Do you still defrag?

[tRoN]

Throw it against a wall

Didn't work. Any other ideas?

 

[kingrob]

Didn't work. Any other ideas?

Mac uses a different filesystem, like Linux, and apparently it optimises itself.

 

[nand]

Mac uses a different filesystem, like Linux, and apparently it optimises itself.

Also, http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1375

 

[kingrob]

Also, http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1375

Thank you!

 

[me_]

ext4 acts in a more intelligent way than merely adding new files into the next available space. Instead of placing multiple files near each other on the hard disk, Linux file systems scatter different files all over the disk, leaving a large amount of free space between them. When a file is edited and needs to grow, there’s usually plenty of free space for the file to grow into. If fragmentation does occur, the file system will attempt to move the files around to reduce fragmentation in normal use, without the need for a defragmentation utility.

That's not entirely true. It is the case if you don't have a lot of files on your drive, but if your drive is frequently getting to 80 - 90%, it's probably getting quite badly fragmented. I was shocked when I saw how badly fragmented my ext4 partition was so now I defrag regularly using e4defrag and it makes quite a big difference.

Windows defrag isn't just about clearing fragmented files. It also optimizes some files by placing dlls and exes (which don't change) at the start of the drive which is quicker to ensure the system loads faster and regularly used applications open quicker.
It also allocates free space after files that are modified regularly to try reduce the amount of fragmentation, however I don't think it's quite as effective as ext4.