Thursday 27 December 2012

Disk clean up | Mac cleaner for unwanted files

The Mac machine is much better than a PC, but just like anything else in this world, it is still not perfect. So, you cannot say that with your Mac you are totally free from frustrations,which you have to deal with your PC.

You should therefore understand the things and activities that sooner or later affect your Mac performance. The various reasons reasons of slow Mac are mentioned below.

Here, we will discuss about all unnecessary types of files that build up over time and contribute in degrading Mac performance. There are many questions which come in mind that what are these files, how they are created , and their effect on Mac performance.

These are some unwanted files get accumulated in Mac machine with the passage of time:-
  • Log files: Log files are part of Mac applications that can be used for many puposes. But , after a while these files just take up hard disk space. So, deleting these files is very necessary.

  • Cache Files – Cache files are created by general user activities while using Mac. Like, visiting Internet or web sites. This type of files help user in providing web pages faster(load time decreases), when they are revisited but it also slows down Mac’s computing performance with time. As the time passes numerous cache files get accumulated in drive resulting in consumption of memory and hence lowers speed of operations.

  • Duplicate Copies – Duplicate files are created during modification in files or images and downloading activities from internet. So, finding and deleting duplicate files is a significant step towards improve Mac peformance.

  • Excess Language files – Many software applications are usually available in various international languages. But as far as my personal experience says, for a common user, one language is enough to do all his necessary works. Each program have at least 10 to 12 languages. Removing these excess language files would help in freeing up to 7GB of space.

  • Universal Binary Files- Mac applications like universal binaries include executable instructions for both processor types Macbook and Pros. So, knowing your processor type either Intel or Power PC allows you to remove the executable binaries.

Despite of many other reasons accumulation of unnecessry types of files in Mac is prominent in decrasing performance. So, for optimizing Mac performance in a best way is to perform a thorough Mac cleanup.

Mac's disk utility is specifically for your Mac’s volume repair, partitioning drive and restoring Mac. So, one need to have some adroit Mac cleaner , Which keeps your Mac healthy and maintained as the brand new Mac.

Tuesday 25 December 2012

Increase velocity of Mac drive by deleting Log files

Slowing down of Mac has became a common issue for Mac users. I remember those days when I bought a new Mac machine after getting inspired from its fast performance and efficiency but couldn't get the same results that I was expecting. I encounter that my Mac became sluggish just after few months of usage. Then I took my machine to my friend who is old to Mac (Mac geek) and he told me the cause of sluggish Mac. It was due to the presence of lots of log files that degraded my Mac performance. Log files degrade system performance by reducing free space. But, you can overcome this problem by finding and deleting log files from Mac.

Log Files :-

A log file is a type of file that contains a list of events. It consists of number of events that have been "logged" by a system. Today, as there are many software available in market and with this increase in the number of software, their installation in our system also get increased, which increases the size of log files in drive.
  • Generation of Log files: Log files are automatically generated during software installations activities.
  • Created by Web servers
Log files are also created by web servers and useful in many other purposes. One of the important use of log files is to track various parameters of website visitors. This includes information about visitor's IP address, time of visit, and pages visited.
During software installation various log files are generated which contains a list that will be added to the drive. This list of files include date and the time of files installation, and also their location in the directory. 
 
This allows users to see when and which files were installed on their machine by a specific program. And this is more useful when troubleshooting program crashes or during uninstalling an application.

Another important use of log files is to keep track of which resources were loaded on page during each visit, such as images, JavaScript, or CSS files etc. User can processed this information by statistics software, and it displays all the information in a user-friendly format like web analytics in google.

For example, a user can view a graph of monthly and daily visitors also by clicking on each day to view detailed information.

View log files on console: -
Log files may also be generated by operating systems, software utilities and FTP programs. For example, In Mac OS X, log of all programs and system crashes are saved on console so, it can be viewed using built-in Console application. Mostly log files have a ".log" file extension, but some have ".txt" extension.

Console is a great tool to view log files in Mac. It gives a nice feel while exploring the inner workings of your system through log files information. Mac has so much stuff running that is hidden or not visible to user. So, examining the constantly updated log files is a great way to tune your machine.

Examining log files in Mac:-
  • Opening Console application found in OS X 10.5 and later. This can be found through Spotlight feature of Mac otherwise go to the Applications -> Utilities folder.
  • You will found there about tens of hundreds of log files available.
  • For example:system.log describes issues regarding whole system. DNS (Domain Name Server), networking. mail.log is occasionally useful when trying to get the Mail application straightened out.

It is quite clear that accumulation of Log files plays a big role in slowing down Mac performance. With the passage of time, number of log files increases resulting in less free space for other application or file and hence decreases performance of Mac. So, it is important to delete these files from Mac system using third party Mac cleaning application or optimization tool.





Friday 21 December 2012

Improve your entire Mac performance with optimization software


If your Mac sometimes irritates you by getting sluggish while performing any task or during boot, then from now onwards you don't need to be worry for your Mac. As I have got a best software for it, and I ensure you that it did best job for me as I am using it since last two years and it never fail in any task.

I am very grateful to my uncle who suggest me to opt for this all in one utility named 'Drivetoolbox' of Stellar(famous and trusted data recovery company).
This utility brings 12 utility plus one free bonus utility, which helps your Mac to maintain,repair, manage,protect your hard drive.

About this Utility:
This Utility offers you 13 modules comprised in one software, which optimize your Mac completely by enhancing its performance. It is best for day to day maintenance of your Mac, with great reliability and efficiency.

Its Promonenet Features:
  • Clean Up and Speed Up Mac
  • Clone,Image and restore Drive
  • Manage Mac partitions/volumes
  • Defrag fragmented Mac drive,files,volumes
  • Encripts and protect confidential data from unauthorized access.

Means you can repair corrupted volumes/partitions, wipe your personal data or information whatever you wish to be removed from your system permanently beyond the scope of data recovery, resize or repartitions volume without any data loss, and many more, you can do using this utility.

Now, here is short desription of each utility comprise in it:

1.Speedup Mac:
It speed up your Mac by deleting all unnecessary files and widgets from your desktop and cleans all unwanted apps, cache files,log,universal binaries,duplicate etc.

2.Drive Clone:
It create clone and image your drive,volume,recovery HD etc, and restore or regain lost data.

3.Drive Defrag:
Defrag fragmented Mac volumes, drives and files for optimizing Mac performance.

4. Wipe:completely removes all the sensitive or personal data from your drive.

5.Volume Repair:
It repairs corrupted volumes or verify your drive,volumes without damage.

6.Partition Manager:
It manages Mac partitions, can add,delete,hide,reveal,resize your partitions without any data loss.

7.Drive Initialize:
Initialize your Mac hard drive with the required file system and scheme.

8.Surface Scan:
Check and scans surface of hard drive block by block and shows you bad sectors in it.

9.Raw Data Editor:
This option can make you repair manually the minor volume corruptions by editing file structure.

10.Drive Stats:
It provides you all hard drive status or information and smartly monitors,in order to warn against failures.

11.Shield:
It restores lost data and according to schedule keep backup image of your Mac drive.

12.Drive performance:
It checks and analyze drive performance by studying data tansfer sppe and comparing it with standard speed.

13.Data Encriptor:
By encripting and hiding data,it prevent your data from unauthorized access.

So, to achieve complete optimization of Mac drive one can use above mentioned utiities without any hesitation. As per my suggestion, buying one product, which can do all the tasks to speed up your Mac, is better than spending money for buying single software for single task.
For more deatils visit: http://www.drivetoolbox.com/

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Stellar Drive Clone : Secure your Mac OS X and data loss

Are you freaking up from losing your critical Mac data because of broken operating system or hard drive? Have you ever experienced a situation when your Mac denies to boot normally? I have seen Mac guys looking for some great tools to create clone of Mac drive.

I have found many Mac users searching for third party utility for cloning purpose rather than using Disk utility's “Restore” option and Mac OS X Time Machine. Because Mac's disk utility Restore option allows you to restore your Mac drive but it sometimes cause disk errors. And issues with time machine backup are -­- you need to have large external hard drive for it and it is not compatible with versions earlier than 10.5.
In-spite of crash or broken Mac drive, there are some other required activities that may cause your important data to be lost for forever.
For example: You can lose your data while upgrading your Mac, reinstall OS or replacing a new hard disk.

Its very painful to lose your installed programs, applications and vital data including your office records etc. Cloning is highly crucial because no one wants to lose his personal data also like family photos, favorite videos, pictures, and other crucial information etc.

How to avoid data loss situations and protect your data?

Solution to data loss situation is to make regular backups. Although many on-line backup services and software are available in market but they are not safe to implement.
From users point of view, not only the perfection in output but ease to use, also matters. As I have experienced Stellar Drive Clone, I recommend you to give a try to this product and believe me it does its job automatically. You just need to select the source and destination volume for creating clone or image of drive/volume.

Stellar Drive Clone:

To make sure about your data safety it is recommended to have a backup copy of computer's data on an external drive via Stellar Drive Clone. This software enables you to create bootable copy of Mac drive and recovery HD.

Cloning can be of two types: File level cloning and block level cloning.This software enables you to perform Clone of single drive and as well as of entire drive.

Friday 14 December 2012

Mac cleaner and magical tips to optimize Mac


My Mac is running very slow? How to increase my Mac speed? Or What to do to enhance and optimize Mac performance? These are few common questions asked by Mac users through forums,comments etc. The problem is very common among Mac users so, I am not the only one who has gone through this problem.

I remember the day, when I had to delivered my report , but its sluggish behaviour didn't allowed me to do anything. I was unable to understand the reason of this issue. As I have already tried some manual tips for optimization of Mac drive. Then I have reset PRAM recently and ran disk utility tool for fixing permissions. But, didn't find any rescue for this issue.

One of my friends who is old to Mac suggest me to either installing any third party tool that claiming to "speed up", "Mac cleaner", ''optimize mac'' or perform some magical tricks that will revive our Mac to full speed.
Remove unnecessary startup/login items:
Turning off unnecessary startup items helps to speed up Mac performance as it affects boot up times by using system resources.
So, to turn off Login items. Open System Preferences, click 'Users & Groups' then select 'Login items' button. Simply select the application which you don't want to open with login and remove them with the 'minus' (-) tab.

Keep your Mac Organized:

We can organize our Mac data with Mission Control feature (comes in replacement of express ) in Mac Lion. It is very easy to organize open applications and windows on your desktop. In order to add new desktop to your Mac, click on Mission control icon. But it is quite confusing to work on many windows together so, it's advisable to close unused applications, windows on it.

If you want to close or combine the space, launch Mission Control and move the cursor at   the top of the screen of desktop, after a slight delay an icon will appear for closing space.
Upgrade your Hard Disk to SSD
This won’t be possible for everyone, as it is little expensive. But, upgrading the hard disk from a traditional spinning disk to a Solid State Drive (SSD) will give a huge boost to your Mac. It not only lowers the boot times but, also improves the system performance.

Disconnect Unused or rarely used External Drives & Devices:
Some external drives are extremely slow, and during every reboot they have to spin up and be accessed again. So, the easiest solution is to simply disconnect the unused drives and to eject devices which you aren’t going to be used. This can alone save 10-15 seconds easily to boot time.

Deleting Preferences files:
You should uncheck the Preference files that are not used. As these files can become corrupt and cause programs or apps to run slowly or sometimes crash. So, deleting preferences files is necessary but deleting them can also cause recreation of these files at the time of re-launch of some applications to which these files are related.

Path: Preference files are located here: Macintosh HD / Library / Preferences.

Above are some magical tricks which you should consider for maintaining your Mac performance. These tricks might not help you to get your Mac optimized completely but, it certainly cuts some of your issues. In order to achieve full optimization one should go for tool like Stellar Drive Tool Box. For more details you should click on below mentioned link: http://www.drivetoolbox.com/





Tuesday 11 December 2012

Solve Input/Output Error in Mac by deleting Alias

Mac OS X, is full of various files, and applications that we need to use on frequent basis. Now, the question is-­- in what scenario you need Alias?
When you don’t want to move or change the original location of files or adding it to Dock, but want to access those files from the desktop of your Mac, you need to create Alias on Mac.
For creating an alias:
-­-­-> highlight original icon -­-­-­-> press Command+L or choose File -> create Alias.

  • For making Alias, you can also drag the icon to another location while holding down the Option and Command keys.

Alias is not a duplicate copy of icon, but it looks like a clone of the original icon. For identifying Alias from original you can check a tiny arrow appears in the lower-left corner of icon that is Alias.


For deleting an Alias, simply drag it to the trash. It doesn't effect your original file but once after deletion of Alias to trash, it can't restore.

Cause of input/output error occurrence:
Placing an alias in the operating system (OS) folder or volume can cause an input/output error to occur. In some cases, this can also result into crash of entire system. 

Solution of input/output error:

Removing the alias from operating system (OS) folder will eliminate this error. This process requires knowledge of administration password, that was used by the owner when OS X was 1st set up.

Steps:-
  • On Double-click to hard drive icon (desktop) to open window.
  • Double-click on "System" folder(window)
  • Double-click on "Library" folder (window on the desktop)

To view the contents click on the arrow that is located at the top of the window. Finding Alias that need to be deleted. If the Alias is not in the folder, then click the arrow again in order to make the contents disappear.


Repeat this process of finding Alias in every folder on the window until and unless you come to the Alias that is to be deleted. When you got, Highlight the alias by clicking on it once. Drag the Alias to the trash folder at the bottom left of screen. Don't release the mouse button until Alias touches the Trash folder.
Then a pop up window will appear on screen, where you have to enter the administration password. into a "Password" field. After that Click on the "OK" button.

For deleting contents of trash click the trash folder to open it. And then click the "Empty" button at the upper right of the window to make it empty.
Then click the "Apple icon'' at the upper left corner of the screen. Go to "System Services" from drop down menu and select "Restart".

Let the OS X operating system shut down and restart.




Thursday 6 December 2012

Mac disk Cloning to avoid data loss



I have seen that many people are not confident about their data safety, while doing operations like installing, partitioning drive,changing hard drive,upgrading Mac etc.

Losing precious data is very painful for anyone and it happens due to accidental deletion, formatting, virus attack, software crash, and other reasons?
Losing sensitive data could be a disaster to both individuals and companies. So, it's better to either clone or backup your data.

Importance of Disk cloning:

- To transfer data from old hard disk to new drive without any loss
- Secure and protect your Mac OS and data
- Upgrading Hard drive without any data loss

Reasons for losing data can be any human errors, software malfunction and hard disk failure or corrupt etc. Cloning is the efficient way to restore all the contents from your system, when your Mac drive gets corrupted and thus it helps you to use a clone as a backup.

Mac Disk Cloning includes sector by sector copying of the drive, and you will get an exact replica of your disk.

Cloning a Boot Drive

Cloning boot drive is very important in situations when you face difficulty in booting drive or hard drive crash. The simplest and effective way to create a clone is by Stellar Drive Clone.This application helps you to create clone and image of Mac drive -- just by selecting your source and destination drives, Stellar Drive Clone! does the rest. It allows you to create bootable clone and image of Mac drive.

If you do not want to use this tool, you can clone your drive using Disk Utility’s Restore feature. However, I recommend Stellar Drive Clone software, because Disk Utility sometimes fails. On the other hand, Stellar Drive Clone produces perfect clones and image of Mac drive without any data hardships.

Significance of Cloning:

Disk cloning is a process of copying all data from one drive to another. This method helps you in creating an exact replica of Mac drive. Cloning avoids need of reinstalling OS and other applications too. And it helps you to get back all your vital data store in Mac drive.

Thursday 29 November 2012

Boot Mac with Internet Recovery HD

Can you imagine that you can boot your Mac even after your drive is damaged or crashed and your Recovery HD is not working properly? It is possible with the new feature of Mac release in mid 2011 or later known as­ Internet Recovery.

It is much like your standard recovery partition in your Mac, and you can boot your Mac even if your Mac is not connected using this OS X internet Recovery.
How Internet Recovery Works?

A code is stored into your Mac's firmware, these codes are used by Internet Recovery in the form of some combination. However in standard recovery mode, it uses the software in partition of your Mac drive.

An appropriate boot image is stored on Apple's servers which are used by our Mac to boot Mac into Internet Recovery mode.

So, these are the two things which are used by internet recovery mode in order to boot your Mac without Recovery HD .

Specifically, when you go for Internet Recovery, in order to get that boot image, your Mac contacts Apple's Internet Recovery servers and requests it that appropriate bootable disk image.

Your Mac then automatically downloads the necessary code over the Internet and boots.

Note: It's not always necessary that during installing Mac, recovery HD partition creates in every Mac. So, in this case you must know how to create bootable disk Mac  and clone of Recovery HD using some great utility like Stellar Drive Clone application. And that can be achieved through Stellar Drive clone. It have many advanced features also in its new release of 2.5 version.

Process after booting into Recovery HD:

Requirements for Booting with Internet Recovery, is obvious to have internet connection or your Mac connected with ethernet network. If not connected with ethernet, then other option is to connect with a Wi-Fi network.

It tests all minimal requirements like your Mac's RAM and hard drive.

However, while Internet Recovery is an immensely useful feature, and it could even be a lifeguard or life-saver in emergency situations like hard drive damaged etc. It has one major drawback:

It's very, very slow compared to standard recovery mode, because it is obvious as it must first download the necessary software. In fact, when you boot into Internet Recovery, the first screen you will see a slow-moving progress bar with a warning that booting will take a while.

Way of Booting from Internet Recovery:

If you want to see how it boot from internet recovery, then you can do by holding down Command Option R at startup. But if it doesn't come into play, then you must understand the fact that it doesn't happen until and unless you really need means when your standard recovery HD is gone.

Actually the fact is that you can even succeed to boot, your Mac will boot from internet recovery in a case when your Standard recovery HD partition is damaged or erased. So, if you normally wants your Mac to boot from internet recovery, it instead boot into standard recovery mode only. As I tried many times, but fails to boot into internet recovery. I had actually tried this many times in order to test it, but somehow I manage to do it, and able to access the Recovery HD partition and then erase it from drive. Only then or with the blank drive with no recovery HD partition, I was able to do so.

Partition Mac drive and manage data without any failure


Partitioning Mac drive is a necessary process in all systems having any OS. For Mac users it plays a very important role in maintaining performance of their Mac drive. First, it is required to know why partitioning is beneficial:

Using partitions you can place your different kinds of related files in different partitions. For example, it is good to keep user files separate from OS files. Partitioning protects other volumes from corruption if one volume gets any corruption.

  • By creating Partitions one can protect his data from unauthorized access, by hiding it.
  • Repartition your boot drive without any data loss by using adroit tool like Stellar Partition Manager.
  • Partitioning enables you to have multi-boot system, one system having so many OS, like Windows, Mac etc.
  • You can reclaim free space using this software.
It improve performance as we can keep frequently used files together in one partition, by doing this, the OS need not keep searching in whole drive. So, it increases Mac performance indirectly.



For details visit:http://www.stellarpartitionmanager.com/

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Tips to Reclaim Hard Disk Space in Mac OS X

To maintain performance of your system you need to free up some space in your drive. So, it is necessary to keep checking your hard drive status. When your Mac drive gets closer to its capacity, it affects Mac performance considerably. In this situation, in addition to your actual RAM, OS X also uses your Mac disk as Virtual memory. The insufficient RAM is the main cause for an extremely lethargic Mac. But, before increasing RAM you could try few of space saving tips mentioned below.

Clear unnecessary files from Mac disk:

Clean unnecessary cache files, log files, language files, duplicate files, universal binaries etc. for reclaiming space occupied by all clutters. Remove unnecessary language files resources by downloading Stellar Speed Up Mac. This would recover up to half gigabyte of disk space on hard disk and speedup your Mac performance.

Re-index by Spotlight:

Spotlight is the feature that automatically indexes all the files, contents of your Mac drive in early hours of each morning. But, if you turn your Mac off at night, Spotlight can’t have had a chance to re-index.

So, prevent causing unresponsiveness and performance issues, one should use Spotlight to force it to re-index. By clicking- open System Preferences, then click “Spotlight” and after that choose “Privacy” tab.

For re-index any volume, Click the “+” icon and choose your desired volume you want to re-index. After few minutes remove that volume by “-” icon. By this way, Spotlight will re-index the volume.

Memory even less than system requirement:

According to system requirement of Apple’s Mountain lion, 8 GB of disk space is needed for its installation. However, if your Mac is running out of space then you might figure out a significant degradation in its performance. It will become worse if you’ve low memory too, as your system may not have enough disk space to use it as virtual memory, thus problem arises.

So, you must have the required amount of free space available in drive. And you should think over that, do you really have enough disk space for storing applications, movies, photos, OS X and more..?

The more apps you’ve installed the more disk space is consumed. The more files your Mac has the longer it take to find files, index them (for Spotlight).

So, the lesson here is to make sure that you have possibly archived your old files to an external disk, compress them or simply delete the stuff you don’t need anymore or rarely used, uninstall files before deleting them etc.

Monday 26 November 2012

Quick and Easy Tricks to revitalizing your Mac


Are you struggling with slow Mac performance? Now, need not to worry because I have got a couple of easy and quick tricks for your slow Mac. So, when I got stuck due to this slow Mac behaviour after any updation, the first thing I prefer to do is checking my system configuration.

So, it is advisable to check hardware configuration of your Mac whenever you feel undesirable performance. As we know with every upcoming version of Mac OS X, Apple usually increases system requirements for many good reasons. As these applications perform complicated tasks, there lies a valid reason behind increase in hunger for memory consumption. This consumption of more space in memory may affect Mac speed and performance.

So, determining the need of memory or RAM is must, before increasing RAM or performing any other step.

Clearing Clutters from your Mac:
It is one of the common reasons of slowing down Mac speed. Clearing these unwanted files such as duplicate files, log files, universal binaries, etc. using some software may help to regain its previous speed. With the passage of time, there accumulates plenty of files in our machine (out of which some are useless) and consume a lot of space in our drive. You can clean such types of files and your entire drive using Stellar Speedup Mac tool.

If slow behaviour is not because of any above reasons then there could be any troublesome file located in drive causing the issue. So, this kind of issue can be resolved by resetting your PRAM. Now, you need to know some simple steps to reset your PRAM to avoid such issues.

Resetting Your PRAM:

Resetting PRAM is important and easy step that let enhance your Mac performance. It also clears out all potential issues of your Mac. PRAM resetting clears out all caches on your drive that are responsible for sluggish Mac.

To reset you’re PRAM: During the boot process, hold down [Option] + [Command] + [P] + [R] together, immediately just after Mac has shutdown.After this, your Mac will reboot again. After which you can release those keys and now you have successfully reset your PRAM.

Monitoring Activity Monitor:

When you are at the height of multitasking (performing many tasks at a time),you might feel the need of taking a nap in every noon. In Mac, there is an easy way to see which open applications using most CPU and memory resources.

Just open the Activity Monitor. You will see the numbers are constantly fluctuating, showing you the amount of system resources used by each application. For example: This morning when I am watching the Activity Monitor, I found that Firefox generally takes more CPU resources and about triple the memory resources compared to chrome. So, perhaps now it's time to abandon Firefox use for me and replace it with Google Chrome exclusively.

Safe Boot improve performance by clearing out cache:

Starting your Mac in safe boot will clear all the cache stored on your drive. Safe boot process can take a bit more time than resetting PRAM. But, it is another good way to purge some files that cause performance issues.

For a safe boot: Reboot your system and hold down [Shift] key, during boot process, until you see the login screen. When you reach the login screen, you will succeed to see the words Safe Boot within the login pane. Log in and reboot to complete the process.


Friday 23 November 2012

Disk utility is not enough for imaging Mac drive


Imaging is a technique of taking backup by taking image of given file or drive. Backup of Mac drive is first thing which one should keep in mind while doing any activity related to transfer files,deleting,upgradation etc.

In order to protect our data from losing through any reason, one should always keep Regular backups. Imaging of some file or folder is a way to keep backup in the form of its image. You can take backup either by using Mac inbuilt utility named as disk utility or third party software. Disk utility helps to take exact image of your present state of hard drive.


But, you can't make clone of your drive by using Disk utility.

Here, I am describing step by step process to create image of Mac drive with this utility.

1. Go to Applications -> Utilities then double-click on Disk Utility.

2. First close other applications, then select your Mac's internal drive from the left-hand pane of your Disk Utility.

3. Click on File in the toolbar, after that select 'New' then Disk Image from hard drive.

4. Give some name to your Mac backup and then designate your external drive as the destination from drop-down menu.

5. You can change image settings and can make it read only, compressed, read/write or encrypted also.
Generally we make default setting as "compressed" image format with no encryption. But, if your data is confidential(whether personal or official) its recommended to use encryption.

6. Click on 'Save' to start the process of creating disk image on your selected external hard drive (as destination drive). This process will take few minutes. Then it will notify you by giving some message when the process is finished.

You can save your disk image as backup in form of 'Image'. Apart from this by Disk utility you can authenticate your disk images by applying password-protect and encryption against unauthorized access.

So, using Disk utility you can only do imaging. That's why we generally opt for some third party tool which perform cloning as well. I have been using Stellar Drive clone effectively and found it nice to my Mac drive.

By using this software you can clone your Recovery HDD (in case of Mac Lion) automatically Block level cloning (it involves cloning of entire block at a time)is faster than file level cloning(It involves one by one cloning of files.) Bothtypes of cloning File -level and Block -level are performed by this software.


Thursday 22 November 2012

Defrag drive to boost up Mac performance

Organizing fragmented files together in contiguous manner on hard disk is called defragmentation. As we know files are automatically get fragmented in due course of time after too many modifications. It results in increase in fetching time of processor. So, when user calls a program, OS have to search for its related files. It may delay the process if these files are scattered in memory blocks. So, defragmentation is suggested for faster read/write operations which reduces processing time.

Why Defragmentation is necessary?
Generally, if you ask any Mac user then he will tell you that there is no need to defragment your Mac drive. But only in case of those users who don't work on large files. Because HFS+ of Mac OS X is capable enough to avoid fragmentation in your Mac, up to some small extent (small files of 20MB size) only. But, as we know, our drive have large files such as videos, photos etc. So, defragmentation is necessary to perform for those having bulky files.

Although this topic is controversial but from my own experience I would vote in favour of  defragmentation for improving Mac performance. Yes, it is not clear that how many times one should perform defragmentation, but it depends upon the efficiency of utility and amount of files your Mac possess.

Note: For enabling this utility to work on your drive, it require to have more 10% of free space in your Mac drive.

Software to defragment drive for speeding up Mac:

So, now it is time to get rid of your sluggish Mac and to select a tool that will defrag your drive easily, smoothly, rapidly and that too without any disturbance. The word disturbance is used in a context of a technique known as Hot File Clustering. In which Mac OS X, frequently access files in a Hot zone in-order to perform defragmenting . I know much professional and competent software which do its job without interfering in Mac OS X process.

Stellar Drive Defrag is the most trusted product when we talk about defragmention of Mac drives. The tool is recommended by Mac experts too.

It is advisable to take backup of your system initially as it will protect your data from any mishap. Using this software one can also determine the temperature of the drive and can monitor hard drive status. All the features are available in a demo version of the software. Which is available for free download on the respective website.

This software provides reliability, security and enhance Mac performance just in few clicks. There are several applications available in market but most I heard about is Stellar Drive Defrag. You can defrag your entire drive or single drive its all up to your requirement. And this software enables you to defragment meta-data files and optimizes free space.


Monday 19 November 2012

Tips to overcome fragmentation and slow Mac issues

We know that slow Mac is caused by many reasons and among all of them, fragmentation of Mac files is one. So, in this article we deal with the effects of fragmentation on our system and tips to resolve all such issues.

Is your application taking more time to open which usually had taken seconds. Sometimes its really irritating when you have a lot of work and your mouse acting weired or very slow? So, beware of these activities. Because all these are signs of sluggish Mac and you need to take an appropriate action before it goes unbearable.

Such cases eventually leads to data loss and requires Mac File Recovery to be handled, if the backup is not in place.


Effects of fragmentation on your Mac:


  • It starts freezing during general file operations and taking long time to respond. Sometimes in such situations, during system operations system may crash and so the data structure of your system get damaged. And requires Mac file recovery, if backup is not taken place.
  • Sometimes due to heavy fragmentation there are chances of partition table and file system corruption. In such conditions, you face critical data loss situations.
  • BootCamp partition creation requires free contiguous space on hard drive which is not available due to fragmented data. 
     
Free tips to remove the problem of fragmentation as shown below:

Updation and re installation of softwares:
The software and drivers present in your Mac hard drive should be updated to the latest one, to improve the performance of your syatem. Windows and Mac's have features of giving automatic alerts to let you know when your machine needs an update. So, you just require to update manually.

Defragging Mac hard drive:
As HFS+only avoid fragmentation upto 20mb. So, you need to go for some third party tool like Stellar drive defrag, idefrag etc. Mac has HFS+ file system which only capable to avoid condition of fragmentation in small files of 20mb only. Defragmentation performs free space optimization and enables to utilize maximum free space available in drive.
 
Increasing RAM is another great solution:
Increase RAM is one of great solution to enhance speed of system. As it quite expensive so before installing more RAM one must check whether it required or not. So, you need to know how to determine need of RAM in system. 
 
Third party Application for defragmenting Mac:
You can optimize your Mac performance by defragging Mac files using third party application. The one I know is Stellar drive defrag which is capable enough to perform free space optimization. It enables you to make maximum utilization of free space available in drive.This software also gives you status of your hard drive.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Improve Mac performance by Cleaning Up Mac drive

Apple's Mac mountain lion is undoubtedly an amazing operating system. It is designed with many advanced features and benefits over its predecessor. However, users are still facing slow Mac which result into degradation of performance.

Although in Mac the most important thing is -­-­- data accessing speed. Apple designed Mac OS X with such proficiency and excellence that these are used for both home and business purposes.

Often Mac users (including me) work on large multimedia files or graphics. So, after a long usage Mac starts behaving sluggish. My friend who bought a new Mac, few days ago came to me to share issue he was facing with his Mac. He was surprised as his Mac was just few months old and gone so slow. I can understand that it frustrate you because waiting for application to load is irritating.
Well, I told him the cause of slow Mac and how to solve this problem. So, This is caused by the accumulation of unwanted files and applications as the time moves. Now, one by one I will describe how these files created and affect system performance.

One thing which you may not realize is that the more apps you have in start up list that automatically runs on system boot, this lead your Mac take more time to boot. So, minimize the startup items list inorder to reduce the load upon startup.
 
The most important step one could take to speed up their Mac is cleaning up unwanted applications. It includes timely deleting computers cache files, removing identical (duplicate) files, removing unused applications, language files, unnecessary log files and universal binaries. 
 
All these files contribute to deceleration in efficiency of Mac. Due to this, these files are considered as junk. So, by taking away these files from your Mac is the only way to bring your Mac back in prime condition.

After clean up Mac OS, you can additionally improve its swiftness by defragmenting your drives. Defragmentation helps you to reclaim some valuable are in your exhausting drive, that otherwise occupied by clutters. Mac hard disk will become fragmented with time, means pieces of files are scattered in different destinations, thus processor have to search for related files and it effects Mac efficiencey. By disk defragmenter all files transfer to appropriate places in contigous manner in hard drive.

Creating more free space on hard drive is a good way to boost up your Mac operationes. By deleting the programs which you don't use very often, you can free up space in drive.
So, the above mentioned steps explain what to do for cleaning Mac drive. To know how you can perform these steps for clearing clutters from it visit following link:
http://www.stellarspeedupmac.com/



Monday 12 November 2012

How to Defrag Mac OS X to increase performance


I often see Mac guys getting irritated with their slow Mac performance. Although Mac becomes sluggish after a long usage but the problem can also occur in new machines. However, there are many reasons that may cause your Mac run slow but the most prominent is Fragmentation. 

So, in order to overcome this issue, you need to know all about fragmentation process and also the way of defragging your Mac drive. Regardless of operating system you have, slow computer/machine is an issue with everyone.

How fragmentation occurs and what are its ill effects:

The files you store in Mac drives, are fragmented (files scattered into many pieces or parts) and stored at different locations in memory devices. Due to this, the OS takes more time for searching and fetching the related fragments of files which you attempt to open.

I found people asking questions about defragmenting Mac drive and whether it helps to speed up Mac performance or not. This question is very common among Mac users and has been answered by many experts at many famous forums.

In Mac, there is an advanced feature to avoid the chances of fragmentation of files upto certain level. This automatic defragmentation is applicable over a specific size limit of 20MB only. It raises the question among Mac users about the need of defragmentation in Mac.

What actually the built-in defragmentation safeguards do?

Now, there is need to know what this built-in system does for reducing fragmentation of files. The HFS+ file system of Mac OS X keeps large number of small files together and leaves large free space on drive which might be allocated to larger files later. Hence, reducing the need for defragmentation of files in Mac.
 
At the time of writing files in drive, the OS doesn't use space freed most recently but, rather it seeks for a large space to write the entire file in one place. While Mac OS X have great built-in safeguards to keep your drive optimized , it doesn't go as far as any third party utility would.

Note: It is required to note that all these automatic features of Mac OS X and file system work only when you have more than 10% free space available on your drive.

Defragmenting Mac OS X using specialized tool:

Specialised tools will definitely perform better job by grouping frequently used files together on the fastest part of drive. Defragmenting files of Mac drive irrespective of size resulting in highly optimized drive. 

As per my experience Stellar Drive Defrag software is an optimal solution for defragmenting Mac volumes. I have find numerous feedback and heard positive experience of users in several reviews and comments. So one could try its free download version to check the fragmented files in his drive.

Free download link: http://www.stellardefragdrive.com/free-download-drive-defrag.php




Thursday 8 November 2012

Complete package for Mac Maintenance and optimization

Today the world is digital, computers are becoming our basic need. But, in this era of modern technology we shouldn't forget that these digital devices are after all machines, and as such, they have certain life period.

So, we could not avoid maintenance of our computer or machine. A regular maintenance will increase the life of your machine but when the proper maintenance is not carried out, the life expectancy shortens considerably. Here I will talk about Mac hard drive and its maintenance. 
 
Keep Maintenance of your Mac drive:
There are lists of Mac maintenance tasks you can do to maintain its performance and keep it running smoothly as the day one. So, here are few tasks to be performed for drive maintenance and optimization:

Drive defragmentation - When files are updated, they often grow their original storage space. Actually the computer will fragment the files into parts and instead of moving the entire file to a new location, it places these fragments in noncontiguous manner. In Mac, it is done by Mac Journaled file system i.e HFS+. So, when the file is called up, processor searches the files and related pieces scattered in drive. This adds unnecessary wear on the drives read/write heads. Def-ragging arranges all those fragments in order to optimize operations.

Getting rid of unused files: - Unused files can either be deleted or relocated in some other external drive. Large media files, such as video, movies or pictures, takes lot of space. So, if they are not necessary, user can delete them. Otherwise you can have another option of relocating the files in archived or on external media. This will opens an option of allowing you access to these files if you need, as well as it keeps them from consuming space on drive. 
 
Handling with care - If you don't want to go data lab for emergency data recovery, users must handle their machines with care. Laptops are particularly susceptible to any abuse. Dropping these machines damages the internal delicate components of drive. However, solid-state drives(SSD) are sturdy, but heat, electrical intensification and other abuses can damage these as well.

Prepare for your Mac drive crash:
The first and most important thing a computer user should perform is to prepare for his drive crash or corruption. It is must to have some arrangements in-order to protect your precious data. So, make an effective backup plan is crucial for data protection. Additionally, you can make boo-table clone of Mac drive or recovery HD also, using some third-party utility.

Removing Junk File Types:
Improve Mac performance by Clearing up all clutters from Mac drive like cache, duplicate files, unused applications, undesirable log information and language support files and universal binaries. All these files are said to be junk files or clutters, removing them is a necessity for optimizing Mac performance.

Now, the good news is that you don't need to buy many sepatare software for cloning, defragmentation, clean up Mac, disk wipe, data encryption, volume repair etc, because there is an all-in-one complete utility for optimizing your Mac drive. This utility is Stellar Drive Tool box having a bundle of 12 utilities. This is a complete package for optimizing entire Mac performance.