[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

Apple should include a better repair utility program on it's startup disk. Why do we even need 3rd party software? Apple made it, Apple should be the best suited to fix it. [Do] you agree with that?

Sounds good anyway... in theory.

[so, can we change the thread's title then?]

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

Apple should include a better repair utility program on it's startup disk. Why do we even need 3rd party software? Apple made it, Apple should be the best suited to fix it.

To you agree with that?

No.

[CharlesS]

Apple does include a disk utility with OS X. It's just that Alsoft does a better job of it (with the exception of when the directories grow to a size larger than 4 GB).

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by goMac 

Huh? It has to be low level because that's the only level at which you can alter the bits on a disk. A lot of stuff can ONLY be done low level. Graphics drivers are also low level, and no one gets upset...

There are no high level apps that do the same thing because this can't be done on a high level.

Besides, it doesn't even make sense. All high level code is is code that was written using low level code other people wrote. Any way you program you're going to end up with low level code in the end.

My mistake.

Low level regarding software, and more important. I see.

[besson3c]

If Apple were to include a disk repairing tool that is more comprehensive than what they provide they should make it a point to make it difficult to find and use, perhaps command line only. The last thing they would want is people just running it randomly thinking they are being productive, the same way that people run the repair permissions script because an icon is out of place.

If you give users a gun, they will find a way to shoot themselves.

[Big Mac]

Well, if Apple had something that monitored data integrity in the background and then prompted to make repairs when necessary, what would the harm be in that?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Well, if Apple had something that monitored data integrity in the background and then prompted to make repairs when necessary, what would the harm be in that?

A tremendous amount. You don't make live repairs on a disk that is in use - ever.

[Peter]

Diskwarrior has saved a few installations of OS X for me.

[stwf]

Coming from someone who has had their butt saved on a couple of occasions by DiskWarrior I hesitate to criticize them. In fact if there's a problem I'm already blaming Apple. I know in the past they have forced companies like this to jump through hoops, when they should be encouraging them.

I also know nothing, but doesn't disk warrior also have to deal with various drive controllers and how they react to bad sectors, etc? So interacting with the file system isn't the only thing it does. So to say DiskWarrior doesn't need to be updated because HFS is still the same isn't really valid. Different machines could have different behaviors.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

A tremendous amount. You don't make live repairs on a disk that is in use - ever.

When I said "prompt to make repairs" I didn't mean repairs would happen on the boot volume.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

When I said "prompt to make repairs" I didn't mean repairs would happen on the boot volume.

So it would just throw up warnings and not be able to do anything about them, ratcheting up support calls?

[Big Mac]

No, perhaps it could inform you, ask for your username and password, then boot into a mini-OS X or an EFI-X interface and do its thing.

[besson3c]

That's a band-aid to the weaknesses of HFS+. I would much rather them devote resources to moving away from HFS+ to a file system that doesn't corrupt like this in the first place. Yes, any file system can have corrupt files do to corrupt hardware, but a messed up structure is not something that should happen (and does happen) to a modern file system.

[Big Mac]

I rarely have seen much of any FS corruption in OS X, and more seldom since Journaling. I think your concern is overblown.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I rarely have seen much of any FS corruption in OS X, and more seldom since Journaling. I think your concern is overblown.

I'm not saying that the problem is frequent, I'm just saying that it shouldn't happen at all, and that what you're proposing is an ugly hack to something which shouldn't be a problem in the first place.

[Big Mac]

I was just proposing that in response to the expressed desire for a beefier version of Disk Utility. I personally haven't needed Disk Warrior on my Macs for years, but I know it's still the best disk utility on the market.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

My mistake.

Low level regarding software, and more important. I see.

Low-level doesn't mean "more important", low-level means close to the hardware. High-level code, on the other hand, is more abstracted from the hardware and generally a lot nicer to use. However, for a disk utility program, you need to be messing directly with the bits and bytes on the disk, instead of using something like file manager calls to work with the files on that disk, so you have to be working at a pretty low level.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

Apple should include a better repair utility program on it's startup disk. Why do we even need 3rd party software? Apple made it, Apple should be the best suited to fix it.

Do you agree with that?

No, for two reasons:

1. A fresh set of eyes on a problem can come up with a novel way of doing things that is better than the "official" way of doing things.
2. Big companies have reasons for denying problems, and a repair tool by definitions implies problems, defects, or weaknesses. Apple creating and bundling a major repair tool would say "we know our system is unreliable, so badly that we feel you need this repair tool". This is the logic behind Apple publicly denying product defects that get widely reported online (while often repairing affected product anyway).

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If you give users a gun, they will find a way to shoot themselves.

This sounds like an interesting Windows application

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Peter 

Diskwarrior has saved a few installations of OS X for me.

For me, I think the fact that I own Disk Warrior keeps my disc in order

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Low-level doesn't mean "more important", low-level means close to the hardware. High-level code, on the other hand, is more abstracted from the hardware and generally a lot nicer to use. However, for a disk utility program, you need to be messing directly with the bits and bytes on the disk, instead of using something like file manager calls to work with the files on that disk, so you have to be working at a pretty low level.

So firmware would be the lowest level software...

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

So firmware would be the lowest level software...

Yes, it would be. The programming of the hardware itself is low level programming. Firmware, drivers and the like.

[lpkmckenna]

Disk Warrior has saved me twice. Highly recommended!

[CatOne]

Wow, so much anger and misinformation here.

First... DiskWarrior is an outstanding product. I almost never need it. I almost never use it. I've used it proactively a couple times (creating an 'optimized table" made me feel good, but I don't think it helped anything), and in a crisis twice. Both times it saved my bacon -- rescuing a corrupted filevault disk that would not mount. So it's great.

The issue with "not supporting hardware" is the act of making a bootable DVD. This isn't all that easy to do... and it is _not_ possible to create a DVD that will boot one of the new MacBooks or MacBook Pros right now. Nobody outside of Apple can do this, so blaming DiskWarrior is misguided.

There is a very easy solution: Just install DiskWarrior on a bootable hard drive. USB2 or Firewire are both bootable. You need a complete system install, and then just put DiskWarrior in the /Applications folder. So to use it at that point, just boot the machine hold down the option key, then run DiskWarrior, and run it against your internal drive. It works great, and I've done this many times. I've _never_ used a DiskWarrior bootable DVD. Never.

You may say "But this is an expensive solution... I have to buy an external hard drive!!!" My answer here is that if you don't have _any_ external hard drives that you can use for this... then you're probably not backing up either... and you have bigger problems.

[stwf]

The funny thing is the name of this thread referes to Alsoft as a Joke company, when the overwhelming feeling on the thread is from people who love Alsoft. All you need is one Mac that is unbootable to be saved by DiskWarrior and you're a fan for life.

There are only two kinds of DiskWarrior customers those that are already and those that will be someday

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by stwf 

There are only two kinds of DiskWarrior customers those that are already and those that will be someday

There's also a third one: those with a current backup. With Time Machine that's a growing population.

[CharlesS]

Fixing a disk with DiskWarrior is often less of a hassle than reformatting and restoring the whole thing, which can take quite a while if you've got a lot of stuff.