Thank you Ronni. I had been reading on the web pretty much what you have stated. But was just looking for some local confirmation.
I have only ever owned Techtool Pro but have not updated it for quite a while. Something else I need not be concerned about I reckon. Thanks again. > On 28 Dec 2016, at 11:44 am, Ronni Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello Stephen, > > My comments in Situ below. > >> On 27 Dec 2016, at 6:50 pm, Stephen Chape <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> Hi folks. >> >> Does anyone know if it is really worth buying third party disk utility these >> days ? >> EG: Disk Warrior or Tech Tool for example. > > If you are running El Capitan or Sierra, My short answer is “No, its not > worth buying third-party Disk Utilities these days” > I've always had Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro, Drive Genius and other > third-party utilities installed on my earlier Macs and used them quite > frequently. > But I don’t even have these utilities installed on my current Macs since > probably Yosemite OS X 10.10 - my current Macs are running Sierra 10.12.2 > (I still have the above utilities installed on my Support Drive). > >> >> Or can most things be covered by Mac Disk Utility ? > > “Apple has made ongoing hardware and software improvements that keep disks > running happily more of the time. > 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. > These and other improvements to OS X have reduced frequency of disk errors. > In addition, Disk Utility has gained a number of new features in recent > years, and it can now repair faults that might once have been out of its > reach.” > > If you look over the feature lists of the major disk utilities, you will find > that they all advertise capabilities that Disk Utility already offers for > free. The three third-party programs can check a drive’s SMART > (self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology) status, repair disk > permissions, and repair at least some types of volume corruption. Drive > Genius and TechTool Pro can create a bootable duplicate of your disk and > securely erase free space, and Drive Genius can also initialize and format > drives. > But Disk Utility does all that, too. > > Disk repair always requires you to start up from a separate volume. But as > long as your Mac is running at least Lion or new OS X , you don’t need a > second drive; simply restart while holding Command-R to use OS X Recovery, > which boots your Mac from a hidden partition (or, in some cases, over the > Internet) so you can run Disk Utility. > > The third-party utilities, by contrast, ship on bootable DVDs—except that > they can’t boot the newest Mac models (not even if you use an external > SuperDrive, for Mac models that lack an internal one). So in order to repair > your startup disk, you’ll need to create a separate boot volume with the disk > utility installed. (TechTool Pro’s eDrive is the sole exception here, > behaving much like OS X’s Recovery HD.) > >> I get the occasional slow down and more rarely freeze at start up and want >> to run some checks. > > Try Safe Mode: > Some problems can be solved with Safe Mode. Restart your Mac. As soon as you > hear the startup chime, press and hold the Shift key until you see the grey > Apple logo. > The startup process may take a while; once it’s done the words “Safe Boot” > should appear in red in the login screen menu bar. > Log in and you’ll see a progress bar as Sierra runs diagnostics and clean-up > processes. (It also disables software that loads at startup and login.) > If the problem goes away, restart again normally. The problem is most likely > due to third-party software that was disabled in Safe Mode. Look for updates > in the App Store. > If the problems persist Boot into Recovery Partition: > 1. Restart your Mac - Hold down ⌘-R until the gray Apple logo appears; > 2. Locate & open Disk Utility - in Recovery, you can simply select it in the > list that appears and click Continue. > 3. In the list on the left , select your startup volume. Note that volume > names are indented underneath the names of the physical devices on which they > reside. > 4. Click Repair Disk > > Disk Utility examines your disk and attempts to repair it if necessary. > When it’s finished, you can quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac normally. > > Cheers, > Ronni > > 13-inch MacBook Air (April 2014) > 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost to 3.3GHz > 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM > 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage > > macOS Sierra 10.12.2 > >> >> Regards, >> Stephen Chape >> > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> Regards, Stephen Chape
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