MacOSG: maintaining your Mac

Posted by Dennis Sellers Dec 8, 2006 at 1:19pm

By Dave Merten

One question that gets asked quite often, especially by people that just switched to a Mac, is “what do I have do to maintain my Mac?” Well, the short answer is, not much. Many Mac users get obsessed about running OS X maintenance utilities like Cocktail, OnyX, Tiger Cache Cleaner, Xupport, and Tinker Tool, just to name a few. Many of the things these utilities do, are really only needed for troubleshooting. Some can even create problems for you, if not used properly. About the only routine things you need to be concerned about, is making sure your maintenance scripts are run regularly, and that you have a good backup strategy.

Running OS X Maintenance Scripts

There are three maintenance scripts—daily, weekly and monthly—that need to be run on your Mac. Some of the tasks these script perform, are delete and rotate system logs, rebuild the locate and whatis databases, and back up the NetInfo database. If you leave your Mac run 24/7, these tasks will be run automatically between the hours of 3:15am and 5:30am, depending upon what version OS X you are running. If you prefer not to run your Mac 24/7, you can use a free maintenance utility, like OnyX for example, to manually run the scripts, or schedule them to run at a predetermined time.

Now if you’re running Tiger, it’s possible these scripts will run during the day when your computer is on. It all depends upon how long your computer was shut down or asleep recently, and how your launched process handles the execution. To monitor the last time the three scripts were run, there’s a cool widget called Maintidget, developed by MacOSG member Giantmike. If by chance any scripts didn’t get run, you can run them manually right from the widget. You can download a copy of the free widget here.

Backing Up Your Data

Backing up is one of the biggest things overlooked by Mac users. One of the first accessory you should consider buying for your Mac, is an external drive for backup. Drives have really come down in price. I recently bought a portable external 320GB 7200RPM USB 2.0 drive for only $119. Along with it, I use a backup utility called SuperDuper! to backup daily. It creates a bootable “mirrored” backup that I can boot from in case of an emergency. It can also be programmed to schedule backups.

So how often should you backup? Well, consider how much computing you do, and how much data you’re adding and removing from your computer. Some people backup daily, some weekly, and others monthly. I would recommend that you backup at least once a month though. There is nothing worse than losing a hard drive without any backup. I’m sure a few of you have been there.

Below are some other other maintenance functions you may want to perform periodically, but are not necessary on a routine basis.

Repairing Permissions

While it doesn’t hurt to repair permissions, it’s not something you have to do for regular maintenance. It’s a good idea though, to repair them before cloning a hard drive, and after you install any new software. You may also want to repair them if you have some strange behavior going on, simply as a shotgun troubleshooting procedure.

Update Prebindings

Since Tiger was released, changes in the OS have eliminated the need to update prebindings. Whenever you install a new app and see the word “optimizing” at the end of installation, it’s updating the prebindings automatically.

Check Your Hard Drive

As a preventive maintenance, it’s a good idea to check the integrity of your hard drive periodically. There are various ways to accomplish this. You can check it from your Disk Utility application on your hard drive, boot from your install disc and run Disk Utility from there, or run fsck. If you find a problem, you will only be able to repair the drive using the latter two methods. You can not repair a drive you’re booted from. Also, if Disk Utility or fsck can’t repair your drive, you may have to try a commercial disk utility like Tech Tool Pro or DiskWarrior. Note: DiskWarrior released version 4.0 to include Intel Macs now.

If your computer ever crashes/freezes and you have to “force” the computer to restart, or your computer went dead because power was lost to it, you may want to run fsck right away upon reboot to check the drive for any damage. Although some may argue it’s not necessary, I simply do it to make sure the drives OK, and to avoid problems down the road.

Defragmenting

According to Apple, there is little need for defragmenting when using OS X. Read this article: about disk optimization with Mac OS X.

If you do a lot of video editing and are moving large files around, you may notice some benefit by defragmenting, but you will need to use a commercial utility like Tech Tool Pro or Drive Genius for defragmenting.

Cache Cleaning

Now this is something you may only want to do if you’re experiencing problems. For example, if your fonts are all garbled, cleaning your font cache may solve the problem. Deleting System or Kernel cache on the other hand, can cause side effects, and should only be done when most other troubleshooting methods have been exhausted. Note: Your computer will boot slower until your cache files are rebuilt.

Resetting PRAM

PRAM (parameter RAM) stores certain system and device settings in a location that Mac OS X can access quickly. There is no need to routinely reset this. It’s basically used for troubleshooting. If you ever do reset your PRAM, you may need to verify your time zone, startup volume, and volume settings in you System Preferences. They may have changed from the reset.

Check For Viruses

Because OS X is pretty much virus-free, there isn’t much need to check for viruses. I have an older copy of Virex that I keep updating the definitions on, but only thoroughly scan my drive about every six months.

Archive and Install

If you’ve had your Mac awhile, and it’s seems to be running sluggishly no matter what you do, you may be due for an Archive and Install. This will usually make your computer feel like it did when it was new. It gets rid of all the “crud” in you system that may have built up from installing and uninstalling applications. Also, if you have a
system-wide problem you’re beating your head against a wall with, you may actually save time doing an Archive and Install.

Bottom line, OS X is pretty much a low-maintenence system. As MacOSG member Rick Prather—from MacOSG US Podcast’s “Rick’s OS X Tips & Tricks”—recently put it, “I do think more harm can be done by “over-maintenance” than by “under-maintenance”.” Remember, if it isn’t broke, don’t break it!

The Mac Owners Support Group, aka MacOSG, was conceived in February, 2004 as the G5 Owners Support Group by Dave Merten, a former “Focus on Mac Support” guide at About.com. After purchasing a DOA Power Mac G5, and noticing on Apple Discussion Boards that people seemed to be having a lot of common hardware problems with them, Merten decided to open a support site for Power Mac G5 owners. He called it G5 Owners Support Group, registered the G5support.com domain and also applied to Apple to become an online Apple User Group.

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