A year ago I bought my first Mac, a 17" powerbook. I've since given up my PC, but I think I'm going through "system wipe" withdrawal.

With my PC, I'd regularly clean out all unneeded files, temp files, stuff like that. I'd also defrag occasionally, and when times got tough, I'd wipe the OS partition and do a clean install of XP, to keep things moving swiftly.

Well it's been a year now with OSX, and I'm still using my original install of the OS (save for the update from jaguar to panther). Lately I've noticed that there are times when the OS seems to act a little sluggish. I don't know if these were isolated incidents, or if there is perhaps something I can do about it.

So in review, I'm pretty much just wondering if there are any operations I can perform to make sure my mac is nice and clean. Are there any apps that can help me out with this stuff?

Thanks.

**EDIT**
Damn, I just realized this is in the hardware section...If this can be moved to the 'Discuss OSX' section, many thanks.
**EDIT**

I mainly support Windows machines, although my wife has a G3 Powerbook (Pismo) at home. A couple of things: If you can boot off of another drive like a cd, try to defrag that way. Rebuilding the desktop may help as well. Another option I've heard some people do is zapping the PRAM. The last two should be easy to find by using google. I know with the PB at home, to defrag using Norton Systemworks 2.0 that we had to make sure that OS 9 disk drivers are installed, even though we do not have OS 9 installed, only 10.2.8.x. Hope I've helped a little.

Also, how much RAM do you have? I put 1GB in the PB, and it runs very well for a 4 year old system.

Check out a free program called Onyx, it has all kinds of tools to clean your system. If you want to defrag your system check out a program called Disk Warrior, though it probably isn't needed unless you work with large files often.

Edit: When you upgrade your OS it is always best to do a clean install rather than a straight upgrade.

Ditto on the OS upgrade!

Ninja, thanks fot the idea about Onyx. I'll have to check it out.

when i said 'upgrade' from jaguar to panther, I was referring to a clean install. that's why i mentioned it as the exception to my 'single install' statement.

I'll definitely check out Onyx later when I get home from work. Thanks.

And also, about RAM...I currently have 512. Now that I've got a job as a product designer and I'm heavy into Photoshop and Flash, I suppose an extra 512 would be a smart idea...

Have a look at some of this too -

http://www.macmaps.com/oldMacosxspeed.html

Maybe this too?

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003...aintenance.html

Yeah, I'm starting to do a lot of video editing on my main machine, a P4 2.8 800FSB. I need to upgrade my memory as well. I've only got 512 in it. I suppose another 512 would help, plus a real NLE package. Currently using Pinnacle Studio 8, just can't afford the Matrox Suite with Premiere Pro yet.

No offence, but what does that have to do with anything in this thread, or even forum?

Steve, from your second link, I found this:



This is good news. Makes me feel a bit better about my hard drive's condition...

Moved here

I am always cleaning stuff off my OS X partition, old pref files, parts of OS X that are not needed and other random things like logs.

I use an app called 'WhatSize' (its free) and just go down the list starting with the largest files and remove what I dont need. Its not unusual for my to find a few hundred MB of crap a month. I dont really think it makes OS X any faster, but I dont like having files on my HD that I dont know what they do.

Look at my folder sizes and you can see about how much you can remove from OS X (the the exception of your Apps and Users Folder).

I could probably clean out a lot more, I have not removed anything in a while.

OS X was designed to require VERY little user maintenance.... best thing to do is leave the computer on overnight once a week (this is when OS X runs it's built-in 'speed up' tools) if you want to run these scripts to your own schedules search for MacJanitor on MacUpdate.com or VersionTracker.

Seriously, I've had Panther installed since release day, and it's better now than it's ever been.

I know when I switched from Windows, I was quite surprised that I didn't have to 'look after' the OS more! but now I'm used to just getting my work done, and not having to worry about something needing fixing.

Aladdin Spring Cleaning, look into it, it may just be the app you're looking for.

Since the original poster was talking about apps that he uses which are RAM intensive, I was just making a comment along those lines. I'll admit, a little OT, but I think still a little relevent. No offence taken.

this thread has been very helpful, thanks to all who contributed.

im a new user and was in search for programs like the ones mentioned in this thread.

i repair permissions often but i still dont know what it does.....what does repairing permissions do ? lol

Oh! I thought that was considered common knowledge! It sure is when you read a few Mac Vs PC Flame wars!

Personally i don't do alot for maintenance really, but i'll check out that 'WhatSize' thanks for the link bud.

It cleans up the system with regards to permissions you have to each file / folder, in terms of Read/Write/Execute. When an error in your permissions settings occurs, it may cause problems - For example, your applications may not launch or your system may seem a little more sluggish...

Just used WhatSize....damn. I love it.

I just went from 1.31GB of free space to 12.84GB

Thanks for the link.

You may also like OmniDiskSweeper. It isnt free, but has some cool feature like showing you which package different files are from.

What exactly did you have on your machine that took up over 11GB of info? Those are some pretty big temp files!

Well...

I had a folder of the 'Top 500 Rock & Roll Songs' that I never deleted after importing them into iTunes.
I had a few large games that I completely forgot I had and obviously haven't played in a long time.
I had a few directories of PSD images from the past that I no longer need and also forgot about.

To name a few...

PureEdit, thanks a lot for WhatSize tip.
I cleaned out a lot of junk, ~500MB. Jack31081, you beat me...

OS X doesn't really need cleaning, per se. All system preferences and 'registry' type settings are stored in individual XML files rather than a central repository like in Windows. So if you stop using a particular app, it won't use any resources unlike in Windows. If you delete an app, the preference files will just sit there harmlessly doing nothing.

Then there's the defragging as mentioned. This is probably one of the coolest things about OS X.

Finally, as for repairing permissions, this may be a bit overkill but I've set my system to do this nightly. Here's how.

Open a vi session in the Terminal and create a shell script containing this code:
$ vi Repair.sh


This will repair permissions using Disk Utility, and log the results to a file named DDMM-Repairs-HHMMSS in /Users/James/Repairs/. Substitute as necessary if you want it somewhere else. It runs invisibly.

To make it run every night, use the crontab:
$ sudo vi /etc/crontab


This tells the script to run at 2130 every night. If you're not comfortable playing with the crontab, use something like Cronnix (although I personally dislike it).

Don't forget to Index the drive so everything is found and opened quicker! Leave it on overnight, it might take a while.

Sorry maybe my question is a bit stupid, how u index a drive? and is it really useful?

Right click on your HD icon and click Get Info. There should be a thing on there that says Index.

Is it worth it? Maybe, it takes a while to do but personally I didn't notice much of a speed boost in search times after indexing.