Drive Repair Utilities

[unlearnthetruth]

Ok... so I want a good drive repair utility, and I want to be able to defrag. What is good, what isn't, why? I've noticed a lot of people have a strong aversion to Norton here... why is that? I have Utilities 6, and it screwed me once when it froze during a defrag (directory info was blown, resulted in a reformat)... but other than that... what makes it worse than the others? I also have Drive 10, and it looks nice and all, but I can't help but feel as though it's not doing anything. Also, it doesn't defrag... So... any suggestions, comments, anything?

 

[edX]

here is a repost of my previous report of defraggers

below is my run down on the three i have used. i prefer and recomend the plus optimizer/diskwarrior combo but i would add that both are very simple interfaces. techtool pro is by far the most imformative and comprehensive tool, but i had at least one instance lately where only diskwarrior saved my disk.


1. techtool pro - also a good diagnostic and repair tool, includes a virus checker. is perhaps the best value of all. defrag is done seperately from optimization and will at times only defrag if certain conditions are not met. claims to be completely safe in preventing loss of data in case of interruption. drawback - slowest of the three.

2. optimizer plus - can be bought alone or with diskwarrior - i recommend getting the combo. diskwarrior saved my drive when all others failed recently. op is also interuption safe and does partials in case of obstacles. it is slightly faster than TTP.

3. speed disk - part of Norton utilities which also diagnoses and repairs. fastest of them all. can lose all your data if interrupted. defrags and optimizes in one sweep but will not circumvent obstacles. least recommended but the one most people have because they advertise and promote the most .

the latest version of all these work with osx but must be run from another disk using 9.

i also have drive 10 and it does a good job of repair. if you already own drive 10, i would definitly recomend the diskwarriorplus optimizer as your next addition to repair tools. really all have something to offer, but some are more essential than others.

 

[unlearnthetruth]

Thanks Ed - once again you save the day!

 

[edX]

he he

unfortunately, this kind of stuff i know too well. i have decided you can never have too many disk repair programs. seems at some point or another each one has some uniwue fix that you need.

you might want to be sure you have the latest techtool lite as well (free). fast easy and claims to be more efficient for zapping pram and rebuilding desktop.

now when it comes to terminal commands, i am as lost as anybody.

 

[Aqualung]

Are defragging and optimization utilities really necessary with OS X? I've heard that OS X doesn't need any of this routine maintenance, since cron runs background processes at intervals to keep the file system in good shape. But I'm no authority on OS X so I don't know for sure.