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Disk Warrior bad for Snow Leopard?

B

boynigel

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 19, 2009
268
7
i'm having some major issues with a program that i run on my intel imac. after consulting tech support for the program, it was determined that i have some corrupt files that are causing my problems. (even though Disk Doctor says they were repaired). it also said my file count was not matching. the tech suggested either:
a) i wipe my hard drive and start from scratch,
or,
b) purchase disk warrior to fix the problem

i was all set to purchase disk warrior until i read a couple of reviews that simply stated, "don't buy it if you have snow leopard". can anyone confirm or deny this vague statement?
 
I used it all the time when I had SL and it worked flawlessly. I also ran it on multiple other computers with SL and I never encountered a problem.
 
MisterMe said:
I take it that you never heard of the built-in commandline File System Check?
Click to expand...

enlighten me. the only built in thing i've tried is Disk Doctor. i talked to a so-called mac specialist who never mentioned it.
 
DiskWarrior is golden. Best Disk Utility around hands down. Used it several times with SL, worked just fine. Recommend it highly. Its a good investment and a good piece of software to have lying around at home.
 
boynigel said:
i'm having some major issues with a program that i run on my intel imac. after consulting tech support for the program, it was determined that i have some corrupt files that are causing my problems. (even though Disk Doctor says they were repaired). it also said my file count was not matching. the tech suggested either:
a) i wipe my hard drive and start from scratch,
or,
b) purchase disk warrior to fix the problem
i was all set to purchase disk warrior until i read a couple of reviews that simply stated, "don't buy it if you have snow leopard". can anyone confirm or deny this vague statement?
Click to expand...
DW is considered by many to be the best HD repair system around, where did you see that review mentioning Snow Leopard? Frankly I cannot believe someone actually said that, the reputation DW has is so good and that includes Snow Leopard. In my opinion, if DW can't fix a disk, you are better off trashing it and buying a new one.
You can use the file system check apple provides first, it may or may not work. Boot up in single user mode (is that the correct name? I forget), holding down the Command and "s" key at boot.
When you get a prompt, type "fsck -f" and hit the enter key.
This does what is done by Apple's Disk Utility, DW does a completely different routine, replacing the directory with a repaired, optimized directory.
Good Luck
 
davidlv said:
DW is considered by many to be the best HD repair system around, where did you see that review mentioning Snow Leopard? Frankly I cannot believe someone actually said that, the reputation DW has is so good and that includes Snow Leopard. In my opinion, if DW can't fix a disk, you are better off trashing it and buying a new one.
You can use the file system check apple provides first, it may or may not work. Boot up in single user mode (is that the correct name? I forget), holding down the Command and "s" key at boot.
When you get a prompt, type "fsck -f" and hit the enter key.
This does what is done by Apple's Disk Utility, DW does a completely different routine, replacing the directory with a repaired, optimized directory.
Good Luck
Click to expand...

i read the bad reviews on a website that was selling it. out of 10 or so reviews there were 3 or 4 people who gave it only one star out of five, stating that it didn't help, or they got the endless spinning wheel, locked up etc. i took it w/a grain of salt and came here to find out more. given all the positive responses here, i WILL be purchasing DW tonight. thanks for all your responses.
 
I haven't seen the bad reviews mentioned in the last post. I've used it for years. It doesn't have to be used on an inoperable disk. Disk Warrior essentially cleans up the directories so that they're easily located/read.

Oh regarding Snow Leopard you need to ensure you're using a recent version. If you bought one that came out before SL and didn't update it, that could be bad. If the reviewers bought it from a third party just a bit after SL came out and they were buying old vendor stock, this could be the reason. Alsoft mentions all this on their site. They also say to back up. Anyway I've even used it on fresh installations simply because it does reduce any hanging with mapping finder windows.
 
I support over 300 macs in an academic lab where the end user owns the computer. This means that reformatting is often not an option, so I have a lot of experience with disk utilities such as Disk Warrior, Drive Genius, Tech Tools etc . . . I'd say that while they all have their strengths and weaknesses I do tend to use Disk Warrior first because it almost always works. That said I have seen each program work where another has failed. Make sure you have the most up to date edition, if you have a problem call the companies tech support and check the forums for help. More then anything else though, do your best to keep an up to date back-up. If you have a back-up (kept off site from the computer) you should be able to recover from any issue. :)
 
davidlv said:
DW is considered by many to be the best HD repair system around, where did you see that review mentioning Snow Leopard? Frankly I cannot believe someone actually said that, the reputation DW has is so good and that includes Snow Leopard. In my opinion, if DW can't fix a disk, you are better off trashing it and buying a new one.
You can use the file system check apple provides first, it may or may not work. Boot up in single user mode (is that the correct name? I forget), holding down the Command and "s" key at boot.
When you get a prompt, type "fsck -f" and hit the enter key.
This does what is done by Apple's Disk Utility, DW does a completely different routine, replacing the directory with a repaired, optimized directory.
Good Luck
Click to expand...

okay, now i remember where i saw the bad reviews. it was on the MacMall site on the page where they sell DW.
 
boynigel said:
okay, now i remember where i saw the bad reviews. it was on the MacMall site on the page where they sell DW.
Click to expand...
Those are user comments, not reviews. You have zero confidence that the commenter has a clue. In the case of Disk Warrior, it is considered to be the best file recovery utility save using a professional service. The fact that some nitwit doesn't know how to use it notwithstanding.
 
I'd have to agree with the above comments endorsing DW. I've used it since 2007 and I've found it to be a very worthwhile piece of software. I can' t imagine being without it.
 
Given the problems with HFS+ especially when used for external volumes, I actually wonder why Apple never licensed the functionality of Disk Warrior as a baseline feature. Pretty much anyone who uses a Mac could potentially benefit from it, but so many people aren't even aware of the program. Apple has looked for a way to update to a more modern file system but nothing has worked yet.
 
thekev said:
Given the problems with HFS+ especially when used for external volumes, ...
Click to expand...
Exactly what would those problems be? I have used HFS+ on all of my internal drives and most of my external drives since MacOS 8.1 was released in 1998. I used a utility to convert my HFS internal drives to HFS+. Since upgrading, I have had zero (0) problems with HFS+. Perhaps, I am missing something. Enlighten me and the other members of this forum.
 
DW on SL

Disk Warrior is indeed a great program. Saved my bacon several times.
I think the bad reviews come in where DW cannot boot on Snow Leopard on certain machines. I could not install 4.1 on my machine (running SL) . I have a new 2011 iMac and could not boot with DW or even run it.
I had to go to the Alsoft website and do the 4.x to 4.4 update. Even with updating successfully (creating a new 4.4 disk), I cannot boot from it.
However, I can now install it. I must run it from another bootable volume which has it installed.
~john theaker
 
theaks2002 said:
Disk Warrior is indeed a great program. Saved my bacon several times.
I think the bad reviews come in where DW cannot boot on Snow Leopard on certain machines. I could not install 4.1 on my machine (running SL) . I have a new 2011 iMac and could not boot with DW or even run it.
I had to go to the Alsoft website and do the 4.x to 4.4 update. Even with updating successfully (creating a new 4.4 disk), I cannot boot from it.
However, I can now install it. I must run it from another bootable volume which has it installed.~john theaker
Click to expand...
If you ran the updater using your original DW DVD, you only updated the version of DW on the new DVD, the actual OSX system on the DVD would be the same version as on the original DW DVD (and that is why it won't boot any models that came out with a newer OS system). That is how their updaters work (see the Alsoft HP for confirmation). You can pay for an updated DVD and have them send it to you, but even the latest DW DVDs are often still a little behind the latest OS versions (Alsoft has a post about that too on the HP). Anyway, booting from the DVD is reeeeaaaallllly slow, so as you said, it is possible to boot up from another volume (either USB or Firewire) and that will be a lot faster than the DVD too. So what you are doing is probably the best and cheapest way around :cool::cool:.
 
The bad reviews may come from people who had failures other than just directory corruption. That is really the only thing that DiskWarrior does.

It certainly is the best utility for repairing directory structure, but it cannot repair with a drive that has too many bad blocks, failing or intermittent electronics, or any other hardware related issues.

DiskWarrior shines in being able to preview changes to be made without writing to the disk.

I've seen situations where only a combination of several utilities is able to rescue data from a drive with severe corruption. I only wish DiskWarrior had an option to perform a full read-only test of all blocks, however, it DOES tell you in the progress window if it suspects some kind of hardware failure, which, if that's the case, should really be left to somebody with a bit of experience in data recovery. Writing changes to a drive with a hardware failure can be disastrous! :eek:

If you check this page:
http://alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/support.html

you'll find that:
v4.1.1 is the first version compatible with 10.5.8
v4.2 is the first version compatible with 10.6
v4.3 is the first version compatible with 10.7

The current version is v4.4 and can be updated using any v4.x.x original DVD. As stated already, the only draw-back with older v4.x.x DVDs is limited to what Macs they can boot.
 
Last edited:
MacTech68, I just wanted to mention (in case you didn't know), DiskWarrior does have some extra options that might help in some of the cases you're talking about. If you option-click the Rebuild button, you can (I forget the wording) ignore the current directory entirely and do a full scan. I know it doesn't completely substitute for what you're asking for, but I've found it helpful in situations where it initially had trouble due to damage.

jW
 
Mal said:
MacTech68, I just wanted to mention (in case you didn't know), DiskWarrior does have some extra options that might help in some of the cases you're talking about. If you option-click the Rebuild button, you can (I forget the wording) ignore the current directory entirely and do a full scan. I know it doesn't completely substitute for what you're asking for, but I've found it helpful in situations where it initially had trouble due to damage.

jW
Click to expand...

Yup, I'm aware of that option. However, that "scavenge" option doesn't do a full read-only test to check the drive for bad blocks, which is what I was referring to (perhaps not clearly). :)

One thing I have noticed, is that if the partition map is damaged, DiskWarrior seems to be unable to see the drive at all, in which case, something like Prosoft Engineering's Data rescue is called for (though you need a second drive to recover to).

You can achieve something similar with DiskWarrior's ability to mount a "preview" of the repaired disk (before writing changes) and clone the preview disk to another drive, though you need to do this when NOT booted from the DiskWarrior DVD.

My comment was based around the fact that repairing directories on a drive that cannot pass a full read-only test of all blocks something I would seriously advise against, and is likely to be the cause of some of the bad "buyer reviews". :)
 
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