The Best Hard Drive Maintenance/Recovery Programs?

[FasterSoonerNow]

Seems that DiskWarrior gets rave reviews on one end, and horrible ones on the other, with people complaining about it's ease of use, etc.

So... Can anyone recommend what they think is best to me?

I've heard good things about:
DiskWarrior
Norton Utilities
Carbon Copy C?? (I forgot the last C ) For Backup purposes
Super Duper! For Backup Purposes


Anyone?

 

[cleo]

I'm curious about this, too. I just forked out $320 for a new HD in my iBook, and even though I know I probably had nothing to do with the old one failing, now I want to do everything I can to baby my new one.

 

[Covington]

I've used Norton Utilities and SpeedDisk. I prefer Norton Utilities.

A great defrag program is iDefrag. It's definitely worth the price.

Hope this helps.

 

[YS2003]

using Norton software at your own risk

I've used Norton Utilities and SpeedDisk. I prefer Norton Utilities.

A great defrag program is iDefrag. It's definitely worth the price.

Hope this helps.

I heard so many negative reviews and nightmare stories on Norton software for OS X. I un-installed System Works/Firewall from my Ti and did a clean "erase & intall" OS for my 15" Al PB just to be safe. There are so many posts on this forum (and others) about how Norton software causes instability in the OS and other problems. For OS X, there is no need for defrag as it does on the fly for less than 20MB file. For larger files such as graphics and video, I would rather use an exteranal FW hard drive instead of using an internal HD (it is way easier to replace an external FW HD than an internal one).

 

[tweakers_suck]

I'll share my horror story and let you be the judge.

Seems that DiskWarrior gets rave reviews on one end, and horrible ones on the other, with people complaining about it's ease of use, etc.

So... Can anyone recommend what they think is best to me?

I've heard good things about:
DiskWarrior
Norton Utilities
Carbon Copy C?? (I forgot the last C ) For Backup purposes
Super Duper! For Backup Purposes


Anyone?

I few months ago I wanted to do some basic disk maintenance. I was running Jaguar at the time. By mistake put in an old version of Norton Utilities and was running disk doctor. If you are familiar with Norton, you can imagine where I am going with this. Norton is moving along, fixing problems as it sees them - then I finally get to the speed disk application. During the optimization, speed disk froze. I freaked out. The absolute worst time to have a program freeze!

I have two problems at this point. 1) I used an OS X imcompatable version of Norton which totally screwed up the file structure. and 2) speed disk froze during optimization - lots of data is now vaporized.

I rush out to buy DiskWarrior 3, run the 'you really f***ed your HD' routine and was able to recover a few photos here and there, but I lost many. My wife was very unhappy with me.

My feeling is that DW would have worked much better under 'normal' disk crashes. I amplified my troubles to the nth degree by using the wrong version of Norton.

I've since decided that it is best to use DW periodically and maintain a reliable disk directory. I don't use Norton any more and I don't go near speed disk! I realize that Norton is not to blame. I just choose DW at this point in time.

Those are my thoughts.

 

[Kyan]

Maintenance/Recovery

Hi,
I use Carbon Copy clone to backup to an external drive. I have Disk Warrior which is a directory repair utility, and I also have Tech Tools Pro 4 which also repairs directories plus many other repair and optimization utilities.
Kyan

 

[Covington]

I heard so many negative reviews and nightmare stories on Norton software for OS X. I un-installed System Works/Firewall from my Ti and did a clean "erase & intall" OS for my 15" Al PB just to be safe. There are so many posts on this forum (and others) about how Norton software causes instability in the OS and other problems. For OS X, there is no need for defrag as it does on the fly for less than 20MB file. For larger files such as graphics and video, I would rather use an exteranal FW hard drive instead of using an internal HD (it is way easier to replace an external FW HD than an internal one).

YS2003, Thanks for your opinion.

I've heard those stories too. I guess that's what happens when you live in a town that has one very tiny computer store - which is actually a part of a bookstore. Not to many choices here. So far I have not been having any problems yet - I haven't done anything major to my iBook so far. I got to get DiskWarrior when I can.

I work with large files, so I try to For the same reason, I haven't found a reasonably priced firewire hard drive. (And of course, I'm the type of computer "neat freak" who *has* to defragment her files.)

I've only have experience with those programs; I'd like to say more, but I don't want to talk about stuff that I haven't tried.

Which brings up another piece of advice:

FasterSoonerNow and Cleo, search the forum and the internet for reviews of the products that you want to buy.

Hope our advice helps.

 

[redAPPLE]

i am using x.3.8 and i think there is this bug (that Apple SHOULD FIX QUICKLY!), in which the external hard drive doesn't mount.

i tried techtool pro 4 and the program found the external drive, but it could not be mounted.

disk utility does not even see the drive.

i used "data rescue x" to at least fish out the files and transfer it to another external drive.

 

[OnceUGoMac]

DW + Cocktail + Unix = Happy Mac.

 

[HiRez]

DiskWarrior is good but TechTool Pro is my favorite OS X system maintenance utility. I would rather back up my entire 160 GB hard drive to 400k floppies than trust it to Norton, stay far, far away from it!

 

[Bear]

Backing up your data is also essential

...
I rush out to buy DiskWarrior 3, run the 'you really f***ed your HD' routine and was able to recover a few photos here and there, but I lost many. My wife was very unhappy with me.
...

Backing up your data is a rather good idea. It's the only thing that will let you recover from a drive that has totally failed.

Too many people don't back up their data and then get upset when the drive fails. Don't wait until you think the drive may be dying and do back up stuff regularly.