A question we are often asked in service is, “What can be done to speed up my Mac?”
Aside from perhaps a new solid state drive, or adding RAM to the computer, one thing that can help performance is to defragment your hard drive.
Your hard drive works away day in day out, storing and swapping data all transparently in the background, while you are working on your machine or even when you are away from it. Over time, the storage area of the drive starts to “fragment”, meaning as files are added and removed the pieces left behind, while still viable storage, they are broken up, as the drive fills up these smaller pieces are used to storage larger files but in sections, this makes the drive work harder to keep up and causes slow downs, and if extreme can even cause premature failures on the device.
So what can be done? The easiest answer is to bring your machine in and have a “tune-up” so to speak done to it. This will allow us to test all the components, defragment your hard drive and possibly catch a hardware failure before it becomes a problem.
If anything goes wrong during the defragmentation process data loss is possible., therefore it is very important to make sure you have made a backup of your data before this type of work is done, and we can also provide that service to you if you have not done so.
An average computer user should consider a tune-up every 12 months or so, while a heavy data user may consider more frequent maintenance.
While your here, talk to a service tech about your backup strategy at the same time, for a little extra piece of mind.
A healthy hard drive makes for a healthy Mac!
Jeff Cooper, Senior Systems Administrator, Mac Outpost
