there are mutiple ones?

I have had my mac for about a 1 year 5 months, coming onto 6 months. And I want to keep it running in top shape, or as close as it can get. I Am just wondering what is are good softwares for defragmenting a Macbook and what are the price ranges, and what are the recommendations. Which would you rate from best to worst in other words.

First Mac OS X doesn't need defragged. If your harddrive is ~80% full heavy downloading could hurt disk performance but I'd say you're in the clear. If Apple considered defragging a necessity they would have included it into Disk Utility.

Re-Setting Pram - Defragmenting Hard Drive

I was finally able to get the Flashing Question Mark removed and re-install my OS 9.1 install CD by using Norton Uitlities, my question is... should a person re-set the PRAM every once and awhile to (De-Fragment the Harddrive if thats what resetting the PRAM does ? ) to keep the computer operating soomthly, or does a person only do that in dire needs ? Thanks Eric

Hi, Eric -
...where did you learn all that ?
Partly from doing things wrong and having to figure out how to fix them; partly from books (the Missing Manual series from Pogue Press and the Dummies series are quite good); and in recent years mostly from hanging around in these Discussions forums.
I agree with Allan - although it appears that the Speed Disk and Unerase utilities that come with Norton are reasonably safe to use, Norton Disk Doctor has been identified too many times in these forums as causing more harm than cure; it seems to have a bad habit of fixing things that aren't broken.
In general, and specifically with NDD, it is wise to use a disk utility only when the OS on its CD is of equal or greater version than the newest OS on the hard drive.
Partitioning a hard drive, in effect, creates two or more smaller hard drives (volumes) out of one larger one. For most purposes the Mac will treat each volume (volume = an unpartitioned drive, or a partition of a partitioned one) as if it were a separate drive. This can be used to advantage, provided the drive is large enough.
For example, many folk have partitioned their hard drive in order to have OS 9 and OSX on separate volumes. This can make maintenance, repair, and (if needed) reinstallation of each OS easier. On older machines doing so can also speed the machine up a bit, since the running OS would not need to search as large a space in order to find a file it needs.
Partitioning can also be useful for temporary files, particularly large ones which need to not be fragmented - such as when doing video, audio, or even some graphics work. A partition dedicated for such use is easily defragmented - just erase it using Finder's Erase Disk function.
If you're interested in partitioning a drive -
• Plan ahead. Partitioning a drive will erase everything on it, so be sure you have backed up everything you do not want to lose before doing so. It helps to decide in advance what your partitioning scheme will be - how many partitions, and what size each will be. Part of that process is taking into account that the first partition (the one at the top of the list in the partitioning window) will be the fastest; the last one will be the slowest. The primary OS (or OS's) should be on the first partition, probably with applications.
• Use OS 9's Drive Setup to do it (from an OS 9.1 or later version Install CD), or even OSX's Disk Utility, rather than Norton or another 3rd-party utility. Instructions for using Drive Setup to partition a drive are included in this article -
Using Drive Setup
• Partitioning does not replace the need for effective backups. If the drive itself dies, so do all partitions on it.

Defrag with disk utility?

Can anyone tell me how to defrag the harddrive on my Mac? Thanks

I have been using idefrag for some time now and it does a great job. From what I've seen, OS X defrags most of its own system files somewhat efficiently, but it pretty much ignores third party files especially those that are located on drives other than the boot drive. It also seems to ignore some of its own cache files as well. Of course it doesn't matter once a cache file is loaded into memory, but it will take longer to actually load it into memory.
Doing a complete defrag takes a good amount of time though especially if you compact the files. Lately with idefrag I have been using only the "online" option which is a files only defrag and the
"B Tree" option (a select group of system files) with excellent results. This method of defagging takes about 20 minutes instead of hours. Results are equal to or better than the long way.
I will tell you this though: If it were a toss up between idefrag and Disk Warrior for fixing OS X "sluggishness" problems, Disk Warrior wins hands down. A hard drive that is healthy and well cared for will perform well even with a fair amount of fragmentation.
Another thing to be aware of is not all defrag programs are alike and some have been reported to do more harm than good.

Harddrive is going nuts? What's up?

The internal harddrive on my iMac seems to be doing some overtime when trying to open a program or even when I use Spotlight. It makes me think of what a drive does (and sound it makes) when it is serious fragmented on a Windows machine. But from most of what I have read, you shouldn't have to defrag a Mac drive so I am a bit baffled.
The drive only has 131 gig out of 465 gig used (gotta love the "500 gig drive"). I have Parallels and a couple of VMs on there, lots of pictures and then just stuff.
I have run TechTools surface scan on it (borrowed a friends TT Protege) and it showed no problems. I have run Disk Utility to repair permissions and verify/repair the drive. None of this seems to have helped. I didn't run TT optimization as I didn't have time and again, didn't think that needed to be done on Macs.
Where do I go from here (besides getting a new Mac Pro )? This machine doesn't open things as fast as it used to and it is starting bug me.
Thanks!
sounds like a drive in a Windows machine! Whenever I try to launch something, or just open Spotlight and search for something, the drive makes the distinct "i'm looking for it, give me a minute" sound.

It's normal for the random tests to be much lower than the sequential but it all depends on the drive. Though my drive gets a lot better results than yours does. It's not quite the same model but you would think they'd at least be close.
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B18)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model iMac7,1
Drive Type ST3500630AS Q
Disk Test 54.97
Sequential 119.24
Uncached Write 129.07 79.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 131.43 74.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.27 25.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 145.79 73.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 35.72
Uncached Write 11.51 1.22 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 130.65 41.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 92.98 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 148.92 27.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Since your drive passed the Surface Test, Verification, and the SMART status is verified I would say the drive should be good. Are you running Time Machine? Have you checked activity monitor to see if there is anything running in the background like spot light?
Here are the results from my 2.0GHz iMac at work.
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B18)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model iMac7,1
Drive Type Hitachi HDT725025VLA380
Disk Test 62.21
Sequential 99.92
Uncached Write 104.61 64.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 110.65 62.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 75.16 22.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 122.98 61.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 45.16
Uncached Write 16.98 1.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 92.46 29.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 91.07 0.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 137.23 25.46 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Spring cleaning for the harddrive.

hello,
I have had my macbook for about a year now and use it to its fullest potential. I have about 4GB left between a 60G harddrive and a 250G external. Some of the programs I use start to hang and or crash when I try to use them, so Im thinking its time for a good cleaning. I would like to get rid of a bunch of programs that have become outdated as well as "refresh" the operating system. Im hesitant to use just any program to help me optimize my computer, so my question is, can anyone recommend a program to do this with and also what do I need to be doing/looking for to get rid of the buildup that has slowed my computer down without removing important files.
Thank you.

OS X requires at least 15 percent of the startup volume's capacity be free space. You're down to to 4 GBs which is dangerously close to the point of risking serious disk corruption. You can go through your hard drive and delete old files or files you no longer need to free up space, but it would be better to replace the internal hard drive with a larger drive. You might do the same for your external drive.
There is no program that's going to tell you what files to delete. You can go through your files in the Finder using List View and clicking on the Date Modified column to sort files in the date order of last access. As for system maintenance read:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.0 is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.2 is Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. The current version, 1.5.1, is Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. PsynchX 2.1.1 and RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
6. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
7. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.

IPod Video 60GB harddrive

Since, the iPod Video 60GB operate with a harddrive, is there any maintenance required on the harddrive, like defragging or checkdisk, etc.?

Have a look at this previous post on the subject Defragmenting iPod with Windows Disk Defragmenter

I want to install microsoft office on my mac - do i defrag?

i currently have microsoft office on my macbook pro, but i bought a legitimate copy of the newest microsoft office
do i de-install my current software and then im assuming the new software will tell me what to do..
i used to have a pc, and i dont know anyone with a mac who knows whether i will need to "de-frag" my harddrive before i install my new software.
please help, im technically challenged

No need to defrag your hard drive under Mac OSX.
Remember to keep 20% of your hard drive free. OSX will take care of defrag itself.

G4 iPod Defrag problems

Last night I stupidly decided I was going to defrag my iPod because I noticed that it was taking a long time in between songs.
I used a tool called iDefrag, meant for harddrives, not iPods.
I started the defrag process, within 5 minutes i had an error message (sorry I cant remember the exact wording but it was like, "An error occured, please retry defragmentation")
I retried it and it finnished defragmenting. I unplugged the iPod and re inserted it. iTunes said it was corrupted and to restore it. I did and it started to synch songs, about halfway through the syncing process it just hanged, my ipod froze.
I heve probably retried this scenario a hundred times, now its getting to the point where it wont even restore with out an error.
Please help. Thank you.

First, try this
For Mac computer
1. Open the disk utility, hope your iPod appears there (left hand side), highlight it
2. Go to Tab “Partition”, click either “Delete” or “Partition”, if fails, skip this step and go to 3
3. Go to Tab “Erase” , choose Volume Format as “MAC OS Extended (Journaled), and click Erase, again if fails, skip it and go to 4
4. Same as step 3, but open the “Security Options....” and choose “Zero Out Data” before click Erase. It will take 1 to 2 hours to complete.
5. Eject your iPod and do a Reset
6. Open the iTunes 7 and click “Restore”
If does not work, find a window based pc
] Windows users having trouble with their iPods should locate a Mac user. In many cases when an iPod won't show up on a PC that it will show up on the Mac. Then it can be restored. When the PC user returns to his computer the iPod will be recognized by the PC, reformatted for the PC, and usable again. By the way, it works in reverse too. A Mac user often can get his iPod back by connecting it to a PC and restoring it.
Tips
It does not matter whether the format is completed or not, the key is to erase (or partly) the corrupted firmware files on the Hard Drive of the iPod. After that, when the iPod re-connected with a computer, it will be recognized as an fresh external hard drive, it will show up on the iTunes 7.

How do I backup an iTunes library if it is on an external harddrive

Hi
Like so many I have an iTunes library that is rapidly outgrowing my internal harddrive. (ahh Dr Who why did you have to be so good!!??!)
I have been using timemachine to backup my MacBook's drive.
I found articles:
How to move iTunes library to external drive (pretty much simple as!!) I even have the perfect portable drive
How to Back up iTunes to an external drive (also simple)
But what I can't find (and maybe I am being stupid?) is how to back up that new iTunes library (in future backups) now that it is on it's own external drive. Do I need to move it to the MacBook each month and do a manual back up? - pretty sure time machine wont back up the external drive (even though the time machine drive is way big enough)
Not having used external drives too often I am not sure if maybe I can back up the library by following the procedure for backing up to an external drive but just picking the library from where it sits on a second external drive to start it - guess I could just test this before I delete the internal library?
Both of my ideas seem time consuming (and a bit "waving the rubber chicken" to quote Merlin Mann) - any recommendations for a more automated process - the whole reason for me using Time machine is it works without me having to be involved.
Any help would be appreciated
My need exceeds my skills
Thanx
Cecilia
(waiting to sort this out before upgrading to Lion )

I just love this. I may have found the answer which showed up (from 2008) when I posted this Q (but of course did not show up when I first searched :?
https://discussions.apple.com/message/7566039#7566039
I will give this a test run over the weekend. Cross fingers and wave that rubber chicken
C

How do I transfer data from one exterior harddrive to another?

How do I transfer data from one exterior harddrive to another when they are both connected to our Imac Desktop?

Depends what you want to transfer...
A few more Details about what you are trying to achieve would be good.

I had my computer replaced but copied my hard drive and now I can't access my firefox bookmarks, how can I go and extract the bookmarks from my copied harddrive?

My HP Touchsmart was sent back in to HP for repairs under warranty. I was advised to make a copy of my harddrive because they may erase my hard drive, which they did, if the problem had to do with a faulty motherboard, which it was. They replaced my HD with a brand new one and now I DO NOT have any of my data installed in the new computer. Luckily I still have an exact replicate of my hard drive on a seperate external HD. However, when I looked in the bookmark.html under the firefox folder, the bookmarks were all blank and none of my bookmarks were there. I checked the properties tabe and it was dated sometime in March of 2011, earlier this year. I have a lot of stuff I wish to pull out from. The Firefox version I was using was the 3.6.16 and the file version was 1.9.2.4095, my OS was use Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I would like to be able to access it again. Please help. Just a heads up but I'm taking a guess you guys already know, that the information under troubleshooting information is of my current computer and not the same as the one that is copied in my hard drive.

Sorry, I don't find a support article for that type of situation. Read these two articles for help, as bookmarks.html isn't the file type you should be looking for.
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Lost+Bookmarks
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile

Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd.
Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set.
1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price.
I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there.
Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB?
Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopard
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009
where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.

Defragging harddrives

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