Fsck vs. Basic Disk Maintenance software

bigbluebigblue
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
For basic maintenance, OSX has Disk Utility for repairing permissions or repairing disks. To a certain level.

When you startup in Single User Mode (cmd-S), and type /sbin/fsck -f, it runs a few routines that look the same to me than the ones from Disk Utility.



Do we (still) need software like Drive 10 (wich is derived from TechTool Pro) for basic maintenance, knowing that OSX also optimises and defrags on the fly but Drive 10 seems to run more routines (are they all needed here) ?



After 10 months with OSX I never needed a 'real' repair program, does anyone have other experiences ?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Yes, there are unfortunately a few problems that may crop up in the filesystem's directory tree structure that are beyond the repair capabilities of the standard fsck tools.



    As you've noticed, some of the third party tools also go extra steps to optimize and rebuild certain structures that fsck won't (or rather can't). I've personally found DiskWarrior to be the most thorough. I remember that Drive 10 was originally considerd a bad joke by some in that it barely did anything more than fsck, but it may have grown in the past year or two since I tried it.



    In the past 7 years, I have only had (I believe) three or four instances where I *needed* DiskWarrior to save a partition from failure. Only one of those was under Mac OS X and even that was back in the heady 10.0 days. Once a year, though, it at least feels nice to run DW to clean up my drives even though it may not be as necessary nowadays with journaling running.



    That said, I have seen a couple of cases here at AppleInsider of members with disk damage that required a stronger tool (they both purchased DW for it) that still managed to crop up after 10.2 and journaling came about. Journaling can fail. The OS could still have those wild super-rare bugs that smote the filesystem. These cases are out there but are obviously in the extreme minority.



    I recommend these disk utilities on an as-needed basis. As long as you have journaling enabled and your Mac OS X Install CD handy for running Disk Utility, most drive ailments will be kept at bay.
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