DiskWarrior 3.0.1 Builds New Boot CDs -- Let's say you own Alsoft's excellent DiskWarrior 3.0 disk repair utility, and let's also say that you've upgraded to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. You need the DiskWarrior 3.0.1 update for Panther compatibility, but for DiskWarrior to be entirely useful, you need its CD-ROM to be capable of booting your Mac in case of emergency. How can you update a program on CD-ROM? As I recently discovered, Alsoft has created a clever updater that reads your existing DiskWarrior 3.0 CD-ROM, makes a disk image copy of it on your hard disk, updates DiskWarrior on the copy, and then burns the updated image back to a CD-R that you supply. The DiskWarrior 3.0.1 CD Update is a 3.0 MB download, and in my testing, updating the CD image and burning a new CD worked like a charm.
<http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/ support.html#Panther>
It's a great trick, but what Alsoft apparently couldn't do (possibly for licensing reasons) is update the copy of Mac OS X on the DiskWarrior CD-ROM that boots the Mac. So, if you have a Mac released after August 2003, or if you don't have a CD burner, you must order a new CD from Alsoft for $21. Be sure to read all the information about the CD update on the DiskWarrior page linked above, since the new CD has somewhat more strict system requirements. If you don't currently own DiskWarrior, a new copy costs $80. (For a full comparison of then-available disk repair utilities, see David Shayer's "Shootout at the Disk Repair Corral" in TidBITS-707.) [ACE]