We know ads can be annoying, but they’re what allow us to make all of wikiHow available for free. 3: Hard drives are fastest at the beginning of the drive. If your Mac is running slowly, you might want to try defragmenting the disk so that it's easier for the computer to read. Since most OS X Macs, most of the time, don't need defragmenting, no defragmentation tool is included in the computer's Disk Utility program. wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 9 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. By using our site, you agree to our What file system is optimal for an external hard drive used on both Mac OSX and Windows 7 computers? Simply put, Mac defragment moves everything back in order and can greatly speed up a slow system. {"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/d\/db\/Defragment-Files-on-a-Mac-Computer-Step-1-Version-2.jpg\/v4-460px-Defragment-Files-on-a-Mac-Computer-Step-1-Version-2.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/d\/db\/Defragment-Files-on-a-Mac-Computer-Step-1-Version-2.jpg\/aid1891230-v4-728px-Defragment-Files-on-a-Mac-Computer-Step-1-Version-2.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":345,"bigWidth":"728","bigHeight":"546","licensing":"
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