Hi People, I find especially since OS X 10.7 & OS X 10.8 I now very rarely use any third-party Disk Utilities. I have TechTool Pro 6, Drive Genius, CleanMyMac, DiskWarrior & other utilities installed on my MacBook Pro and also on my support external drive.
Apple have improved hardware and OS X that you don't really need to use any third-party disk utility except in an emergency. A Mac running any version of OS X later than 10.2 does not need to be defragmented and you should NEVER Defrag SSD drives. "A solid state drive has no moving parts, so there's no mechanical delay. Reading a section of data takes approximately the same amount of time no matter where it's located in the flash. Defragmenting a solid state drive is actually harmful because it forces the drive to move data around for no good reason, and flash chips have a limit on how many times they can rewrite a section." I agree with what Peter has mentioned previously, and Severin's "housekeeping measures" are fine. The below article by Joe Kissell - 'Do you need a third-party disk utility?' is worth a read before you spend quite a bit of money on third-party utilities. "OS X performs certain disk maintenance tasks automatically in the background—for example, it defragments smaller files on the fly, keeping all their segments contiguous on a hard disk so they’ll load faster. (Solid-state drives don’t require such defragging.) And, when you perform a safe boot (starting your Mac with the Shift key held down), OS X runs a more extensive set of diagnostic and repair procedures without you doing anything else." <http://www.macworld.com/article/2030516/do-you-need-a-third-party-disk-utility-.html> ---- The most important thing is to have a good Backup Strategy in place, which includes regular Bootable backups, Offsite backups, Incremental backups. Hard Drives do die and you are only as good as your last backup! Regards, Ronni Sent from Ronni's iPad4 On 18/04/2013, at 2:26 PM, Severin Crisp <[email protected]> wrote: > Ken, I have looked at Disk Tools Pro but as I already have Tech Tools Pro, > which I believe is better, I went no further. As Peter says, the OS handles > most things, but I still run Clean My Mac and Disk Warrior monthly as > housekeeping measures and hold Tech Tools Pro at the ready in case of need. > For speed and ease of use I have these and other utilities on an up to date > bootable partition on a separate external drive, which I find to be an > excellent arrangement. > Best wishes > Severin Crisp > > On 18/04/2013, at 1:20 PM, Ken Jackson <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hey thanks Peter for such an in depth response. >> Yes it's a part of one of those bundled packages being offered. >> Yes I'm backed up but I may just buy the package to have it there just in >> case, >> >> thanks again Peter, >> >> Ken >> >> >> On 18 April 2013 07:42, Peter Hinchliffe <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> On 17/04/2013, at 5:03 PM, Ken Jackson <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi folks, >>>> has anyone tried this? >>>> Would anyone recommend it? >>>> >>>> DISK TOOLS PRO >>>> >>> >>> I have Disk Tools Pro. I think I received it as part of some software >>> bundle at one time. Fortunately I have never had to use it in anger, so I >>> can't testify to its effectiveness. >>> >>> Like all software of this type, I would not regard it as maintenance >>> software, rather than a tool to have around in case of emergency. Writing >>> information back to a hard drive always carries risks, and software such as >>> this always has the potential to make a bad problem worse. Knowing this >>> makes such software difficult to road test. Sure, you can test it on a >>> non-essential drive, but if it comes back with no errors you are none the >>> wiser. If it does come back with errors, it's probably time to back up that >>> data and replace the drive. >>> >>> The other problem is that hard drives have so much capacity these days that >>> they are quite likely to have bad sectors, etc, out of the box. Any attempt >>> to repair these is usually futile. Modern OSes are designed to deal with >>> these as a routine matter, so unless they are demonstrably causing problems >>> they can generally be safely ignored. By all means it is probably a good >>> idea to have a tool such as Disk Tools Pro, or any of its cousins such as >>> Tech Tool Pro, Disk Warrior, Drive Genius, etc. They all have different >>> tools and purposes, but ultimately they are all designed to rescue you from >>> a disaster. The best defence remains a good backup strategy. >>> >>> Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services >>> FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer >>> Perth, Western Australia >>> Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 046 948 >>> -------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to.
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