How to Partition your Mac drive OS X

Partitioning hard drive is a common practice among users for managing data in Mac machine. Although there are many reasons and benefits of it, but creating a multi-boot drive, is most significant. The search for Mac drive management tool became wider after the launch of new version of Mac OS X i.e 10.8.

With the release of Mac Mountain Lion, one should needs to create divisions in Mac drive for keeping this OS X 10.8 or files associated with it, in separate section. Before creating these one must need to understand its requirement for partitioning Mac drive.

Why user need to create partitions in Mac Drive:

1. It allows you to keep separate OS, program files and user files from each other. This will make you able to create backup image or clone of your OS and installed software without disturbing other files.

2. After creating it, you can have a separate area for OS, virtual memory, swapping/paging.

3. It help you to keep frequently used files and application near each other in same or closer regions.

4. Partitioning of drive results into changing file size rapidly and dynamically, by keeping separate cache and log files from other files.

5. You can have multi-boot setups, it allows you to have many OS in one machine. So, as a result your data integrity and authenticity is maintained. As one system can be used by many users via different logins and booting with different OS present in different volume, without losing your private data.

Ex. Linux.,win,Mac OS x etc. You can install different OS on same hard disk by creating different partitions and you have a choice to boot your system with your preferred OS which is compatible.

6. If one volume of your drive is corrupted due to any reason, it doesn't affect others. So, other file will not be affected.

7. By division of drive one can have a separate partition for diverse range of files like one section for music and for keeping movies, data files and pictures different volumes respectively.

8. It keeps your related files together in contiguous location in memory, it reduces read/write time of processor in fetching and searching files from drive. Hence increase performance of system.

How to Create partitions in Mac OS X 10.8:

Today as we know all work is done digitally means on computer whether its related to office or home. So all this work require large memory on your system for storage. When your Mac drives become full, it needs an external hard disk for storing different category of data by making different partitions in it.

For installation purpose also as described above, to use another OS with Mac OS X 10.8 you need to make divisions in your Drive.

There are two ways to do it:

1. Boot camp Assistance

2. Disk Utility

1.Using Boot camp Assistance:

Boot camp Assistance creates a volume just for Windows, it lets you run windows on your Mac machine, without erasing any existing volume from your drive.

So, if there is a PC application that you need to run on your Mac you just require a copy of start up Boot camp.

Requirement:

• Intel based Mac with built-in keyboard & mouse

• Mac OS X version 10.5 or late

• Latest firmware update available

• Boot camp Assistant

Do 's Before installing Boot camp:

• Backup important data.

• Update your Mac to latest version of Mac OS X, use software update in

Apple menu to check latest updates.

• Install latest update available for firmware updates available on your Mac.

2.Using Disk Utility:

• Go to Applications-­­­­­­­­­­> click to Utilities-> Disk utilities

• Choose drive and click partition.

• It provide information and then at end choose correct partition scheme.

Disk utility is a great tool but its features are fairly limited as compared to third party software. As I have used many software for it, and from past two years I have been using Stellar Partition manager utility, and its awesome. Easy to use application and best in performance, so, that saying much I would suggest to have a look by downloading its free trial version.

It is recommended by experts to clone your drive using some reliable Mac cloning software in order to be on safe side as sometimes partitioning process can lead to data loss.  

Why and how should I Optimize or Defrag my Mac Drive

When compared to window users, Mac users like me, are more concerned about their machine performance and its maintenance. So, I too want to know how and why should I defrag my Mac drive?

I love my Mac very much so, before I use any technique or application, I always check for its reliability and risk levels. If you love your work, you should not take any risk with your vital data and always be on safer side, take a backup before going into any up-gradation of OS, any optimization technique.

During my analysis, I went through many questions and discussions. Here are some queries from many sources and their solutions by experts.

How do I actually defrag my Mac? Is it necessary to backup my all Mac files before defragmentation? How defragging optimize my Mac?

By defragmenting Mac files as the name itself gives an idea of keeping fragmented data together in order to avoid delay in performance. When we ask many Mac users about the fragmentation level of their drive, they often ask “Do I really need to Defrag my Mac.

There are many benefits of defragmentation of Mac drive, some are:-

• Quick boot times
• Faster access time in fetching file
• Reduces wear on drive because read/write head of drive do not need to travel as much, when searching for a file.

As we know, Mac itself has capability to avoid fragmentation of files but up to 20MB only. So for large files, one really needs to optimize his Mac by defragmentation. A highly fragmented drive cannot perform to its optimum and thus it is always recommended to defrag the drive for routine maintenance of Mac drive and keep it optimized by using some third party tool.

1. Use Stellar Drive Defrag software to optimize Mac performance:

This utility defrags your entire Mac files or selected files automatically, without consuming your precious time. Just what you need is to click on the desired volume or drive you want to defrag, and do whatever you wish as it does its job by own.

Its new version has many advanced features including temperature bar, which gives you temperature of your drive, so that you will aware of its rise in temperature and can act according to it. Using this tool one can also defragment boot volume.

2. Have Patience!

If you don’t use your drive very rigorously or say you don’t run heavy application, then there is no need of defragmenting your drive too often. Actually your Mac drive has to work a lot during optimization by defragging your files (keeping related files fragments together; organize files). So, you should wait before running defragmenting process again, until and unless your Mac disk has a large percentage of fragmented files. Means if you’re utility shows you that your disk is 5%fragmented, you can afford to wait.

Manage your Mac easily | Optimize Mac performance

With the advancement of Mac things are becoming smoother and easier to use. But, with the due course of time, Mac slows down due to many reasons but, fragmentation of files and accumulation of number of unnecessary files (cache, log, duplicate, universal binaries, corrupt partition etc) are the important ones.

Often, Mac users seem to search for a utility which can solve all the issues related to Mac performance. Although Mac has its own tool (Disk utility) for maintaining its performance and keep it healthy but, up to certain limits only. In order to optimize, repair, and manage Mac, we have to opt for a utility which does all tasks required to attain optimization.

There are lots of things which make your Mac running slow, although Mac OS is considered as the most reliable OS among all, but now-a-days slow Mac performance is a common issue. When I feel my Mac is slugging, this situation becomes worst when I find difficulty accomplish any task in my Mac OS X.

Gradually this situation becomes intolerable and hence it causes several problems as mentioned below: -

• Mac machine hangs and freezes frequently during any work or processing.
• Application terminates in between execution of process
• Slow startup, copying, deleting and transferring of files
• Files, apps, and folders takes long time to open
• Sometimes applications become unresponsive to user request

Hence, it becomes necessary to opt for an all rounder tool which can overcome all these issues and make your Mac optimized.

When I was stuck in this problem, my friend who is having good knowledge of Mac, suggested me to go for Stellar Drive Tool box. This tool is an all in one utility that contains 12 plus one free utility, all these useful modules in a single module.

I find this tool very useful in optimizing and enhancing Mac performance effortlessly. In my next post I will describe all its utilities it contain and the things it can do.

Why you need to Resize your Mac partition

Resizing Mac partition is required to be done in many situations. As I am using Mac since five years , have such quite big and good experience with it, so in this concern I can confidently say that, Mac users are very sophisticated towards their Mac performance.

You can easily resize your Mac partitions using Disk Utility-­-­- which is a free tool provided by Apple for maintaining your Mac partitions and image backup. And you can also perform partitioning by using third party application which you prefer to use

Reasons why you need to resize your Mac partitions:

1.We store all our precious data like important scan copy of documents, office papers, songs, video, movies etc., in hard drive,. When your drive gets full in due course of time, and to copy more data there is no space left in hard drive, then you realize the need of resizing your partitions.

2.Now-a-days, we store every bit of information, either personal or professional, in our Machine.

So, eventually we need to resize partitions.

3.Generally we face the problem when there is limited space left in boot volume (where all system apps are installed). We require more space when we need to install some software. In such a scenario, we increase the volume size, but the task is risky so, we should use some third party Mac volume resizer.

4. Sometimes we encounter situations when a volume is assigned size much greater than the requirement. In such cases too much of free space is wasted. Such free space can be utilized if merged in other partition. This can easily be done with Stellar Partition Manager.

By decreasing size of partition, we can make use of that unused space, by creating entirely different partition or merging this free space into some other partition.

Apart from the above discussed facts, resizing partitions play an important role in optimization of Mac drive and utilize of memory.

In my next blog I will discuss how to resize Mac partition using Disk Utility.

Drive Cloning - A backup option and its Types

We can say cloning can be a better backup option in order to protect our data from any loss. So, one must take cloning as a serious task to be done without any failure. Cloning creates a mirror image or copy of one drive or partition from one machine to another, so that the two drives are exactly the same in both content and functions. Today we have all our imperative data stored in hard drives, so it is very essential to take some measures towards its protection from failure or any data loss.

However, Time Machine can create backups of your Mac drive efficiently and that backup is restorable but not bootable. But, you must restore them to a partition in order to use them as such, and it takes several hours to complete. On the other hand, cloning allows you to create immediate bootable backup, and therefore are quite preferred as an effective option. Sometimes, even Mac experts who are well aware of cloning process, can get confused about the difference between these types. These are Block level and file level cloning.

So, here, types of cloning are the ways of making clone of hard drive, either entirely or portion of hard drive (volume, partition).

Here I am going to explain you difference between these cloning types and their pros and cons over each other.

Click to create clone of your Mac- how to clone mac drive

 

1.File-level cloning(cloning file-by-file):

In File-level cloning, only one file is copied at one time from one drive to another, regardless of data location on the drive. Mechanism behind this is that file level reads and learn the logical file system of your source drive and then create a new drive's data structure so that they have the exact same properties(permissions etc.) like the current source drive or volume.

2.Block-level cloning(cloning data from destination drive to clone disk block-wise):

In Block-level cloning, as the name suggests here same that it copies the whole block not file wise, but entire block at one time. In Hard-drive our data is organized in a large number of "block" or we can say sector. Blocks that are copied are also having the same properties like data as the original one,format, partition scheme and so on.

Now when it comes to using these schemes of cloning, there are some practical differences you will get to know in terms of speed and use.

File-level cloning Pros:

1. It Defrag files automatically while cloning, means save files in organized manner or in contiguous memory location.
2. It is useful because it allows you to update your cloned copy of volume/drive within few minutes and hence synchronize source volume to clone volume.

Disadvantage of file level cloning:

3. Its drawback is that you can clone one volume at a time, means if your Mac has two or more partitions, you can't clone two portions at the same time by this file level. And it also cannot partitions boot camp and secondary drive.
4. File level cloning is relatively slow than block level, especially for drives that are full. Because file access needs processor to read the file system, and fetch the location of file, then fetch the particular file. So all of these steps increase copying time of file level cloning.

Block level cloning Pros:

5. It has fast cloning speed then file- level because it takes block-by-block, irrespective of the data it contains. And it copy the whole data of block at the maximum speed possible.
6. It has very beneficial feature of recovering lost files,deleted, corrupted files using data recovery software.

Disadvantage of Block level cloning:

7. It doesn't perform any defragmentation while cloning through block-by-block.  

There are number of cloning utilities that perform both type of cloning. Block-level cloning is better than file level in many aspects.

How to find and delete Duplicate files in Mac OS X

To keep your Mac running effortlessly, you should regularly check your Mac drive in order to find and delete the unnecessary duplicate files, that are gathered in drive, with the passage of time. So, the first thing you need to do is searching their location in your Mac drive.

Before going further, we should first know that how these files are created and stored in our machine. During downloading files from Internet, modification of documents, files or images can also be the reason of their creation. Hence this causes accumulation of duplicate files and disperse over your Mac drive.

Bad thing about accumulation of these files is that, they become the source of wastage of memory space of your Mac disk.

Although in today's scenario there is no problem of memory shortage,because most of the people are using external drives for storing their large amount of vital data. But still you need to delete these files for increasing indexing and thus it speedup your Mac and enhances its performance.

By deleting these duplicate files you can overcome the issue of synchronization of data as well as it allows you to make use of wasted free space.

So, its important to find and remove these duplicate files that your Mac applications. So, there are number of ways for searching and deleting these duplicate files. If you have Mac book pro, it have an feature for locating duplicate files called ”spotlight”.

How to use Spotlight to search duplicates:

1.Click spotlight icon in menu bar.

2.Type the filename in the search field and then click “Show all”

3.Scroll down the list of results, and it will show you all the results that match your query.

But once when one of my friends told me that after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7 he didn't found this spotlight enabled. I don't know, what was the reason behind that, but after too many hits and trials we fixed the problem. But, all in vain since, it takes too long to scan the drive and enlist all duplicate things in Mac.

So there are many other excellent and easy ways to do it:

1.Using Third party Application: Mac also has some free application while few with small fee to find and remove duplicate files. But be careful before using such application that may have malware as often these Mac application are used from Internet.

2.Manually by Finder:

Duplicate files can be found by using Finder of Mac. Although the process is slow as you have to decide manually which files you want to keep or which to delete.

In order to use it, Open a new Finder Window and from the search field enter the wild card asterisk symbol. Make sure that columns size and kind are displayed.

3.Deleting from i Tunes: Sometimes these duplicate files are stored in i Tunes, Fortunately you can remove such duplicate songs stored in it.

As i Tunes provides the ability to check for duplicate files, as follows:

1. Just make sure you’ve highlighted the appropriate item in your i Tunes library (such as Music, Movies,etc)
2. Go to the File menu, click Display Duplicates
   

Any duplicate items found will be displayed in i Tunes window, allowing you to simply delete them as normal.

As I explained above about my friend's issue regarding spotlight feature, he is now using Stellar Speedup Mac utility and enjoying a smooth running Mac.

One day after using his Mac machine, I was wondering about the changes that I have noticed from the speed of processor in searching and fetching files to improve in overall system performance, so it just work.

Whatever task you choosing to play, runs just flawlessly without any interruption. By all this I realized that I must use this software for getting such performance for my Mac too.

The day I observed the things is the same day I had purchased this immensely useful tool having many advanced features in just 29 $.

Its Features:

• Quickly find and delete duplicate Mac files on your Mac.
• Incredibly simple to use.
• Adroit tool
• Awesome design :Having three main tabs:- Speed up Mac,Clean My Mac, Uninstaller.
• Exclude List:In this you can select specific type of files for scanning or checking through this software, on the basis of file size, type(.jpeg,.mpg), language.

For ex. You can select and delete specific files on the basis of size, file type, language etc..

• Powerful search capability for all unwanted files like cache files,log files, temporary files,duplicate files etc.
• Customizable and interactive interface & search capacity
• Provides External Drive Supports
• Scans audio files, media, text, .pdf, graphics, fonts and more and cleans your Mac by removing all clutters of your Mac.
  

Are you required to defrag your Mac OS X

Defragging your Mac OS X is still being a matter of wrangle or controversy among Mac users. Although we know that defragmentation is a technique to optimize performance of Mac OS X, by resolving reliability and performance issues associated with your Mac hard drive.

So, in order to make a right decision about the same, one must have a close look to all the details linked to this discussion, which aforementioned below:-

• According to some Mac users, it comes with enough built-in techniques that minimize fragmentation. OS X moves your frequently accessed files (read only), in a hot zone, after monitoring the files, this process is called Hot file adapting clustering. OS X can take care of fragmented files if its size is upto 20mb. But some users having a big misinterpretation that they never require any defragging software, even they think that these are simply a money-making strategy.

• The users who migrate from PC to Mac, they know very well the significance of defragmenting drive, because its an important tool in Windows to maintain PC speed. In Mac, the user doesn't need to worry about such things.

Here, you should also know the Apple's view regarding the same. The company states in one of its Knowledge base article published in 2003 that-­-­-­-­-­- “you probably won't need to optimize Mac OS X at all,if you think you might need to defragment your Mac, then provides instructions for what you should do "

Some myths about maintenanace of Mac:

1. Using Disk utility:Reparing permissions regularly:

Repairing permissions—a procedure which simply resets permissions , works only on a particular portion of OS X system files. It doesn’t affect your third-party files or user files, So, it’s unlikely that regularly repairing permissions will prevent yoour Mac from problems.

2.Run Magical Unix Maintenance Scripts:

I think you all would have heared about the Magical scripts of Unix supported by OS X that are scheduled to run in night, by putting your Mac in sleep mode or in shudown state. Yes, its true that these scripts perform some clean up tasks, one script every day ,other in a week,and third one in a month. But if you shut down your Mac every night then scripts don't run.

Mainly its task is to remove temporary files and log files in order to clean up Mac.

But, performing these scripts aren’t so necessary and even if few are missed, it will not affect your Mac.

3 Defragments your files hourly:

Basically users having large files, are required to perform defragmenting Mac on regular basis, But for small sized files, OS X is enough to protect from fragmentation.

4.By frequently cleaning caches:

To improve fruition of Mac some programs and OS X store frequently accessed data in cache files, so to delete these files regularly is not a good idea.

If you ask me then I will suggest you to do it beacause it will benefit you. I am using Stellar Drive Defrag software for defragmenting my Mac drive and find this tool very efficient with many advanced features.

How to create Image of Mac Disk

As we often hear the incidents of losing data accidently, formatting drive or losing data due to virus attack on OS etc. so, creating Image of your Mac disk is required in order to take protection measures against any drive crash or data loss instances.

Disk Imaging is a relevant data backup technique to be used when we want to make image of some large files or software so that it takes less space than original and can keep as a backup in compressed form.

The process of creating disk image can take long time depending on some factors, including speed of Mac, size of the disk being imaged, and the destination of the image itself. As we know, Disk Utility is great tool in creating image of Mac disk but don’t be surprised if it takes quite a while to create the backup file or image.

After completing the imaging process, you’ll have an exact copy of Mac's hard drive in the form of a .dmg image file.

Creating Image using Third party tool:

It is recommended by many technical experts to use Stellar Clone drive for creating Image of Mac disk or backup files. This utility can also provide facility to create image of boot volume. It creates an exact image block-by-block.

Steps to Create Image of a Mac volume/disk (Including Boot Volume):

• When we run Stellar Drive Clone software, the welcome screen comes on its interface is three tabs, you have to click the first tab name 'Cloning and Imaging'. Then click the tab 'Imaging' below 'Cloning and Imaging'.

• Windows shows you all the drives/volume connected to your Mac. Now, there are two cases whether you want to create disk image of boot volume or any other volume.

• In case of creating image of boot volume, the window offers option to 'Create Minimal System of Boot Volume'. In this message it ask you to continue, so in order to continue, click the 'Image with Minimal System'.

• Now click on 'choose destination' button on screen, so that you choose the destination folder or volume where you want to store the image.

• While if you want to make image of any other volume, then select your drive/volume from “select source” section.

• Specify the name of image after moving into destination drive or folder, and click on save. Click continues to start imaging process. After completion of imaging process the image is saved on your designated destination drive.

Note: It is always recommended to store your image destination in another drive. Stellar drive clone is read only utility and easy to use even for novice users because of its highly interactive interface.

As we often hear the incidents of losing data accidently, formatting drive or losing data due to virus attack on OS etc. so, creating Image of your Mac disk is required in order to take protection measures against any drive crash or data loss instances.

Disk Imaging is a relevant data backup technique to be used when we want to make image of some large files or software so that it takes less space than original and can keep as a backup in compressed form.

The process of creating disk image can take long time depending on some factors, including speed of Mac, size of the disk being imaged, and the destination of the image itself. As we know, Disk Utility is great tool in creating image of Mac disk but don’t be surprised if it takes quite a while to create the backup file or image.

After completing the imaging process, you’ll have an exact copy of Mac's hard drive in the form of a .dmg image file.

Creating Image using Third party tool:

It is recommended by many technical experts to use Stellar Clone drive for creating Image of Mac disk or backup files. This utility can also provide facility to create image of boot volume. It creates an exact image block-by-block.

Steps to Create Image of a Mac volume/disk (Including Boot Volume):

• When we run Stellar Drive Clone software, the welcome screen comes on its interface is three tabs, you have to click the first tab name 'Cloning and Imaging'. Then click the tab 'Imaging' below 'Cloning and Imaging'.

• Windows shows you all the drives/volume connected to your Mac. Now, there are two cases whether you want to create disk image of boot volume or any other volume.

• In case of creating image of boot volume, the window offers option to 'Create Minimal System of Boot Volume'. In this message it ask you to continue, so in order to continue, click the 'Image with Minimal System'.

• Now click on 'choose destination' button on screen, so that you choose the destination folder or volume where you want to store the image.

• While if you want to make image of any other volume, then select your drive/volume from “select source” section.

• Specify the name of image after moving into destination drive or folder, and click on save. Click continues to start imaging process. After completion of imaging process the image is saved on your designated destination drive.

Note: It is always recommended to store your image destination in another drive. Stellar drive clone is read only utility and easy to use even for novice users because of its highly interactive interface.

How to Access recovery HD of your Mac OS X Mountain Lion

As we know recovery HD is an invisible partition created while installing Mac OS X lion and mountain lion, So you can't access it like other volumes. It is available for users but only in read only mode, in startup disk of your Mac.

You need to access recovery HD in adverse situations, like disk corruption or disk boot failure. So when you get stacked in such types of problems, you can boot your Mac with this useful Recovery HD-- (Apple provide this feature in Mac to handle or overcome these adverse conditions on your Mac). Here the question is -­ how a user can access this invisible partition. Here is the complete explanation of this feature of Mac OS X.

There are two ways to access the recovery HD.

1. Starting/restarting your Mac.
2. Keep holding command+R, until you see a OS X Utilities on the top across the screen in large text. It will make you to access recovery HD.

But, if you do not find this method easy or if it doesn't work, you can apply the next method explained below:

• Here, start your Mac while holding down the Option key, keep holding it until you find 'Startup Manager'. Startup manager window seems to you as gray screen and it will show you all connected OS and their respective recovery HD.

1. And if you also want to access backups using time machine then you can do this by connecting to local network. For connection establishment you can click on the pop up menu at the screen's bottom and choose tab local Wi-fi connection. However it will provide you to choose a network after booted from recovery mode, so its not required to establish this connection just after first step.
   
2. Then by clicking on arrow pointing-upward makes your Mac boot from Recovery HD. After a short time, you’ll see the new OS X Utilities screen.

Note: You can also make bootable clone of Recovery HD partition by using Stellar Drive Clone in order to Clone recovery HD for use in emergency situations.

How to Optimize Slow Mac| Clean up Mac

Why my Mac is getting sluggish? How and why to optimize Mac? These are some basic questions people ask and search for solution to overcome this issue of slow Mac.

Mac machines usually remains trouble free but as the time passes and after few months of usage, it starts slugging, which proves that Mac too is not as perfect as per our expectations. It just means that it needs some regular maintenance for keeping it healthy and working as day one..

Note: It is always suggested to backup your drive before performing any system maintenance. I can ensure you because, I have implemented all following items without encountering a single issue.

You can apply some no cost tips in order to optimizeMac performance. 

Here, I am describing you some steps that are different from above mentioned ?

Use of Monolingual program:

By using this program somehow you can improve your Mac performance by reclaiming hundreds of megabytes of space on your computer. Because this program remove all the unnecessary language files from Mac.

Actually Apple is concerned in providing many localizations for their products. Although we are not using them, we all use our Mac computer only in English language.

Requirements:64-bit Mac, at least Mac OS X 10.7 or Mountain Lion.

So to overcome this issue you can use Stellar Speedup Mac to clean all these unwanted files and make your Mac fast and efficient. You can download its free version and have a look over it.

Here is a snapshot showing its one of the feature of deleting unnecessary files from Mac.

Cool off using Fan Control free Utility:

You can simply increase your Mac performance by making use of utility Fan Control on your system. It helps your Mac to perform better by keeping your processor cooler.

Beware of leaving system running constantly/sleep mode:

Some people have a habit of leaving system running for long time or keep it in sleep mode while taking breaks or in between recreation activities. So, what happens if any software has memory leaks, than this constantly open system will result into more and more utilization of system memory.

Infect some application like safari will not released that used memory fully, even after closing the tabs. Other browsers also consume memory but not more than safari.

For a once but quiting and restarting these tabs will reduce memory consumption of your system. As when you restarting your computer, actually what happens is-­-­-it does the things to clean up by reseting OS X virtual memory.

Backup your Mac:

The first and the most imperative thing before doing any update or for restoration of your data in case of any hard drive failure is Clone Mac drive. By taking backup of your vital data or entire drive you can protect your data from any loss.

As far as I am concerned , Stellar Drive Clone! is best software for making bootable clone of your hard drive.

Use Third Party Application:

By using third party tool one can optimize their Mac. But, electing right tool is the first step you do towards optimizing. Because there are plenty of software available in market but I observed Stellar Speed up Mac software best to clear clutters from your Mac drive and make your Mac up to date. It can remove all duplicates files, cache files, logs, universal binaries,leftovers etc from your Mac and make your Mac fast as brand new. By implementing third party tool one can fix slow Mac issues.

This utility is very useful and easy to use apps give support to Mac OS X10.3 or later.