Mac Backup External Drive Got Fragmented? Defrag It Now.

Summary: File fragmentation could be one of the possible reasons behind the slow running of an external hard drive backup`. Ever wondered how your backup drive got fragmented? Don’t worry since this post includes a free method to remove file fragmentation from any hard drive. 

Newer hard drives on Mac don’t get fragmented for many years to come. On the other hand, Solid State Drives (SSDs) never accumulate fragments on its storage space since it doesn’t contain moving parts. Despite all this, fragmentation still remains an exclusive hard drive problem that occurs widely on a Windows system, and occasionally, on OS X Mac. 

How Internal Mac Disk Becomes Fragments?

Internal hard drive fragments because it serves as a primary and frequently used storage device on a Mac. External hard drives being secondary, aren’t used or read-write by the OS X just as the internal hard drives are. Hence, the data gets distributed to multiple locations on the primary Mac drive, that causes the OS X to pick up the file information for the same request from several places to execute. This critical job done by the OS X to fulfil the access request causes delays and more drive’s head movement.

Note: More hard drives head movement repetitions aren’t a good sign for its health.

How External Backup Drives Gets Fragmented?

External storage devices purposely meant to keep an exact backup copy of your Macintosh HD faces file fragments issues due to its source hard drive. If you clone your fragmented Macintosh HD to another drive, then cloning creates a mirror image of your source device to another device. Though the data gets backed up, the destination drive becomes fragmented. This results in unresponsiveness from the external hard drive whenever accessed on Mac.

Fragmentation of Time Machine Drive

The external hard drive used for Time Machine backups are utilized by the OS X twice or more times in a day for backing up the Mac. Nonetheless, the Time Machine external storage device copies the entire Macintosh HD data historically, and it can incremental backup files to the external device too.

Chances of Time Machine disk fragmentation are least if the backup external hard drive is 2X or 3X times the size of the Macintosh HD. Due to the availability of plenty of free spaces on larger drives, the Time Machine drive can perform smoothly whenever approached for files restoration. On the other hand, a small capacity Time Machine hard drive will choke due to rapidly decreasing free spaces, and more importantly, due to incorporation of fragments from the source disks. As a result, the backup restoration may stretch for a longer period than usual.

Defragging a Mac Hard Drive

The source hard drive i.e. internal Macintosh HD requires defragging not just for itself but also for external hard drive. Defragging a Mac hard drive cannot be done using a built-in utility such as Disk Utility or Activity Monitor. Mac hard drive defragmentation can be achieved by using an alternative Mac defrag software.

However, if you aren’t interested in running a specially designed Mac drive defrag utility, then you can perform disk defragmentation using the below steps:

Note: Defragging Mac Hard Drive does not require any special tool 

1.     Image the entire Mac hard drive to external media

2.     Go to Recovery Mode and erase your Macintosh HD

3.     Restore OS X through the Recovery Mode

4.     Restore your files back to your Mac hard drive 

The process of restoring data back to a newly formatted hard drive eliminates file fragmentation or can reduce the severity of fragmentations to a considerable extent. Since the source drive is formatted with a new file system, the backup restoration occupies contiguous memory location rather than distributed. Thus fragmentation is eradicated or reduced.

The Bottom Line

Be it an internal or external Mac hard drive, just remember to keep the storage device free from file fragmentations. Though Macs don’t easily get fragmented yet they aren’t practically safe from fragmentations, especially, the older hard drive that has gone through plenty of head movements. 

How to clean install OS X El Capitan

OS X El Capitan is the latest version of Mac operating system. El Capitan is equipped with all new features and improvements for a Mac user. Some of the notable features are the split view of the applications you may be working on, improved space management, smarter spotlight search feature and more.  If you are thinking to use the new El Capitan OS, there are two ways to go - Upgrading the existing system and performing a clean install of the OS. A clean install will wipe out all the existing data on the Mac machine and provide a fresh install. A clean install will be the matter of discussion in this article.

Preparing for installation

1. Minimum system requirements

Before you rush into installing the new OS X, here are few things listed that you should check to get a successful installation of El Capitan:

a) Minimum of 2GB RAM is required for the OS X El Capitan to give a decent performance. However, 4GB should be considered the best.

b) 8GB of free space on the drive is required for installation. This amount is what the OS X El Capitan will occupy. The extra space is required for other storage.

c) A 64-bit processor space and a 64-bit version of EFI firmware.

To check whether, the system meets the requirement “c”, follow the steps below:

a) Go to Applications and open Terminal application.

b) Type the command: Uname –a and press enter.

c) Check the output displayed. It should contain the phrase “X86_64”. If it does not, then you cannot install OS X El Capitan on the given machine.

d) Then, enter the command: ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree -l |grep firmware-abi and press enter.

e) The output should contain the phrase “EFI64”. If it does not, you cannot install El Capitan on the given machine.

2. Data backup

Update to the operating system always has a probability to go haywire. El Capitan, with its new features, changes the system settings and makes changes to the overall machine that may cause data loss. Adding to that; power failures, hardware errors and other unwanted hurdles might escalate the loss of data and normal functioning of the system. Hence, take a Mac backup using Time Machine or other methods as desired. This way, you can restore the system to the working state in case of an update failure.

Getting the clean install done

There are two ways to clean install viz. clean install on startup volume or clean install on empty volume. Before installation, download the installer package. It starts running automatically. Quit the installation if you need to install it on the startup drive. Follow the instructions to create a bootable installation device. Let’s take the installation methods one by one.

1. Clean install on empty volume

This should be straightforward.

a) Launch the installer from the Applications folder and click Continue to start the installation.

b) Then, the wizard asks to accept the license agreement. Read & accept the terms and the process continue.

c) Select the target disk and location where the installation will happen. Enter the admin password if any and continue.

d) The system restarts and the installation progresses on its own. This may take some time.


2. Clean install on startup volume

Once you have prepared the bootable USB drive for installation, shutdown the system and plug in the USB drive. Start the system and hold down the option key. Follow the steps below:

a) You will be displayed with the start up menu. Select the USB device.

b) Select Disk Utility to erase the volume where you need to install the El Capitan.

c) Select the format to be Mac OS X Journaled (Extended). Then click on Erase.

d) You will be back to the startup menu. Select install OS X.

e) Now the two methods follow the same process from here. Repeat the steps (a to d) in point 1 above.

3. Set up process

Once the installation is complete via either of the clean install methods, you will see the login screen on the system. Enter the admin password and follow the steps below:

1. OS X El Capitan asks for an Apple ID. You may choose to enter it or do it later. Providing the Apple ID here will ease the installation process and will automatically set many system preferences.

2. Then the user is prompted to set the preferences for “Find my Mac” which allows remotely locking or erasing the Mac and identifying the geo-location. You may set the preferences now or later.

3. The next step is to set up the iCloud Keychain, which allows you to sync the passwords and other information across the Apple devices. You can set them now or later.

4. This finishes the configuration and shows the new desktop of El Capitan.