disk defragging?

[Bert Bates]

Hi Guys,

My 160 gig MacBook Pro disk is down to 7 gigs available, and I suspect that's why things are starting to slow down

I know I have to backup some stuff and free up room.

My question is this: After freeing up space should I do some sort of "defragging"? I know back in the DOS and early windows days defragging was crucial, but it seems I've heard some people say that OS X doesn't really care.

??

[William P O'Sullivan]

Can't not help.

I would be more concerned about where the other 153Gb is allocated. ;)

WP

[Bear Bibeault]

Defragging? The concept is vaguely familiar...

[Greg Charles]

The Mac OSX file system is based on inodes, isn't it? That would make it less susceptible to fragmentation. I used to understand why, but when I defragged my brain awhile back, I also purged a bunch of knowledge that wasn't any practical use to me. If you're interested, http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_doesn_t_linux_need_defragmenting seems to be a reasonably good explanation of it. It's talking about Linux, but the basic points should carry over to OSX.