Amongst the foremost reasons for why people were so desperate about the official release of Mac OS X Mavericks, slowdown issues take up the top spot since they greatly affect the overall performance of the computers, irrespective of the brand name they hold. Fragmentation, in fact, is the prime cause, which results in poor response of data, sluggish startup, and many other issues that equally contribute to bring your Mac to such a deprived state.
People using earlier versions of this ‘so-called’ excellent operating system had a firm belief that slowdown issues would disappear with the release of Mac OS X Mavericks. This consideration enforced them for an early upgrade to Mavericks. However, they soon realized that the same issues appear of Mavericks as well.
The file system on Mavericks is responsible for allocating space to each file, which implements a file allocation algorithm for this task. However, the space allocation scheme does not compare the size of the file to that of the block before saving it.
Consequently, large blocks store small files and rest of the space remains unused, which is wasted. Likewise, many small blocks contain a single large file and cause file splitting. Based on such inefficient storage scheme implemented, fragmentation is classified into three categories:
1. Internal Fragmentation: Due to the inefficiency of the Mavericks file system, many blocks contain small files and rest of the space in these blocks is wasted. The wasted space in a block of the hard drive is termed the fragment and a collection of such blocks inside a closed region of the hard drive causes Internal Fragmentation.
2. External Fragmentation: The term External Fragmentation refers to a state of the hard drive in which the occupied blocks are not arranged orderly. In other words, the space allocation algorithm fails to arrange these blocks in an order for easier access. Consequently, though the blocks of required sizes are available outside the allocation regions on the hard drive, the file system fails to allocate them and go for random allocation.
3. Data Fragmentation: In a state of unavailability of blocks of required sizes, the file system allocates blocks randomly to store the files. Consequently, large files are stored on multiple non-contiguous blocks, which cause data fragmentation.
In a state of excessive fragmentation, your computer eats up system resources (RAM and CPU) excessively, which enhances its read and write times extensively. Consequently, the workload on your computer increases and applications fail to avail CPU time and RAM, and therefore fail to execute. Also, running applications start crashing.
The additional consequences of fragmentation include, applications launching poorly, files taking longer time to open, slow system boot and shutdown, browser crashing while opening multiple tabs, and more.
These issues might not affect your personal work at home, but you will never tolerate them if they occur in your office PC and hamper your productivity.
The file system used by Mavericks to format the hard drive itself deals with fragmentation, but it follows certain criteria, according to which, the file to be scanned and defragmented can be (at most) 20 MB. In other words, the HFS+ file system fails to defrag large files.
Since the boot volume is the primary volume in which overall execution of files takes place, you should first and must go for your OS X Mavericks drive defrag in order to avoid boot/shutdown and like issues. This will also fix the issues like applications launching poorly and more, thereby speeding up the system boot and execution of files.
As per the process, the memory or space on the drive undergoes rearrangement of blocks in a logical order by efficiently analyzing the allocated as well as empty blocks and the allocation algorithm put into practice. Defragmentation implements non-destructive algorithm for blocks reorganization so that there should be no data loss in the mean time.
With defragmentation done, the response time of the files and applications is improved significantly. This is because the blocks storing such data no longer contain free space. In fact, the free space is fused to make large blocks for further usage, which also means that defragmentation frees up drive space, considerably.
Note: Please ensure that the defragmentation software is authorized and reliable for the task before using it.
Faizan Ahmad
About the Author:
This article is posted by Faizan who is the Author and Founder of TechSenser. He is a Professional Blogger from India and a passionate writer about Technology, Gadgets, How-to-Guides, etc. You can connect him on Google+.
People using earlier versions of this ‘so-called’ excellent operating system had a firm belief that slowdown issues would disappear with the release of Mac OS X Mavericks. This consideration enforced them for an early upgrade to Mavericks. However, they soon realized that the same issues appear of Mavericks as well.
Fragmentation on Mavericks
Fragmentation has been a massive issue on Mac based computers, as there is no internal utility provided by the manufacturer to resolve the issue. The HFS+ file system used to format the Mac drive splits up the overall space into blocks where each block is intended to save a file. Since these blocks are of unequal sizes, saving a file larger than the block creates issues. Go through the following for details:The file system on Mavericks is responsible for allocating space to each file, which implements a file allocation algorithm for this task. However, the space allocation scheme does not compare the size of the file to that of the block before saving it.
Consequently, large blocks store small files and rest of the space remains unused, which is wasted. Likewise, many small blocks contain a single large file and cause file splitting. Based on such inefficient storage scheme implemented, fragmentation is classified into three categories:
1. Internal Fragmentation: Due to the inefficiency of the Mavericks file system, many blocks contain small files and rest of the space in these blocks is wasted. The wasted space in a block of the hard drive is termed the fragment and a collection of such blocks inside a closed region of the hard drive causes Internal Fragmentation.
2. External Fragmentation: The term External Fragmentation refers to a state of the hard drive in which the occupied blocks are not arranged orderly. In other words, the space allocation algorithm fails to arrange these blocks in an order for easier access. Consequently, though the blocks of required sizes are available outside the allocation regions on the hard drive, the file system fails to allocate them and go for random allocation.
3. Data Fragmentation: In a state of unavailability of blocks of required sizes, the file system allocates blocks randomly to store the files. Consequently, large files are stored on multiple non-contiguous blocks, which cause data fragmentation.
Consequences of Fragmentation
Fragmentation is subject to inefficient storage on the hard drive. In fact, Mac OS X Mavericks gradually loses its performance in this state. Based on the extent of fragmentation caused on your computer, you may come across many unusual scenarios depicting performance disaster.In a state of excessive fragmentation, your computer eats up system resources (RAM and CPU) excessively, which enhances its read and write times extensively. Consequently, the workload on your computer increases and applications fail to avail CPU time and RAM, and therefore fail to execute. Also, running applications start crashing.
The additional consequences of fragmentation include, applications launching poorly, files taking longer time to open, slow system boot and shutdown, browser crashing while opening multiple tabs, and more.
These issues might not affect your personal work at home, but you will never tolerate them if they occur in your office PC and hamper your productivity.
Defragmentation on Mac Mavericks
It is a well-known fact that Mac OS X does not provide defragmentation feature to fix slowdown issues occurred due to fragmentation. In fact, since there is no such tool provided, it does not mean that Mac machines (even if running the most recent OS X Mavericks) do not face memory or data fragmentation.The file system used by Mavericks to format the hard drive itself deals with fragmentation, but it follows certain criteria, according to which, the file to be scanned and defragmented can be (at most) 20 MB. In other words, the HFS+ file system fails to defrag large files.
Since the boot volume is the primary volume in which overall execution of files takes place, you should first and must go for your OS X Mavericks drive defrag in order to avoid boot/shutdown and like issues. This will also fix the issues like applications launching poorly and more, thereby speeding up the system boot and execution of files.
How Defragmentation Works?
Defragmentation refers to a process, which results in improved performance of the computer by utilizing the drive space efficiently. As Mac OS X lacks defragmentation utility, you have to go for an external one to get this job done.As per the process, the memory or space on the drive undergoes rearrangement of blocks in a logical order by efficiently analyzing the allocated as well as empty blocks and the allocation algorithm put into practice. Defragmentation implements non-destructive algorithm for blocks reorganization so that there should be no data loss in the mean time.
With defragmentation done, the response time of the files and applications is improved significantly. This is because the blocks storing such data no longer contain free space. In fact, the free space is fused to make large blocks for further usage, which also means that defragmentation frees up drive space, considerably.
Note: Please ensure that the defragmentation software is authorized and reliable for the task before using it.
Faizan Ahmad About the Author:
This article is posted by Faizan who is the Author and Founder of TechSenser. He is a Professional Blogger from India and a passionate writer about Technology, Gadgets, How-to-Guides, etc. You can connect him on Google+.