DiskWarrior is back from the dead!!

SGilbert

SGilbert

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Can't believe it, but DiskWarrior is alive and kicking with version 5.3 just hitting the net!!
After 4 ½ years, this is the first sign that Alsoft is still working on the app.

AND, an added bonus, it's a free upgrade for v. 5 owners.
 
Got the update a few minutes ago.
Good to see this. I have used (and trusted) DiskWarrior for a number of years.
I still hope that DW will eventually be useful for APFS volumes, but with the history on tools for that, I don't know if that will ever happen.
 
Have used this for years for problems and just as a checkup. Always found some problems and corrected them.

Have the new version, but haven't used it yet! DeltaMac, are you brave enough to give it a whirl & report on your impressions?
 
Tried out new version on a couple of drives that I was building today.
I didn't time it, but it appears to be somewhat quicker when rebuilding drives.
No APFS yet. The app does respond with "Directory cannot be rebuilt because it uses an unsupported version of APFS"
That appears to imply that some version of APFS might be supported. Prior to today, it simply said Unsupported OS, so minor change,
Anyway, it recognizes APFS for what it is, but still does not rebuild or recover APFS volumes. But -- I think that is what has been on their site as part of the next version 6.
The "big" news with 5.3 is that it will successfully work for rebuilding on Apple Silicon - M1, M2, etc, Still won't scan APFS drives, but you can do external drives that are Mac OS Extended volumes (HFS+)
Maybe today's release (FWIW) is an indication that the version 6 will be released soon, too! (It was only 5 years between 5.2 and today's 5.3), but it's something...
 
So....If it cannot scan APFS, it really cannot do anything? This, then, is just a version bump to say: "we're still here, but can't help APFS Macs yet." (Which have been around for a long time!.)

If TechTool Pro can do it, why can't DiskWarrior?
 
SGilbert said:
So....If it cannot scan APFS, it really cannot do anything? This, then, is just a version bump to say: "we're still here, but can't help APFS Macs yet." (Which have been around for a long time!.)

If TechTool Pro can do it, why can't DiskWarrior?
Click to expand...
Because They created first a Universal version right at the beginning of the Silicon era! They had time and help creating overtime more and more better updates to what they have today! They are smaller and more nimble!
 
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TechTools remains useless unless you create a bootable clone, which is rather difficult to do. I was a fan of TT until it bricked an Ext-HD and the response from their support was, "oh?" They also did not know that defragmenting an SD was not something to do.

This DW will not help modern users who have SSD and APFS BUT the fact they are still alive makes me happy.

I suspect if they create a program that can work on APFS it will have to be on a bootable clone.
 
I'm still waiting for some traditional disk manager applications for APFS So I went with a Free as beer application called Onyx which is Universal and work on APFS by running many routine apple scripts to clean/rebuild the cache files that can get huge from Internet surfing! Plus I also use the freeware TinkerTool to do hackies to my system easily!
 
Folks in this thread have stated that both TechTool Pro and Onyx can repair APFS formatted drives. That isn't accurate if one is referring to repairing the directory on APFS drives. Neither one can repair the directory on an APFS formatted drive. They can do other, mostly minor things, but because Apple hasn't released the specs for APFS (and it seems as if they never intend to), no third party hard drive repair utility will ever be able to repair the directory on an APFS drive.

If you look through MicroMat's Web site for TechTool Pro, they do their best to try and make you believe that TTP can repair the directory on an APFS formatted drive, but if you read their page very carefully, you will find that they more or less explicitly admit that TTP doesn't have that ability.

OnyX doesn't make any claims to being able to repair the directory on your hard drive, not even your HFS+ formatted drive. OnyX has never had that ability.

This is not to say that TTP and OnyX aren't useful tools in some instances. It's just that if you expect them to be able to do the sort of near-miraculous repair of a failing APFS formatted drive that DiskWarrior was once famous for doing on HFS+ drives, you will be sorely disappointed.

Nothing outside of Apple's own DiskUtility can repair the directory on a drive formatted as APFS. The good news is that at least Disk Utility can now do a better job of it than it could a decade or two ago when it always seemed to be a disappointment in that regard, which made Disk Warrior and TechTool Pro popular and in some cases invaluable. At this point those products are mostly an anachronism.
 
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Onyx use a GUI to hide that it just runs applescipt inside of it to clean cache, built up logs use the command to run daily and monthly routines because we tend to sleep our computers sometimes those routines don't get done! Onyx does that so the way I use it is about once every two months runs all its maintenance routines and reboot the Mac to reboot to rebuild those simple cache logs! TinterTool is the true hackie to your Mac without being Terminal nerd! So if you don't like those programs just say so!
 
And, there is another update released, now for version 5.3.1, fixing some performance issues. I had noticed several minutes lag between launch and ready for use, and now the app starts up much more quickly.
 
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