What is a good Disk Utility?
Can anyone recommend a good (Tiger friendly) disk utility. Kinda stopped using one for a while there, now I think it might be a good idea to do some basic maintenance, defrag, et al (Tiger seems to "lag" at bootup a little longer than Panther ever did). I won't trust Norton Disk Doctor again (got screwed one too many times), DiskWarrior worked fine on Panther, and I've heard about issues with TechTool Pro.
Any other utilities out there worth getting?
Thanks.
Any other utilities out there worth getting?
Thanks.
Comments
Originally posted by ikDigital
Can anyone recommend a good (Tiger friendly) disk utility. Kinda stopped using one for a while there, now I think it might be a good idea to do some basic maintenance, defrag, et al (Tiger seems to "lag" at bootup a little longer than Panther ever did). I won't trust Norton Disk Doctor again (got screwed one too many times), DiskWarrior worked fine on Panther, and I've heard about issues with TechTool Pro.
Any other utilities out there worth getting?
Thanks.
Norton Disk Doctor is not Tiger-compatible. The Norton Utilities suite is no longer under development for the Mac. Don't use it. DiskWarrior is the choice of Mac technicians "back in the shop." It is the best thing short of a professional file recovery service if you lose files. AppleCare includes a version of TechTools. I don't think that you can mistake by upgrading to the commercial version of TechTools. I have never heard of a problem caused by TechTools. However, MacOS X 10's built-in tools, the freeware GUI frontends to the BSD utilities, the commandline tools will probably be all you every actually need to keep your Mac purring like a kitten. And they don't cost you a dime.
Originally posted by Mr. Me
Norton Disk Doctor is not Tiger-compatible. The Norton Utilities suite is no longer under development for the Mac. Don't use it. DiskWarrior is the choice of Mac technicians "back in the shop." It is the best thing short of a professional file recovery service if you lose files. AppleCare includes a version of TechTools. I don't think that you can mistake by upgrading to the commercial version of TechTools. I have never heard of a problem caused by TechTools. However, MacOS X 10's built-in tools, the freeware GUI frontends to the BSD utilities, the commandline tools will probably be all you every actually need to keep your Mac purring like a kitten.
Sometimes DiskWarrior will not work but Data Rescue from Prosoft Engineering, Inc. will. That has been my safty net several times. I also prefer OnyX (free) vs. Cocktail (shareware). For ~$100 Drive Genius and Tech Tool Pro 4.x are very similar to each other, but DG has a free tryout from the prosoft web site. Any more Q's please ask away in the Genius Bar Forums. Good luck.
Originally posted by Mr. Me
...MacOS X 10's built-in tools, the freeware GUI frontends to the BSD utilities, the commandline tools will probably be all you every actually need to keep your Mac purring like a kitten. And they don't cost you a dime.
Is there an easy tutorial on how to use these, or do I need to know UNIX?
What are the BSD utilities? "Commandline" sounds a little over my head.
Thanks.
Open Disk Utility, and select your Mac OS X partition. Click repair disk permissions.
You should not need to do this, unless your disk is acting up, but there you go.
Your HD is defragmented on the fly by Mac OS X, BTW.
Originally posted by ikDigital
Is there an easy tutorial on how to use these, or do I need to know UNIX?
What are the BSD utilities? "Commandline" sounds a little over my head.
Thanks.
Stay as far away from the Unix command line as possible.
Download Yasu.
On occasion, run this utility. All of its maintainance tasks are out in the open and selectable via checkboxes. It is foolproof.
Originally posted by Mr. Me
Stay as far away from the Unix command line as possible.
Download Yasu.
On occasion, run this utility. All of its maintainance tasks are out in the open and selectable via checkboxes. It is foolproof.
Thanks, Mr. Me.
Just what I was looking for.
Disk Warrior 3.0.3 for checking/repairing the directory/file structure and rebuilding a clean optimized version. It's the first tool I run following Disk Utility's Repair Permissions when performing routine maintenance, every month or so.
Tech Tool Pro 4.0.4 for checking/repairing the hardware and volume/file structure if Disk Warrior has a problem. I seldom use this tool, except when everything thing else I've tried fails. Why? Because it can be slow...robust and reliable, but slow. I've heard of some problems with its Disk Optimization (defragmenting) tool, but I've never used it.
iDefrag 1.11 from Coriolis Systems. This tool replaced Norton's Speed Disk for me. I've been using it on ~40 Macs over the past 3-4 months with no ill effects. The just released, fully Tiger-compatible, version is a bit faster than the beta I had been playing around with. Note that Tiger automatically defragments only files of <20MB. If you have any Movies/Photos/large application files (e.g., InDesign), Tiger will NOT defragment those. iDefrag fully supports Tiger's new Access Control Lists (ACLs) permissions structure, and moves most commonly used files to the new hotfiles area of the volume. It works really well, and will noticeably improve the performance of a drive. After running it, reboot the volume, startup each of the applications you use regularly, then quit everything and shut the Mac down. Upon rebooting, you'll see a noticeable performance improvement. I also run this last thing after performing serious system maintenance. It will take a couple of hours to finish.
To summarize, for regular (monthly or so) maintenance:
1. Run Disk Utility's Repair Permissions (also every time you run Software Update for system file updates).
2. Run Disk Warrior 3.0.3 to check/repair/optimize the directory/file structure.
3. Run iDefrag 1.11 to defragment and optimize (move files on disk to locations that will give better performance based on your historical use)
Repair Permissions will only take a few minutes to run. Disk Warrior may take 15-20 minutes. iDefrag will take a couple of hours, at least. (it's OK to leave it running overnight)
Do NOT use Symantec's Norton Utilities on any Tiger volume. It will interpret the new ACLs as damaged files and attempt to repair them, wreaking potential havoc in the process. Norton was my primary tool (after Disk Warrior) in Panther and earlier versions of the MacOS, but it's done, and Symantec has discontinued its development.
iDefrag is a cheap shareware kind of thing for simple defrag. I HAVE NOT USED IT.
Great info.
Originally posted by BigBlue
A very good (and free) disk utility (and more, like 'show hidden files' and stuff) is Onyx. You can find it at Versiontracker.
Tbanks for mentioning, I checked it out and it works great.