Defragmenting HDD

[oldcro]

I've always had PC's on which I defragmented the hard disks now and then. Now i use am iMac I cannot find any way to do this. Do Macs automatically defragment their drives, or is there a way to do this I haven't found yet?

Another annoyance with the iMac is that it looses the internet connection quite often "you are not connected to the internet" notice pops up even when I am. Connection is via an ethernet cable, so should I remove the cable and use Airport instead? I have never had connection problems when using a PC, and still don't with my Sony laptop.

Hope someone can put me right before this iMac goes out of the window and I go back to good old PC's.

 

[eGuru]

I use a free programme called Onyx to keep my Powerbook clean.
From what I have been told Apple computers carry out self maintenance tasks but I cannot find where the settings are right now.

Some information here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375?viewlocale=en_US

 

[oldcro]

Thanks for the info and Apple link eGuru, It seems I would only need to defragment/optimize (in Apple speak) when disc is near full.

 

[Shude]

File fragmentation is a "feature" of FAT and NTFS type file systems. A lot of unix-like file systems do not suffer from fragmentation at all!

 

[seymansey]

As per shude. Defragmentation is a workaround to what is a fundamentally poorly designed file system in windows. Other operating systems are not affected.