I'm curious to hear if you Mac users run any kind of maitenance on your Macs? Any kind of programs to clear cache, fix permissions, etc.? For example, I'm trying out Onyx right now, as I noticed my MacBook Pro was starting up more slowly (already).

Have you found the need to, and if so, why do you think this is the case, and if not, why do you think this is the case?

My husband runs it more often on his laptop than mine because he's always messing with stuff...installing/deleting programs and optimizing every last possible thing for speed and efficiency. Me, I'm not quite so nerdy and most of the stuff stays put.

I've used Onyx here and there, but only when I know that the system cache is full and I'm running out of HD space on my laptop, which is almost all the time! It's great for that sort of thing.

Otherwise, I don't really run it.

Jan

OS X runs some maintenance scripts (daily, weekly, monthly) at night if you leave your computer running over night. It will roll over log files and do some other stuff, like indexing. If you shut your mac for the night, they will never run. I installed a script called anacron which checks and runs those system scripts every time I start up my computer.

Yeah, running something like Onyx and repairing permissions is a good thing. A better thing is running DiskWarrior to make sure everything's good. Running it monthly will head off most issues you might have. And, of course, if you ever have a disk go bad, DiskWarrior is the best thing to run to get it back.

What? You need to run something to keep you Mac running? I thought on PC owners needed to do that???

-Mike

I was told by the wonderful people at the apple store that you don't need to run your computer over night, if you turn it off, it will run the maintenance scripts at the next boot. just food for thought

Maintenance? What is that? I've got a 5 year old G4 that has been on 24/7 for the entire time. Never done any maintenance.

Marc

I don't know. For some reason they were not kicking off until I installed this:
http://members.cox.net/18james/anacron-tiger.html

I think I should, but I don't. I think I have alalysis paralysis since I don't know which method is the right one.

I've been running onyx every now and then. Mostly when I remember... It does seem to make things a bit snappier. Pushing photoshop around means you need every bit of snap you can get...

Good luck

Hope you backed up all your important stuff after you wrote that.

You'll love Disc Warrior - my Mac works 10times better after each defrag.

ERIC

Nathan you need to talk to Shua he had a thread going last year on how to run daily, weekly, and monthly things that clean everything up and repair permissions. It may still be around but I think it was lost in the crash. Shua if you see this, any way you could repost that?

Do a google search for Onyx its a great app for making things quick and perky all the time.

My stuff stays backed up like every single day. Apple doesn't make hard drives.

Marc

maintenance? i run my G5 24/7... it does its thing, i do mine, and i've never had a problem. gotta love macs!

I repair disk permissions once every month or two. And I run disk warrior 2-3 times a year. The only reason I even consider/think of doing either is because I'm doing it all day long on 300 other macs, and so every now and then I decide to treat myself.

Nathan,

If you're not already repair the disk permissions (Under Disk Utility, do a spotlight search for it). That should help. Just a thought, in case you weren't already doing that.