Poll: Disk Utility Recommendation

[gibblehey]

I know of three disk utility applications (and of course fsck): Norton Systemworks, Drive 10 and DiskWarrior.

I've heard non-flattering things about all three at one point or another, and I have yet to see a consensus on which (if any) is a "must have".

If you have used one or more of these products on OS X, what is your opinion?

[Craig R. Arko]

You left out the one I actually use: Apple's Disk Utility, off the boot CD when required. ;)

[Roy Vincent]

Originally posted by gibblehey
I know of three disk utility applications (and of course fsck): Norton Systemworks, Drive 10 and DiskWarrior.

I've heard non-flattering things about all three at one point or another, and I have yet to see a consensus on which (if any) is a "must have".

If you have used one or more of these products on OS X, what is your opinion?

You missed one--TechTool Pro. It's the only one I use.

The latest version is 3.06. It has to be run from OS 9 but is applicable to OS X. Twice in the last month I've had problems that fsck/OS X DFA announced and couldn't repair. Neither could DFA booted from OS 9. Both times TTP fixed them.

What you should buy depends on how many different checks/repairs you want made and how much you want to spend on utilities. I decided I wanted to buy just one utility and I wanted it to cover a lot of bases. And I wanted a modest price for the one utility. TTP is a Swiss Army knife thing, doing about thirty different checks and a lesser but large number of repairs. Other utilities will do some of its repairs better. None will do as many. And none will do all the checks it does. And if you use TTP regularly, you may never have a problem so major that it cannot handle the problem. On the other hand, if you worked in a computer shop and had to repair really botched machines, you won't likely be reaching for TTP first.

TTP has won a number of awards, has an always present representative at MaxFixit who will reply very helpfully to your queries usually in hours, and is produced by an extremely user friendly and Mac oriented company. The same company (Micromat) makes Drive 10. But Drive 10 seems to need some attention and is limited in what it can do.

I doubt that any of the existing utilities are yet very good for OS X. I would wait for something that is very good for OS X. That's what I am doing. But in the meanwhile I have TTP.

[Phil St. Romain]

Craig and Roy, I've gone ahead and added TTP and DU to the poll, as it's less than a day old.

My favorite is fsck, as I think it does pretty much the same thing as DU, and doesn't require booting from a CD. I've used Norton on a few occasions, but always with fear and trepidation.

[rmletc]

disk warrior screwed my system up royally......

[sbur]

I voted for Norton for only one reason...It's the one I had when fsck and DU didn't have the features I needed.

Say what you will about the need to defragment, but it actually did my system a lot of good. That was right after I installed everything, and I haven't needed it again, but it was nice to have a versatile tool when I needed it.

I've seen some bad press around Norton, but I had no problems. As always, you need to back up important stuff...but that is true of ANY sidk utility...even fsck and DU.

My suggestion is to see which package fits your overall needs, and go with it. Each one of them has strengths and weaknesses, but all of the work.

[chug]

I use the disk utilty for erasing CD-RW's. Thats about all ive used it for. fsck is good for when the puter crashes due to a blackout when you boot back up to check the HDD's.

GUI apps are pointless when your in Single User Mode ;)

[macmath]

I like DiskWarrior. I have never had anything but positive results with it. I once had a problem where fsck would fix a node count (then I'd run fsck again and it would say all was fine) and then I started-up from the OS X install CD and the Disk Utility fixed the same count (and a second pass said all was fine), and then I started-up from the OS 9 install disk and Disk First Aid fixed the same node count (and the second pass was clean). Finally Disk Warrior fixed the problem so that fsck and the Disk Utility no longer reported the problem (I did not bother starting up again to try DFA). Sorry to hear of your data loss rmetc.

I don't trust anything of mine to Symantec. Although I do wish that DiskWarrior were able to keep the Directory in one contiguous piece (but that is just my anal side showing). [I realize that I've let myself open to a number of jokes here.]

[DFrakes]

Personally, I've used a combination of DFA/fsck and Disk Warrior since I first installed the beta, and have been perfectly satisfied.

[silicondiode]

Originally posted by Roy Vincent


You missed one--TechTool Pro. It's the only one I use.

The latest version is 3.06.

TTP is up to 3.0.7 actually. and Drive 10, 1.1.1, with it's neato "Optimization" or defrag, locked up on me last night at about 95% complete. the only utility that ultimately made my hard drive healthy again was DW.

[wgscott]

I used Norton Systemworks 2.0 on 10.1.3 last April and my G4 never worked again until Apple replaced the dual processor board.

My G4 functioned flawlessly before Norton touched it; it functions flawlessly now that i keep Norton far away, locked in a drawer. I wouldn't recommend Norton Systemworks 2.0 on OS X to my worst enemies.

I've heard various similar reports from others. I don't think it is a coincidence. I think somehow it corrupts the firmware (I removed everything else and still had kernel panics on reinstall from my OS 10.1.2 CD.)

[SunByrne]

I stopped using Norton years ago when Symantec felt it necessary to charge $40 for x.x.X updates which were essentially nothing but bugfixes.

When the hard disk on my laptop died while I was on the road around Christmas 2000, the guy helping me tried Norton on one partition and it was lost forever. We ran DiskWarrior on the the other four and they all came back perfectly and immediately. So I'm a big fan of DiskWarrior, but until an OS X native version comes out, I'm using Drive10. Seems OK.

[macmath]

The current version of DiskWarrior (2.1) works wonderfully on drives which run OS X. It repairs the directory as well as correcting some problems which occur only on OS X disks. (See: http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html)
The only thing is that when you start up from the DiskWarrior CD to do repairs (necessary to start from some other disk in order to do repairs anyway), your machine will start in OS 9.2.x instead of OS X. This does not bother me, since I'm having to restart to do the repair anyway. I use only fsck and DiskWarrior.

[ceenvee]

I had flaky problems with my 2001 iBook that fsck -y didn't fix. Bought DiskWarrior. It was slow slow slow (and that's on a lousy 10GB drive; hate to see it on an 80!) but it absolutely cleared my problem. I'm sold.

[toddsnc]

I can only echo, amplify some of what's already been said. Granted, I have an older (version 6) copy of Symantec, but it thoroughly hosed my OS X 10.2 boot. Even fsck couldn't fix it, but DW (2.1.1) did.

It's my understanding that any low-level disk utility will force you to boot from a disk other than the disk you wish to repair. This makes sense, as all files, especially system files, need to be closed in order to make any meaningful repairs.

[Lore]

This pole is not asking a valid question and is misleading. Each of the utils mentioned has something it does better then others. I am a Certified Apple Tech and have been repairing home users machines for 8 hours a day 5 days a week for a long time. This is how I do things (in this this order) and have spoken with many other techs that do it exactly the same way. I have all my utils on 1 bootable 9.2.2 CD. Do all your work booted from CD.

1) DiskWarrior: DW does 1 thing and does it VERY well. Repair directories. If you have a badly corrupted directory Norton can actually make the drive worse not to mention crashing.

2) Virus check/repair. I prefer Virex 6.1. This is a good time to do it as to prevent spreading a virus to your backup drive.

3) Backup: The entire HD to another disk. I prefer an external FW HD.

4) Norton Disk Doctor: Nortons strenght is repairing individual files and finding corrupted files. If it does find a corrupted file THROW IT AWAY AND EMPTY THE TRASH. I cant tell you how many times I have seen home user machines with aliases to corrupted files sitting on the desktop that were created by Norton DD and the user never bothered to throw them away. You can Command-R the alias to show the original.

5) Norton Speed Disk: To defrag the HD.

6) Rebuild the desktop.

On some very badly corrupted drives Norton will fail and even crash. Thats when I use TechToolPro. TechTool is also very good at recovery of drives that are so bad you want to toss them out the window.

No util is an all-in-one-wonder-util. You need a combination to do drive repairs correctly.

[Phil St. Romain]

Lore, the poll is only asking people what their favorite disk repair utility is. I'm pretty sure most of us know that these all do different things but it was good to see this explained the way you did.

Would you be willing to share with us what you would consider a good process using these various utilities to check out and repair a problem. E.g., what to run first, second, third . . . What NOT to do first, second, third . . . That could be very helpful.

Or anyone else who'd like to share on this?

[Roy Vincent]

Originally posted by Lore Each of the utils mentioned has something it does better then others.
No util is an all-in-one-wonder-util. You need a combination to do drive repairs correctly.

No doubt a point well taken.

But many of us can't afford to buy a number of utils--or just don't want to. In my own case, I don't want to. I use my two computers for fun at home and on vacation--not for business or anything else that is especially significant. I am prepared to buy one, maybe two, utils. My interest then is: Which ONES of the utils available will suite my computer use best? If I were using my computer for business, I would probably go your way and own ALL of them.

But your remarks as to what you take the strengths of the particular utils to be were very helpful. (They may, possibly, be controversial: I would be interested in hearing dissenting opinions from others who have used all the utils.) It is, of course, valuable to hear assessments from people who have used all the utils-- and used them often and for longish periods of time. Such people are in a position to make reliable comparative assessments. Thanks for that.

[Lore]

Get DiskWarrior and Norton Utils. My reasons are explained above. You dont need to buy the whole 'Norton SystemWorks' package. Just Norton Utils that contains Disk Doctor and Speed Disk.