Cleaning up my Mac's HD?

The Last Gent

I'm really not very computer-savvy, so bear with me.

So I've had my iMac laptop for awhile, and it's starting to run slow. Understandable, I'm into photography and have tons of high-end RAW photo files from my digital camera on there. I was going to dump some of them onto my portable hard drive to make room, but I heard one of my friends also talking about how I could use a program to reorganize all the data on my laptop, and make it run faster.

Can someone clarify/give me info on this?

also are there any other ways aside from straight-up buying more ram (yay poor college student) to make it run faster?

Fallingman

So, I'm not the most tech-savvy, and I'm sure someone will be along shortly to put me in my place - but a few things:

I think your friend was referring to "defragging" (de-fragmentation) of your hard drive. My understanding is that macs do this automagically in some way (hence needing a third-party program if you want to go further). Having said that, if you do have a really full HD, it might be worth looking into. I'd google it and see what people say.

RAM is the obvious choice - if you do decide to do this DO NOT buy it from apple because they charge silly money for it. Unless you genuinely need help installing it (I dont know how difficult it is on an older iMac) - but I've always found it pretty easy.

Periodically, I always enjoy reinstalling everything on my PC's. I really don't know if this speeds things up at all - but it makes things feel fresh and new. Although it always takes longer than you think it will.

KalTorak

I just started using this program: http://www.derlien.com/

It gives you a nice visualization of the files on your hard drive, and takes you to them quickly if you want to delete/move them. I freed up a good 10 gb or so getting rid of files I'd forgotten I had and never used anymore.

Is your laptop a Macbook or Macbook Pro? iMacs are the standalone desktop computers.

I'd look into buying more RAM anyway; RAM is only a little more expensive than dirt, and easy to install.

edit: Yes, don't buy RAM from apple. I usually buy Mac components from this site: http://www.macsales.com/ They make it easy to figure out exactly which part to get to go with your particular machine.

RUNN1NGMAN

And if what you meant was you have an "iBook" rather than an iMac, its slow because that shit is ooooooooold.

The Last Gent

This is how un tech savvy I am, not being sure of the terms. I'm not even sure if it's a Pro or not. It's a fairly new macbook. I bought it during my first year of university, and I'm in year 4....it was before they came out with the metal skins, if that helps.

Yeah I don't really want to buy RAM right now, don't have the time. I guess I'm asking if there's any kind of defragmentation program for free I can use.

RUNN1NGMAN

Like fallingman said, the Mac OS automagically defrags your HD, so getting a defrag program isn't really going to help.

You could try doing an archive and install of the OS, which usually speeds things up a little.

Here's the Apple Support Article on why you probably don't need to defrag: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375

As to not having time to buy RAM, you could install new RAM in about 5% of the time it will take to defrag your hard drive.

psyck0

You have a first-gen macbook, which is what I have, because I bought it at the same time. Any modern brand of laptop DDR2 800MHZ RAM *should* work, it doesn't need to be apple-specific. Make sure it's laptop, DDR2 though- otherwise it won't fit!

Anectodal, but I defragged using a program and it speeded my computer up immensely for a few days, but it went back to normal (which is pretty fast) very quickly.