Every computer user has noticed it; over time, your system slows down. This is particularly true in these days of constant security updates as replacing operating system components not only increases the potential for file fragmentation, but also creates a more insidious problem over time, the operating system itself ends up scattered all over your disk.

This, of course, doesn't show up as fragmentation after all, the files themselves are probably contiguous but nevertheless, it takes your machine longer to start up, it takes programs longer to start, and above all, it takes longer to get your work done.

iDefrag defragments and optimizes your disk for improved performance.

Add in the size of some of the files in common use today, especially music, video, graphics and computer games, and even the best filesystem has trouble keeping things contiguous.

Some people say that HFS+ is so good that you don't need to defragment. In a way, they're right: HFS+ is pretty good at keeping small to medium sized files from getting fragmented it isn't particular good, however, at keeping large files or free space from fragmenting, a particular problem on the Mac because the swapfile must be contiguous on the disk, so you can actually run out of virtual memory long before you run out of disk space if your free space is fragmented.

Another objection, this time raised by Apple, is that existing defragmentation tools may actually slow your machine down by moving files into or out of the "Hot Band", defeating Panther's Adaptive Hot File Clustering code. As far as we know, iDefrag is the first defragmentation tool for the Mac that fully supports the Hot Zone, guaranteeing that this is not a problem.

Even if you aren't interested in defragmenting your hard disk, if you produce products on CD-ROM disks, iDefrag will be of use. Seek times on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks are many times slower than those of hard disk mechanisms, so fragmentation really hits performance, in some cases adding many minutes to read times. iDefrag can defragment disk images before they are burnt onto CD or DVD-ROM, optimizing access time and significantly reducing install or read times.

And, unlike other products, iDefrag provides a wealth of information about your files, so you can see which ones are most fragmented and even look where they are on the disk. The screenshots on this page are from a perfectly normal 120GB hard disk, installed in a PowerMac G4 that is used for software development, wordprocessing and other everyday tasks (writing this web page, for instance).

Look how fragmented it has become; most of that is actually down to one or two large files, like /usr/bin/emacs, shown on the right, with 96 fragments but there are a substantial number of less fragmented files, over 3,000 in fact.

Here are some key features of "iDefrag":

· Full support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
iDefrag is compatible with the latest versions of Mac OS X, and with the very latest hardware from Apple.

· Works with Time Machine
iDefrag is safe to use on Time Machine back-up volumes if you so wish.

· Native support for journaled filesystems
iDefrag knows about the journal and does the right thing automatically. No need to turn journaling off to defragment or optimize your disk.

· Support for case-sensitive HFS+
Using case-sensitive HFS+ for compatibility with legacy UNIX software? No problem. iDefrag knows what to do.

· Supports the Hot Zone
Mac OS X is smart about the files you use the most. It moves them to an area on the disk called the Hot Zone, for improved access times. Unlike older defragmentation tools, iDefrag understands the Hot Zone, and knows which files should be there.

· Thermal Monitoring
iDefrag watches the temperature of your disk while defragmenting. If things are getting a little toasty, iDefrag will wait for the disk to cool down before continuing.

· Four powerful defragmentation algorithms
Optimize or compact your disk as required. Includes a sophisticated programmable optimization engine-if you're an advanced user, you can rearrange the contents of your disk how you want.

· Defragment while the disk is in use
iDefrag can perform simple defragmentation while the disk is still in use. Good for situations where you don't need the full power of the optimizer, but have a few fragmented files you want to sort out.

· Per-block and accurate whole-disk display
See the individual blocks used by your files, watch iDefrag move them around in real time, and get an at-a-glance overview of the state of your disk.

· AppleScript and Automator support
iDefrag includes extensive AppleScript support and comes with an Automator action to help Automator users script defragmentation without needing to learn AppleScript.

NOTE: In order to download iDefrag Beta you must give your e-mail address and password, which is sent to you in the e-mail received when you purchase a product.

Requirements:

· 500MHz PowerPC G3 or better.
· 512MB RAM.

Limitations:

· Demo version will not defrag disks over 100MB in size.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Fixed the rendering of whole-disk volumes in the volumes list.
· Fixed an exception that sometimes triggered if you eject or unmount a disk while iDefrag was running (this was a new bug introduced in 1.7.2).