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/

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.