David Shayer, an expert on the subject, recently wrote an excellent article in TidBits about disk repair utilities, although he, unfortunately did not have a copy of Tech Tool Pro 4.0.1 to test at the time.
David Shayer's Disk Utility Shootout Article
This article was referenced in a previous thread here:
Is Norton Utilities Any Good? Thread
In order to see how thorough the tests were, I recommend reading the entire article. He really did a job. But for those who did not read the previous thread or want to see before reading the article, here are his conclusions:
And the Winner Is... Of my 15 tests, DiskWarrior fixed 12 successfully, Norton Disk Doctor fixed 11, Drive 10 fixed 9, DiskGuardian fixed 5, and Disk Utility fixed 4. "Fixed" includes cases where recovery may not have been perfect, but was good enough.
So what, in my professional opinion, should you do if your disk starts acting up? First, try Apple's free Disk Utility. It may fix only a limited set of problems, but when Disk Utility finds a problem, it's invariably correct, and it applies fixes only when it's absolutely certain it knows the correct fix. I've never seen Disk Utility accidentally make a problem worse, something the other utilities can do, even if only very occasionally.
If Disk Utility doesn't succeed, let DiskWarrior do battle with your damaged directory. It was our overall winner, and it deserves its excellent reputation. DiskWarrior can also show you a preview of the repairs before you accept them, which lets you check that a damaged file or folder really was fixed before DiskWarrior makes the fix permanent.
If DiskWarrior fails, give Norton Disk Doctor a try, since it can address some problems that DiskWarrior misses. After that, try sacrificing chickens. Seriously, if the combination of Disk Utility, DiskWarrior, and Norton Disk Doctor can't repair your disk, you can either restore your data from backup, or, if that's not possible, decide if the data is sufficiently important to pay DriveSavers for recovery.
I still think the most important data protection utility you should own is a backup program. But sometimes a good disk repair program can save the day by repairing minor damage quickly so you don't have to run through the time-consuming process of reinitializing your hard disk and restoring from backup.
[David Shayer was a senior engineer on Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0. Before that he worked on Public Utilities, a disk repair program that won the MacUser Magazine Editor's Choice Award, and on Sedit, a low-level disk editor.]
====================
I second the original thread in this:
"* P.S. If you find the article informative, don't forget to think about David's PayBITS."
Be advised that several posters in the orginal thread cautioned against using Norton because of very bad results they had observed.
I e-mailed the author about the article, and he indicated he was looking forward to testing TTP 4 when he gets a copy, and possibly revising the original article or following up on it.
Top
