Is there any disk cleanup software for Mac?

[cambsno]

Had my imac for over a year now, and have been thinking, do I need to have a cleanup. When I had my PC I found it was best to 'spring clean' every so often to create space and remove stuff i didnt need.

Not found anything like this on amazon, is it something i need or would find useful? Any recommendations.

[Tenex]

Lots, free and paid. I'd recommend Onyx its free and will do all you need. However you don't really need to worry about spring cleaning a Mac in the same way you do Windows.

[Zebadee69]

Try 'MainMenu' here: Santa Software | MainMenu

It's pretty good.

[koobs]

If you're confident in terminal, most disk maintenance can be run from the command line using diskutil http://developer.apple.com/documenta...iskutil.8.html

[simon12]

Given that Macs are supposed to run 'cleaner' than PCs, how often do you need to clean up a Mac. What exactly are you cleaning if there are no registries or malware?

[Tenex]

Some run a regular routine using iCal to automate the process but mostly you don't need to do anything. I flush the caches if I have browsing problems but thats every few months. Running overnight will allow OS X to run regular routines but again you don't need to be particularly prescriptive.

[cwick]

One I do run now and then, when I remember, is the periodic tasks in terminal:

% sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

It'll need a password to run. These are scheduled to run around 3am, but my laptop's never on at that time, so I usually do them manually every few months.

This will run a bunch of cleanup stuff, but it's mostly removing log files, system messages and temp files.

[simon12]

I'm still thinking in 'Windows' mode so I might be a bit too cautious but it appears that there is some cause to clean the system occasionally......

So, in a nutshell (from a newcomer to Mac) what's a recommended program to run and how often would I use it?

[LFC_SL]

I ran Onyx using this guide:
Keep your Mac running smoothly with OnyX : Switching To Mac

However I really want to defragment the hard drive, because after digitising my complete Friends DVDs (80GB) and selecting a few choice films to digitise (80GB), a big of lag has now come up when initialising programs

I am thinking getting a spare HD, taking all the video files off then putting back on should do it, no?

[baldrick]

You should repair disk permissions every so often. This is done via Disk Utility....

[simon12]

What are disk permissions?

[cwick]

Every file and directory on your disk has a set of permissions associated with it (who can read, write and execute it). By some process that I don't comprehend, these permissions get 'broken', yet disk utility is able to 'repair' them.

It's a little bit of voodoo baked into Mac OS X. Whenever something isn't working as expected, the first mantra you should attempt is the 'repair permissions' mantra. This makes no sense, and the fact that it often works only makes it worse.

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by simon12

So, in a nutshell (from a newcomer to Mac) what's a recommended program to run and how often would I use it?

How about reading post #2 or 3?

Honestly I've had a Mac for 4 years and like you thought I should run an app once a week etc, but after some time I discontinued it and it really made no difference - Macs largely look after themselves. If you get a specific problem that's the time to do a little maintenance.

Originally Posted by LFC_SL

I am thinking getting a spare HD, taking all the video files off then putting back on should do it, no?

Somewhere on here there was a ref to a good explanation of why it isn't necessary to defrag discs in OS X, if I find it I'll post it but the nub is that modern HDDs are so fast that typically when files are written to disc the complete file is written so the fragmentation is not significant. On Windows I'd defrag every week and now I have a utility to do it on OS X it doesn't seem from the summary report to be worthwhile.

[LFC_SL]

Files under 20mb are defragmented by macs when accessed or something like that. Which accounts for minus 5% of my HD I'm not paying for defragmentation because a) I'm cheap* and b) I figure putting the videos back on in one single go should mean all the data is in one place

At most I will have only wasted my time and will have a reference for the future

*Feel free to misquote me

[Tenex]

Well the background to my comment should really have been included in my post - all my video content is on one of the external My Books unless its recently downloaded so in a sense its as you have proposed. When I said the defrag wasn't worthwhile that refers to the iMac's HDD from which the content is moved. Thought you had a Drobo though, don't you keep the content on there?

[LFC_SL]

Other moderator

[nodeath]

Originally Posted by cambsno

Had my imac for over a year now, and have been thinking, do I need to have a cleanup. When I had my PC I found it was best to 'spring clean' every so often to create space and remove stuff i didnt need.

Not found anything like this on amazon, is it something i need or would find useful? Any recommendations.

I found Hyperbolic Software - Tidy Up! very useful.
Mainly it's for removing duplicates.