Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

mac health/ keeping ur mac fast!

  • 16-08-2009 12:15am
    #1
    eurotrotter
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,073 ✭✭✭


    hey gang
    anyone would like to share any tops of tricks for keeping ur mac clean tidy and fast?

    i dont even use anti virus, or do disk defragment or disk cleanup!


    anyone got any advice

    thanks
    ed


Comments

  • #2
    Mikey23
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 277 ✭✭Mikey23


    Try Onyx. It's an easy to use front-end for the maintenance scripts etc that your Mac runs. Some are scheduled to run automatically at midnight, but if it's off, then the nightly/weekly/monthly script mightn't run. It cleans caches and so on as well.


  • #3
    Sad Professor
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,693 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    Disk fragmentation isn't really an issue with OS X unless you are doing a lot of video editing. The maintenance scripts Mikey mentioned above handle disk cleanup. As said, you can run them manually using OnyX but it's not essential.

    More so, I would recommend that you repair permissions and verify the startup disk every so often, just to make sure everything is okay. Other than that OS X should stay fast all by itself. If it's slowing down it's usually because of some background process from an app you've installed. When that happens look in System Prefs > Accounts > Login Items and minus off the offending apps.


  • #4
    kevteljeur
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,287 ✭✭✭kevteljeur


    I know I sound like a shill because I keep banging on about it, but Disk Warrior does a great job for me in making sure that the file system is in good shape. I recommend it.

    I've always found that my Macs have been fastest (more 'nippy', and I'll agree that it's very subjective) after a fresh OS install. I think this is because the files are laid out on the disk where the OS expects them to be, to a degree, and defragging the disk can get something similar. So I would say run something like Onyx or MainMenu, clearing all the caches, fixing permissions, etc, run Disk Warrior, then iDefrag (this all takes a few reboots). That said, I wouldn't do it more than once every 3-4 months at the most. It's a waste of time for the reasons Sad Professor says, the Mac OS is well-designed to stay fast.

    Allegedly it helps to keep your desktop free of stuff, as in any files or anything. I don't know if this is still true, but it used to force extra screen drawing and updates. Running various background apps isn't great either, but this is all getting into the dodgy area of performance tuning and you might as well just get more RAM or a faster Mac altogether in that case. Oh, and if you keep your browser open, particularly with a page with Flash on it, can eat processor cycles. It doesn't help at all. Firefox, I'm looking at you.



    .


Advertisement