Here are a great couple of articles from Mac hard drive expert David Shayer on drive repair utilities:
Shootout at the Disk Repair Corral and
Tech Tool 4 Joins Our Disk Repair Comparison. The author systematically damages disks in specific ways and then tracks the extent to which each utility can fix the problems. Unlike other reviewers, he purposely leaves out judgments about each program's UI, since his chief concern is the efficacy of the repair engine. Even though the most recent addition is nine months old, the information should still be pretty current. Shayer details the various maladies a disk can suffer and provides additional pertinent information, such as this informative paragraph on journaling:
"A new feature in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther that should reduce directory errors even more is the journalled file system. You can enable it in Disk Utility, and it's usually turned on for disks onto which you install Panther. Here's how journalling works. Before the file system changes the directory, it leaves a note on the disk saying, "I'm going to make this change in the directory." Then the file system makes the change, and once it finishes, it clears the note. If the file system ever sees an incomplete change note on the disk during startup, it knows something bad happened and "rolls back" the directory to its previous state. You will lose your last change, but the directory won't suffer any damage."
To paraphrase Shayer's conclusion, run Disk Uitlity (or fsck) for simple things, and turn everything else over to Disk Warrior.
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