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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > New Powerbooks: Disk Warrior or Techtools 4??

New Powerbooks: Disk Warrior or Techtools 4??
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Daniel Bayer
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Oct 3, 2003, 06:18 PM
 
I was using the old os 9 boot version of Disk Warrior to manage my drive's frag factor.

Now Alsoft says that even the newest version won't boot the new PBG4's (Like the one I just got)

Any ideas??

Or are they just working on a revision that will work with Panther on down?
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Super Glitcher
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Oct 4, 2003, 06:09 AM
 
I've heard that techtool is sissyware and that norton's is like pooping on your hd platter- *BUT* diskwarrior rocks... so I'd get that.

I used nortons in OS9 and it was great, no issues... using it under OSX though, you kind of get the feeling that it might be problematic because it always is showing major mdb errors and crap that doesn't make sense at all. Then it fixes the 'issues' and you wonder what exactly is going to happen... I usually hide under my covers and cry like a little girl when that happens..



so.. now I use diskwarrior
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Super Glitcher
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Oct 4, 2003, 06:16 AM
 
Oh yeah, and the booting..

Put a cut version of OSX on your external firewire and boot from that when you want to run the diagnostics.. the 17" is kind of a pain that way..

I tried to make a start-up disk on DVD with my diagnostic junk on it, but this pb is really finicky about startup disks... so far no luck, probably because of my sub-par intellect- and the fact that I gave up.

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ngrundy
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Oct 4, 2003, 08:54 AM
 
Personally I really don't see the use of defrag tools. I've never seen any other unix system i've ever used. If you really want to get all paranoid about fragmentation then you could just copy the data off to another disk (using disk copy or ccc), format and then restore.

I've been using the same OSX install since I got my laptop in november of last year and I can't say I've really noticed any measureable decreace in file system performance.
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Daniel Bayer  (op)
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Oct 4, 2003, 11:03 AM
 
Well then, with all this said, what makes a drive's *Scores* in say, Xbench drop? Do they really matter if your open / close times don't change in a phtoshop file??

My HD moves up and down in size probably 1-3 GB per day and 3-10 GB per week, mostly 2-5 MB files with about 20% bieng 10-60 MB. The drive is usually around 27-34 GB free with top outs at 18 GB free space.

It's kind of confusing really, My open and close times on photoshop files don't really decrease until I'm around 37 GB free.

With OS9, it was (is) cut and dry, it really needed maintenance at the levels above and because of the frequent crashes it has

We all know that OSX is not that monster.

So when we reset permissions, is that in effect, a minor selection of what a CD disk utility would accomplish?

It's a techie-paranoia thing mostly, one would guess. But you have to admit, when we feel a gain in performance and stability or fix a problem because we have used one of these gizzy's, it makes you simply want to maintain things really well before they even become and issue.......especially when your living depends on it.

So in the world of third party software versus
Mac OS, the dog is once again wagging it's tail, not the other way around. Hence: We find ourselves waiting on current Disk Utility Software again.

Disk Utility Software up to now, has been a vital or at least convenient way to maintain a drive's performance.

Where does it stack up now? When and how do you really want to use it??

Honestly, whenever I used Disk Warrior on my ti, 11% fragmentation is the most I ever saw.
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LfGrdMike
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Oct 4, 2003, 01:30 PM
 
techtool pro sissy ware ha thats a load of BS. TechTool can check for hardware problems and disk problems you need to get your facts straight. Norton utilities blows goats and antivirus is a complete waste of money.

TechTool or Disk Warrior.

Disk Warrior is hense the name disk related. it is good at what it does which is rebuilding your directories. Having both of these in the toolbox is a very powerful way to solve most problems.

still i must reccomend techtool they have great support and their software owns. Disk Warrior is good too, but you get a lot more out of techtool.

I dont understand why techtool is sissyware. With disk warrior all you do is click a button and it fixes stuff so if this is related to what you mean then wow. Load of BS if you ask me. Either tool is good.
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LfGrdMike
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Oct 4, 2003, 01:33 PM
 
Disk Optimization what a hoax it doesn't do anything beneficial anymore on todays fast machines. ITs just going to get fragmented again so who gives a rats behind. thats a waste of time and effort on all disk utilities at this time.
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absmiths
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Nov 25, 2003, 04:52 PM
 
Originally posted by ngrundy:
I've never seen any other unix system i've ever used.
You've really never seen any other UNIX system you have ever used? That's interesting . . .
     
absmiths
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Nov 25, 2003, 04:54 PM
 
Originally posted by LfGrdMike:
Disk Optimization what a hoax it doesn't do anything beneficial anymore on todays fast machines. ITs just going to get fragmented again so who gives a rats behind. thats a waste of time and effort on all disk utilities at this time.
That's like Microsoft rationalizing that 1,000,000 lines of code bloat won't matter since todays machines are so fast. If so, why bother optimizing?

Really, modern machines are so much faster than machines of a few decades ago, but they also do exponentially more work, so many of the same optimization techniques still apply.
     
terrancew_hod
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Nov 25, 2003, 06:41 PM
 
Diskwarrior has saved a few of my drives structures after they have been corrupted (that'll teach to stop tinkering with my corecrib setup). I keep a minimal Jaguar partition for diskwarrior (so far it works best there) and was able to recover my drives.

It gets my vote...

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TheIceMan
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Nov 25, 2003, 08:28 PM
 
If you do a search, you'll find that DiskWarrior is mentioned positively by many on this forum and in magazine reviews. When I got my Ti PowerBook last year, one day the hard drive started acting weird. Then it would screw up when I try to access my folders or apps. So I brought it in to the Apple Store (Genius Bar) and they popped in DiskWarrior. About an hour later everything was fine. DW saved my behind.
     
tooki
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Nov 25, 2003, 10:19 PM
 
DiskWarrior CDs that boot G5's and new AlBooks are on the way.

tooki
     
guigo
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Nov 25, 2003, 11:28 PM
 
just for the record....
Disk Warrior is just to rebuild the directory structure of a hard drive, just that??
because, when I press "graph", it shows a little fragmentation but don't give me a "optimize" option....
I'm doing something wrong or is just that?
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alfric
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Nov 26, 2003, 03:41 AM
 
with the journaling file sytem in Panther, do we really need DiskWarrior to mend our directory structure?

--------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by guigo:
just for the record....
Disk Warrior is just to rebuild the directory structure of a hard drive, just that??
because, when I press "graph", it shows a little fragmentation but don't give me a "optimize" option....
I'm doing something wrong or is just that?
regards
guilherme
brazil
     
Boondoggle
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Nov 26, 2003, 06:01 AM
 
Disk warrior does not defrag the drive. It repairs/optimizes the directory. That is all it does as far as I know, and it does it well.
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NeXTLoop
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Nov 26, 2003, 06:10 AM
 
One thing to keep in mind is that Panther now has some built-in defragging. It's been added to the filesystem. So this definitely goes a long way toward minimizing the need for a third party tool to perform this function.
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neilw
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Nov 26, 2003, 12:27 PM
 
The benefit of owning DiskWarrior is that it *repairs* the directory structure. I don't care so much about the optimization aspect of it. It is extraordinarily good at recovering a corrupted disk.
     
   
 
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