Drive 10

thegelding

anyone using drive 10?



<a href="http://www.micromat.com/drive10.html"; target="_blank">http://www.micromat.com/drive10.html</a>;



thoughts on it's usefulness and if it has caused any problems on your system would be appreciated.



use techtool pro with my iMac G3 in os 9.1 and really like it....planning on using drive 10 with my new iMac....g

kidred

Well, my thoughts are that it's useLESS.

koffedrnkr

drive10 isn't useless...but in its present state, it is much more helpful for people testing and fixing hardware related problems. yes, it can fix directories and disk related stuff, but that is about all it can do relative to the O.S.



if they would add the ability to defrag/optimize, unerase and wipe disc, then drive 10 would be a very good and wellrounded utility.



i hope they add more tests and features soon...

kidred

It is Disk First Aid, what does Drive 10 do that - fsk thing or Disk First Aid can't?

thegelding

i thought it did scheduled tasks, like rebuilds of the volumn structure and stuff like that in the background or when the computer was not being used....don't really know...oh well, i ordered it so i guess i will find out if it's useful or not...my system seems to be running fine, so i'm not sure why i ordered drive X except that i like techtool pro and i didn't want to wait for problems with my new iMac before having something to help me fix them....g

kidred

If X wasn't everything it is, I'd tell you great purchase, but because X is what it is, most errors will be fixed with DFA or y -fsk (ot whatever) I had drive 10 and have ran it a few tims and everytime it's found no erorrs. So, in almost a year with X, no errors, so why buy drive 10 (I didn't )

thegelding

thanks kidred (wish i had posted this sooner)...you're right, X is great, at least for me so far....was somewhat fearful coming to X after using 7 then 8 then 9 for the last 10 years and being very comfortable with that os (haven't really liked is that much since 8.5 as it hasn't been as stable....but "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" ...7 seemed very stable, 8 less so...9 had good days and bad days....but X has been a rock for me....only two weeks using it--but i have found by experience that if i am going to have a problem with an os the problems are going to be right away--but in those two weeks it has been impossible for me to crash....iPhoto to iDisk has hung with the spinning wheel once, but a force quit of iPhoto stopped that....very happy with X so far....got the Drive X as a sidegrade...so maybe i blew 60 bucks...but running it a couple of times and seeing that everything is great might make me feel better...thanks again....g



hey! this is my 500th post....either weeeeee!!! i love this board....or dammmmnnnnn!!! i need to get out more..... <img src="confused.gif" border="0">



[ 02-12-2002: Message edited by: thegelding ]</p>

kidred

LOL, well it does look cool, whether you blew $60 or not is only important to you, if you want peice of mind. I just fealt oblgated to share my experience being that I have drive 10 already.



The beachball and apps crashing are the apps themselves and won't affect your system stability most of the time. Even then, most is fixed by a restart. I read somewhere that the system checks iteslf automatically every start up making a disk repair utility even more pointless...er, mm, I mean to me.

koffedrnkr

if you want a cool little utility program, try macjanitor. it adds a GUI to the crontab function and it allows you to activate the built-in housekeeping maintanance of OSX. under normal conditions, these functions only run if your computer is up at 5:30am on certain days of the month. as for drive10...here's a list of tests from micromat's website....



Unit Ready

Ascertains the drive's ability to receive commands.



*\tSupply Voltage

Checks the power supply voltage level that powers your drive!



*\tSelf-Diagnostic

Runs manufacturer's self-test on the drive.



*\tRezero Unit

Determines the drive's ability to resynchronize and rezero the read/write heads.



*\tFormat Check

Establishes whether the drive was properly formatted during initial setup.



*\tSpare Sectors

Checks the service tracks to isolate whether there are enough spare blocks for block repairs.



*\tSurface Scan

Checks entire media surface for defects that could cause read or write errors. Blocks are repaired by remapping.



*\tRandom Read

Used in conjunction with the Random Write test, reads data from a random memory location.



\t

*\tRandom Write

Used in conjunction with the Random Read test, writes data from a random memory location.





*\tSeek

This test checks the ability of the initiator to position the device heads in preparation for access to a particular logical block.



*\tLinear Read

Used in conjunction with the Linear Write test, reads a linear set of blocks from the drive.



*\tLinear Write

Used in conjunction with the Linear Read test, writes a linear set of blocks to the drive.



*\tRead Buffer

This test is used in conjunction with the WRITE BUFFER command as a diagnostic function for testing the drive's buffer cache and bus integrity.



*\tWrite Buffer

This test is used in conjunction with the READ BUFFER command as a diagnostic function for testing the drive's buffer cache and bus integrity.



*\tVolume Structure

Tests and repairs critical volume structure elements like Volume Header, Extents File, Catalog File, Attributes, etc.

sdw2001

Well, I bought version 1.0.2 from an Apple store and it quit every time it got to volume structures. Mircromat had to send me a new CD to fix the problem.



But, it redeemed itself. It saved my system after a second failure due to structure errors, and thank God for that. I'll be running it more often now.



BTW, disk first aid couldn't fix the problem and the OSX partition wouldn't boot. Drive 10...thank you!



[ 02-15-2002: Message edited by: SDW2001 ]</p>

kidred

If I had to buy or recommend anything it would be DiskWarrior. I just had a problem and Disk Warrior found and fixed numerous errors and everything is running smoothly again in X. You do have to boot from a CD to repair the start up disk or boot into another partition with 9 on it, but hell, it fixed my problems.