Real People Reviews: Fix what ain’t broke—preventative Mac maintenance, part 1

Posted by Daniel East Feb 20, 2007 at 2:18pm

Summary: There is no «right time» to fix your Mac, but why wait until something goes terribly wrong? Macsimum News’ Contributing Editor, Daniel East takes an in-depth (and two-part) look at some things you can do to keep your Mac running well that might prevent a more serious problem later … and make it perform better today. This is part one.

Whether your Mac is slowly slowing or running along nicely, a really good time to do a little maintenance is when you don’t have to. In other words, why wait? 

to use utilities, or even just your built-in software and OS tools, that can really help keep things cruising along for you. You may even prevent an unknown pending problem or simply give you some peace of mind that you are in good shape. There may be more or less, and there are a lot of opinions out there of what’s best, that can be done. Regardless, here are a few things (and we’ll focus on OS X) that may just make a big difference in how well your Mac is working for you. So, let’s get to it…

What we’ll look at in this article:

• Dealing with your files
• Repair
• Disk space issues
• Permissions and CRON scripts
• Utilities and other software

NOTE: There is a lot more that can be done and discussed on this subject. The idea here is to provide a “heads up,” give you some ideas and, perhaps, get people talking. As a consultant, I recommend these techniques to clients, friends and colleagues. If this seems like a lot to read, I’ve summarized things at the end of this article. For more help, I would recommend two great Apple programs who have experienced people who can help you. Apple User Groups and Apple Consultants Networks can be great starting points to getting the information you really need as well as to help you learn what to do when these things come up. You can also consult your local Apple retail store, Apple authorized reseller or Apple Solutions Expert for more information. 

If you are a member of a user group, a user group newsletter editor, or have your own blog that might wish to reproduce this article, contact Macsimum News’ Dennis Sellers at daseller@earthlink.net for reproduction rights (with proper attribution) 

Back it up

You’ve heard it a million times, “back up your Mac.” With Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) offering Time Machine as an impressive way to seamlessly keep things backed up, you’ll still need an external drive according to current data from Apple. External drives are more affordable and more necessary than ever and I highly recommend getting an external drive that is at least three times the size of your internal drive. (e.g., if you have an 80 Gb internal drive, check out a 250 Gb or higher drive) This way, and if your internal drive is too full (a major culprit of system slowness), you can store your iTunes and iPhoto libraries, two major culprits of eating up a lot of drive space, externally if you wish. Of course, this is much easier on desktop model Macs compared to portables that may not want to go without. There are variations of this, but that’s for another day. Playlist magazine’s Christopher Breen posted an excellent tutorial on setting up an external iTunes library folder here.

Once you have the drive, there are many products available to automatically and brainlessly perform these backups on a schedule so that they are done in the middle of the night, or any other times when you might not be using your Mac. If you already have a .Mac account, you can download Backup 3x software that is free as part of your account. Simple scheduling, use of your iDisk (depending on spacial limitations) and a no-brainer way to back up the files that are most important to you.

Let’s not forget that iSync can keep your mail settings, bookmarks and other items matched up if things should go wrong. Intego’s Personal Backup X4 is an excellent choice, but there is a slight learning curve to creating the scheduling scripts. Its simple navigation and interface really demystify backing up your Mac. 

Another great way to keep things flowing well, and to make backup easier? Do NOT keep your documents on your desktop! Keep them in your documents folder and access it from the dock OR create an alias to your documents folder on the desktop and leave it open.

Remember: You can reinstall software – it’s your FILES that you want to save. You user documents, address book, bookmarks, iLife files – all can be reloaded onto your Mac. In other words, note a list of your applications. If you have too many, open your applications folder and switch to “list” view and take screen shots (press COMMAND [Apple key] + SHIFT + 3) as you scroll down and back up those files as well. O’Reilly Media has a great article on screen shots here.

Apple Disk Utility

It comes with your OS and it is on your system disks – either purchased OS X or your Mac’s software disks that came with it. A good thing to do is to use Apple’s own Disk Utility as the first line of defense. You can simple boot up from your install disk (yes, you can use another Mac to boot as a target disk, but we’re sticking to the basics for the purposes of this article) and select the utility from the menu bar options, bypassing the OS installer. Repair the disk and see what happens.

FSCK it

FSCK is acronym for the terminal command “file system check.” This is a great little way to optimize your system’s performance with a simple command at startup. Here is a great article on how to do that from About.com, as well as some other helpful hints on routine maintenance. Another way to accomplish this is by using «Safe Boot» mode. Much like in the days before OS X when you could start with your extensions off, the current OS does a similar base-startup by holding down the SHIFT key during the bootup process. Although it may be very time consuming (compared to conventional startup times), your Mac will performs a series of checks to your system in the process. For more information see this article.

Commercial products

From there, and once you know the condition of your drive, there are some options. If you know that there are repairs needed that the basic utility cannot fix, I recommend having TWO, yes 2 commercial disk utilities. First, and in no particular order, DiskWarrior 4 from Alsoft; second, and for different reasons, TechTool ProToGo or TechTool Pro from Micromat. If you have these two products, there is almost nothing you cannot address. There are exceptions, but remember we’re sticking to the basics of maintenance, not major repair here.

The reason I like both products is the fact that each seems to repair a little something that the other may not. Neither vendor seems to agree or discuss these things, but it matters little when things go wrong. If you have to pick one, either is an excellent choice. For what are the differences, TTPTG (shown below) allows you to make nearly any drive device into a bootable repair tool—even an older iPod no longer in use or just about any external drive (including flash media a la their Protegé product), but not media like CD or DVD since, according to Micromat’s website, it is faster and more reliable to boot and utility software from a drive so that there is swap space for memory management. DW4 is incredibly fast (far faster than previous versions of this title) and can “scavenge” a drive to look at even what other utilities may have missed or repaired incorrectly. Again, I use both and cannot stress the point enough regarding the importance of having at least one of these products.

Repair the drive before your repair permissions

It is always recommended to repair your drive first so that you are not setting permissions to potentially damaged files. Since we’re talking about a maintenance routine, not troubleshooting, repair your permissions AFTER your run your repairs.

Rebuild Mailboxes

People who use Apple’s Mail.app know that it can get slow after a while. One thing that may help is to use the on board “rebuild mailbox” command. MacFixIt has a good article here. Also, backup, delete and remove old emails and their attachments you may no longer need.

Why you never really need to shut down your Mac

The Mac OS has some built-in technologies to help maintain your Mac 24/7, but in order for them to run your computer has to be left on. The X Lab offers a good explanation here. A great way to allow this to happen is to change your Energy Saver preferences to keep your hard disk from “sleep,” but allowing the display to turn off. 

Go to Apple Menu>System Preferences>Energy Saver>SELECT “never” for computer sleep>select 15 min (or whatever is a bit beyond when your screen saver kicks in) for display sleep>UNcheck “put the hard disk to sleep…” This way, the make is on and able to run your scripts overnight. 

If you have a constant Internet connection, you may wish to be certain that your firewall is enabled and/or that you use an additional product like Intego’s NetBarrier, but that’s a story for another article altogether. 

NOTE: While in the Energy Saver control panel, you may also wish to set go to the OPTIONS and set processor performance to HIGHEST (Powerbook, iBook, Mac Book Pro or Mac Book users may only wish to select this option when using the power adapter, not battery to avoid heavy power drainage) to help performance as well. 

In part two tomorrow, we’ll look at maintenance script software, the “removal business,” preferences and more.

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