best software to maintain mac integrity?

dage007dage007
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Just currious, on macbidouille, I've noticed that techtool 4 pro has it's new release out and so does intech with there speedtools utility. Im just currious as to what software I should look at to maintain my overall system as best as possible. Currently I use deja vu for my back up software to basicly back up my system drive. As far as maintaining my system I was using norton system works 3.0, but as you may know i cant defrag or do many things because of panther and im getting impatient to be honest. I guess I can just use the virus protection from it and thats it.



But what im asking is if I want to make sure that my system is keeping up a backup of my system drive incase somehting bad happens and also monitoring my whole system and keeping it running nice and fast, which of there 2 products would you get, or jsut get both I dont know?



I have the techtool delux, from my applecare protection, but i think the one on the site offers more then what mine has.



let me know



dave



PS on a side note I also have Disk Warrior, the newest one, and data rescue the newest one.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    homhom Posts: 1,098member
    Disk Warrior + Carbon Copy Cloner = heaven



    I don't bother with any other disk utilities seeing as Al has never done me wrong. Just remember to repair permissions frequently.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    dage007dage007 Posts: 320member
    Not to sound stupid but what is Al? Abreviation for what?



    So I take it carbon copy will make a good copy of my system disk, and allow me to boot from it if something happens to my original correct?
  • Reply 3 of 8
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dage007

    Not to sound stupid but what is Al? Abreviation for what?



    So I take it carbon copy will make a good copy of my system disk, and allow me to boot from it if something happens to my original correct?



    Alsoft?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    homhom Posts: 1,098member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dage007

    Not to sound stupid but what is Al? Abreviation for what?



    So I take it carbon copy will make a good copy of my system disk, and allow me to boot from it if something happens to my original correct?



    Al isn't an abbreviation for anything. It's a guy's name. Al is one of the two founders of Alsoft. They were both Apple employees and if I am not mistaken, Al designed the original HFS.



    And to your second question, yes Carbon Copy Cloner will make a bootable copy of your drive, but as far as I know it only works on external drives not networked ones.



    As always YMMV.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    First and best: DiskWarrior.



    Second most important: Data Rescue. If it can't get it back, you are either screwed or you spend $800 for DriveSavers.



    Third: TechTool Pro 4. It has an insane number of hardware diagnostics but you don't really need all its gizmos. the one cool thing is eDrive which lets you finally check the boot disk without using a boot CD because it creates a small partition it works from. I saw this in the news lately as having problems but it sounds useful if it works.



    You don't need virus software. MacOS X has no viruses and probably never will. If it does they won't do much since OS X is very secure and needs authentication for everything, and if you stay away from peer to peer and opening attachments from spam, you are the best virus protection anyhow.



    OS X is becoming idiot proof, it takes care of itself, a nice change from Classic which got cruddy and needed a good ol' Desktop Database erasing every now and then, and a Prefs sweep and Extensions audit.



    In OS X just Fix Permissions in Disk Util every now and then and everything should be fine.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    mcsjgsmcsjgs Posts: 244member
    For automated system maintenance (set and forget it), I like Macaroni. Does all the CRON tasks and repairs permissions on schedule you set. Never forgets. Here:



    http://www.atomicbird.com



    For disk maintenance, I use fsck first. Then DiskWarrior if problem won't go away. Looking forward to Tech Tool Pro 4 for some other tools.



    For standalone maintenance where you do it, Cocktail and Maintain are my favorites.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Those tasks your mac does at night anyway and new users might be intimidated by made up words like cron and grep.. But Macaroni is a good app, just that those tasks aren't too important wrt integrity.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    mcsjgsmcsjgs Posts: 244member
    I suppose the problem arises if you don't leave your computer on 24/7. Then unix doesn't do the regular maintenance.



    I used to do the maintenance tasks every weekend, but that got to be a pain, hence Macaroni. Set it once, and I never have to think of it again. It will work in the background every day and never forgets to do the tasks assigned to it.



    I've been looking a lot at Maintain lately. Very powerful program which lets you see everything going on in Terminal. Very nicely done.



    Cache cleaning has me a little curious though. Seems like most programs seem to alter things a lot. I lost installed updates from Software Updates after running cache cleaning programs. Not sure if they are as well written as others.



    IMHO, maintenance should be invisible to most users.
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