Again, screw defragging, it's a total waste of time, it's misleading, don't bother. Leave your Mac on overnight once, you're good to go.

You can switch scrolling back to it's traditional method in System Preferences.

Here's how to create a Lion bootable USB drive.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848

Then install Disk Warrior on it, or just run from your DVD once booted from the USB stick. Be sure you have the latest version of Disk Warrior, too! And be sure you first run Software Update and launch the App Store to be sure ALL your software is up to date, FIRST.

Here's a little known hardware check built in to Lion.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4510

Ok, thanks Ben, duly noted.
So, if I leave my Mac on all night it will defrag everything?

Today's hard drives do not need defragging at all, period. Long ago when drives were slower and less efficient, it helped with performance, but today, it won't matter.

OS X does a minor form of defragging at all times now. Nothing further is required. I'd just leave it on all night for one night, let it do it's overnight routines, background processes, etc. Not that it will really matter, but you'll feel better about it.

There are daily, weekly, and monthly OS routines that clean up minor logs and temp files, and these run during the night. If you don't leave you Mac on overnight, OS X will actually eventually figure that out and run them during the day while it's on, when it thinks you're not doing much. Not that running these things would ever be anything you ever notice anyway.

Yeah, defrag is ssssoooo outdated and unnecessary, but some folks love to harp on it and sell utilities for it still. That's like back in that say day, when powering up a hard drive was very stressful for it, so you just kept them turned on all the time. Today, drives power up without blinking an eye, and it's no big deal to power up, power down, over and over and never effect the drive at all.

Yes, the old days, when I actually used a volt meter and soldering iron on an old Big Blue to do repairs... man, I sure to NOT miss those days...

TrixTrax9000 wrote:
No reason to waist valuable resources. Just run this in terminal as admin
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
and chil.

And to check last ran script pop this guy in
ls -al /var/log/*.out

The cron jobs are mega trivial and eventually run anyway. It's not anything that will ever effect your system anyway. But if you like to just geek out, hey, it can be fun.

I've always been kind of wary of Terminal.
Sorry Scrubelicious - I don't understand what your post means.

Looking into your suggestion of using my flash drive for an external drive. Your link has this quote...

"Note: In order to create an external Lion Recovery using the Lion Recovery Assistant, the Mac must have an existing Recovery HD."

What is the existing Recovery HD, & how can I find out if I have it?

Lion creates it automatically. It's a tiny, hidden partition so if your OS gets corrupted and needs re-installation, you can recover from that without needing an installation DVD (which you don't get from the App Store).

Hey Trix,
Glad to hear things worked out for you. That is a tremendous relief I'm sure. I'm really happy for you.
Yes, I am very cautious especially with someones else's data and there is no back-up/fall-back. When working on someones computer, I always start by cloning the drive, and then often I make a separate copy of files.
You state that this is the most problems you have had in 20 years, shows Mac OSX is very robust stable, and the fact that installing a new OS repaired your problems is further proof to that. Most of the time "It Just Works". M$, nah!
Glad installing Lion worked, think you will like it. Has some extra features related to FCPX.
I agree that eventually, your Mac will defrag itself.
Huh, just had spellcheck change defrag to defray, HaHa. You can control click (rt click) to add to dictionary.
Your drive most likely fragged while so very full. Video work writes lots of large files, and when applying effects etc... this adds up. With a slower drive, limited ram, and some weird software glitch, fragmentation can occur. Now that you have some room, Mac will start to consolidate the files.
Apple has a knowledge base article somewhere, and I believe they at the end mention dedicated defray programs may help in extreme cases. I'd just wait.
If you want to run the daily, weekly, monthly routines, Onyx (free) will do it under a GUI. A nice program tool, not toy. Gives user control and ability to monitor process. Lots of other routines gathered together in one place. No terminal for user required. Actually when you installed Lion, part of installation runs these anyway.
You can access Lion Recovery partition by holding down the command key + R key during a startup or restart. It is there to help rebuild if needed. Think of it as a emergency repair service. It allows access to disk utilities, terminal, reset password, and several other programs.
Great to hear your problems solved, enjoy!
p.s. Please back-up HD ASAP!

I have an updated version of my FCP System Maintenance PDF online now, just FYI.
http://www.fcproxuniversity.com/documents/FCSystemMaintenance.pdf

Thanks again guys. I've DL'd Ben's pdf, will educate myself, thanks.

Yes, 20 years on Macs with nary a problem. My peecee friends have to go the their "tech guy" at least once, usually twice a year, where he has to completely reinstall windoze, usually costing them between $150-300.

I had to chuckle at all the eco-crap about the latest MacBook, them saying it wasn't very repair friendly. I've had MacBooks for year, & never had to repair one once. Sure there are some breakdowns somewhere, but generally the quality of this company & its products, justifies its position as global leader.

Just tried to follow the advice of making the boot disk, or as it's now known as The Recovery Disk.

It didn't go as smoothly as hoped.
First of all, creating a partition on my 8 gig flash drive which had 4 gigs of free space, erased my 4 gigs of backed up files. Ouch.

Next, creating a 1 gig space for the Recovery Disk, makes that section invisible to the finder. Ok…
So I will need a second partition that has the Disk Warrior on it, but here's the problem - which is threefold.

1) Once booted from, the Recovery disk won't show any other partitions, there is no desktop & my choices are very limited - essentially, repair, wipe & restore, seek help, etc. Trying to exit that screen to seek the other partition, only prompts to restart & choose a startup disk.

2) Attempting to add the Disk Warrior to the same partition with the Recovery Disk seems impossible with the 2 options.

* Adding Disk Warrior first = it will be erased when Recovery Disk is added.

* Adding Recovery Disk first = makes the Recovery Disk invisible to Finder, thus unable to add Disk Warrior to.

Solution please….

thank you

PS - Another thing I don't like about Lion, in Spotlight SnowLeo, hovering over the results would reveal their location & path... not any more.

Burn the contents of the Disk Warrior DMG (application an all) to a DVD. Boot from the USB drive, run DW from the DVD.

Yes, it says in the instructions that the recovery USB will be wiped clean. It's a boot disk, it's going to have to do that.

Use Spotlight in a Finder window, not the menu bar. It'll show paths at the bottom of the window, and allow you to double click the folders in that path to open them in new Finder windows. Yeah, that's different now.

Check your PM, I sent you something that will help out.

Trix,
Spotlight has changed a lot in Lion. New tricks some pretty cool.

Trix says ps-Another thing I don't like about Lion, in Spotlight SnowLeo, hovering over the results would reveal their location & path... not any more.

Hover over, pop-out window appears, hold down command key> addition info appears bottom of pop-out, command + option = path.

Here's one article on some new features spotlight Lion..

www.macworld.com/article/1162168/secrets..._spotlight_menu.html

Also in Finder > View > Show Path Bar will show path at bottom of sidebar window, etc...

Trix,
Did you work out USB boot? Little unclear if you wanted to make a full Lion boot drive, a DW bootable recovery drive, or a Lion Recovery disk or a combo of these USB drive. All are possible.. The key is to partition the USB drive first into as many separate "drives/sizes" that you need prior to installing software. Once partitioned, installing boot ware will only be on that partition.
After installing all boot ware when booting Mac > hold down option key to select boot volume.
Here is an article going into differences and how to's. Better than Apple's KB.

www.macworld.com/article/1161664/hands_o..._disk_assistant.html

You can add the DW boot to a separate partition as well.
Personally, just make a full Lion bootable drive which includes the lion recovery disk section. Leave DW on DVD.
Also it is possible to repartition under full lion or recovery disk either through Menu > Disk Utility or Terminal. You can also cd to other partitions/volumes from there.
Finally remember Recovery Disk is designed to be hidden > command + R @ boot.

I tried making separate partitions on the USB drive before installing the Lion recovery disc, it erased them all.

As mentioned, I could see no way to even get to a desktop, so a DVD inserted, might not be visible...

Right now I'm in a country where blank media is outrageously expensive.. back in North America I could buy a package 50 blank DVD's (generic no-name which worked 100% of the time, compared to expensive brands with a 10% or more failure rate) - 50 for 10 bucks no tax, at flea markets.

Where I am now, 5 DVD's is over 25 euros with taxes, enviro fees & other jibberjabber.


PS - I'll check my private message, thank you. This site sure doesn't make them very visible, no notifications, nothing, you have to actually go digging to find out if you have any...

Email me.

Thanks Ben,

thanks again - my system is already light years ahead of what it was... & FCPX is a joy now

I would just like to be able to run a final check with Disk Warrior from a boot drive to make sure there are no underlying problems.

I dragged my Disk Warrior dmg onto my usb flash drive, rebooted holding down the option key. The screen told me I was going into the Recovery Disk mode. It looked so much like the previous Recovery Disk experience, I was certain I hadn't erased that partition from my flash drive, or somehow the invisible part was still there & taking over again. So I did it again, being sure to erase the entire 8 gigs of the drive, make one partition the full size of the drive, then drop my dmg on, but I can't as there is already something on the drive, despite repeatedly erasing it. It takes up about 500 mess, which seems about the file size. That can't be the directory structure for the drive, can it?

EDIT - Now I know it is STILL the Recovery Disk partition, that I installed earlier. Even though it's invisible, it's still there taking up that space, & taking over the drive when I option key reboot. Apparently Disk Utilities can not erase this portion of the drive? Or is there a secret way to do it?

If I drag my dmg onto the free portion of the usb drive, I once again am unable to get to it once rebooted in Recovery Disk mode. The screen opens in Mac OS Utilities with 4 choices;
- Restore From Time Machine Backup
- Reinstall Mac OS X
- Get Help Online
- Disk Utility

I thought if I went into the latter I could open up my usb drive & access the DW dmg, but no, the usb appears in the disk utility window, but never mounts on the desktop. There is the option to Unmount it, but not to actually mount it, or make it visible.

Please tell me what I'm doing wrong.
Also, is my usb drive forever cursed with the burden of carrying this invisible Recovery Disk?
How do I wipe the usb completely clean?

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