Scattered mosaics aren't good for your hard drive's health. iDefrag aims to straighten things out.

Your Mac runs slower every time you get an email or use Spotlight - these two everyday functions cause file fragmentation, slowing your hard drive's ability to access data. iDefrag can eliminate those file fragments so your hard drive acts like its old speedy self again.

Ideally, a file is saved to consecutive hard drive sectors for the fastest read times. More likely, a file is saved in scattered sectors, taking more time to read. Also, the more fragmented a file is, the harder it is to recover in the event of a drive disaster.

Mac OS X has built-in, automatic ways of keeping your files as unscattered as possible, but iDefrag takes things a few steps further. With a straightforward interface, iDefrag lets you choose how thorough a job it should do: It can completely rearrange files, make frequently used files easier to access, or just do the minimum amount of shuffling around needed to defrag every file. You select your drive (you must boot from another drive if you want to defrag your main startup drive), determine the defragmentation method, and you're set. iDefrag took 70 seconds to do a prescan of a 100GB hard drive - not superfast, but optimizing your drive is a task that's better done carefully than quickly.

The bottom line. While defragmentation is something you can live without, adding iDefrag to your regular maintenance toolkit is an inexpensive way to keep your hard drive running smoothly.

COMPANY: Coriolis Systems
CONTACT: www.coriolis-systems.com
PRICE: $30
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.7 or later, 512MB RAM, secondary boot volume to defragment your startup drive
Straightforward, informative user interface. Universal binary.
Slow engine. Company recommends not using iDefrag with Western Digital drives in G5 Macs.