System Requirements: PowerPC, Mac OS 7.5 or later, 16 MB RAM, 12 MB of HD
Pros: very effective disk repair, good optimization, proven track record
Cons: optimization is slow
SRP: $99.95
Manufacturer: Micromat
www.micromat.com/micromat/main.html
System Requirements: Macintosh Plus or above, System 7.0 or better, 4 MB of RAM
Pros: effective disk repair, various interface levels, plenty of diagnostics cover all the bases
Cons: quirky optimization, some diagnostics are superfluous
SRP: $69.95
Manufacturer: Alsoft
www.alsoft.com
System Requirements: 68020 or higher (any PowerPC), Mac OS 7.1 or later, 16 MB RAM
Pros: one-hit wonder, clean interface, easy to use, effective
Cons: one-hit wonder, limited, pricey
not yet rated
SRP: $99.95
Manufacturer: TotalRecall Software
software.totalrecall.com
Preface
Utilities designed to repair and maintain drives are perhaps the most difficult to accurately evaluate. Unlike a professional 3D application where experience and usage can make even the most advanced feel simple, only real world situations, and a wide range of them, can gauge the true success of disk utilities. Interface and ease use play second fiddle to performance and effectiveness, and messing up a drive to the extent where features can be pushed and tested in real-world situations is surprisingly difficult to do. It is for that reason that it has taken MacNN perhaps longer than some readers may have expected for us to produce reviews of the current crop of disk utilities, although we no present not only complete but accurate reviews of our experiences with all four utilities in the past months.
Norton Utilities 4.0.3
For the past years Norton Utilities has been the quintessential disk utility. It single handily eliminated virtually all previous competitors and quickly became the must-have utility for Macs everywhere. All this changed when Apple debuted its new HFS+ (HFS Extended) file system in January of 1998 with Mac OS 8.1. Norton Utilities 3.5 could no longer read or repair drives formatted with this new space saving approach and it could even harm such drives if it was used.
It took many months after HFS+ debuted for Symantec to deliver a version of Norton Utilities that was compatible with this new format. Norton Utilities 4.0 finally arrived with much fan fair, HFS+ compatibility, and a modern, new interface. The interface is essentially just a visual make over, retaining almost all of the basic form and function of previous versions.
Norton Utilities 4.0 is also PowerPC native meaning it runs much faster and can now perform multiple tasks (such as the extraordinarily long bad blocks test while checking file integrity). While Norton Utilities 4.0 is faster, it's not the fastest of the current crop of disk utilities.
Disk Doctor - Repair
Norton Utilities 4.0 is a suite of five main applications and an added extension, Crash Guard. The foundation of Norton Utilities has always been Norton Disk Doctor, the utility that finds and repairs damage to your drive. For the most part, Disk Doctor 4.0 is a solid utility capable of repairing virtually all damage to a drive, especially when you boot up off the Norton CD.
Disk Doctor thoroughly performs two tasks that other utilities either don't do or don't do as well. The first is searching for bad blocks on a disk and repairing them (if possible). A Jaz disk of mine had a couple damaged blocks that rendered a 300 MB file unreadable, but Norton was able to rectify the situation and save the file (no other utility was able to). While bad blocks are a relatively rare occurrence, you'll be glad you can fix them if your drives ever have any.
Disk Doctor also thoroughly scans each and every file on a drive for everything from bad modification dates to damaged resource forks. This process does take some time but it will either repair or tell you which damaged files you should replace to keep your drive and all its files running in peak condition.
Disk Doctor does have a few random and rare caveats where certain kinds of damage go unrepaired even when the repair button is clicked and another that would actually cause Disk Doctor to hang while scanning a damaged drive.
One must remember, though, that in the realm of disk repair there's never a perfect utility and despite its shortcomings, Disk Doctor is a very nice offering.
Speed Disk - Optimization
Speed Disk is the other major component of Norton Utilities. Speed Disk optimizes disks for maximum performance; performance that can be more than noticeable after a fragmented drive is optimized. For most, disk optimization is a once a year affair but for users who are constantly adding and deleting files (such as a reviewer), it turns into more of a monthly affair.
Speed Disk 4.0 carries over much of the same features of its version 3.5 predecessor, with the added advantage of being compatible with HFS+ drives. Although not terribly fast, Speed Disk does the job and does it well. You can even optimize drives for maximum performance in specific applications including multimedia, software development, and CD-ROM mastering.
Unlike some disk optimizers that can't optimize files larger than the amount of free space, Speed Disk can overcome this shortcoming and produces a perfectly optimized, maximum performing disk.
All the rest
The rest of Norton Utilities 4.0 is somewhat like the decorations on top of the icing on the cake: they're not terribly useful, but you won't mind having them, either. CrashGuard, Norton's well toted feature that debuted with version 3.5, aims to alleviate crashes or at least let you save your work before you restart, but I have yet to see it truly escape from a crash. Interestingly, crashes seemed to occur more frequently with CrashGuard installed.
FileSaver is a control panel that works partially in sync with Disk Doctor to scan you drives at shut down and create a map of all the files on your drive, increasing the chances of recovering a file that you may have accidentally deleted, for which you'll use the UnErase utility.
Volume Recover is the final, main utility and the one where your results will vary the most. It was successfully able to recover a seriously gummed up drive that was not even recognized by Apple's Drive Setup; sort of. While it was able to recover the drive and mount it on the desktop, running Disk Doctor afterwards (which is recommended) revealed that 95% of the files on the drive were damaged beyond repair. Unfortunately some essential files that hadn't been backed up weren't lucky enough to fall into that 5% of files that could be recovered.
Still the king?
Norton Utilities 4.0 is a nice utility package but whether it is still the must-have utility that it once was is questionable. It lost some ground to other utilities because of the delay in its actual release but you can still repair and maintain your HFS+ (and HFS) drives with confidence with Norton Utilities.
Tech Tool Pro 2
Micromat was the first to ship a disk repair utility for HFS+ drives when it shipped TechTool Pro 2 nearly a year ago. After some initial growing pains, version 2.1.1r2 (available through free updates for owners of any previous version of TTP 2) has made the utility more stable and effective.
TechTool Pro 2 is most notable for being able to perform many more tasks than disk repair. It can test your RAM, sound, keyboard and virtually every other hardware aspect of your Mac. Though some may question the usefulness such tests, you'll appreciate having a few of them on hand (the memory and processor tests in particular) if things ever start to go haywire with your system.
TechTool Pro 2 also features three different interface options ranging from beginner to expert. The beginner interface closely resembles the simplistic nature of Norton Utilities 3.5 with a list of your drives and a scan button. The intermediate interface expands on this by allowing you to define which major tests (chips, disk) you'd like TechTool Pro 2 to run, but you won't be given access to the full suite of tests unless you choose the expert interface, and interface that may prove to be overwhelming for the amateur Mac user.
While TechTool Pro 2 looks great on the spec sheet, most users will find little use for several of the diagnostics tests such as mouse, keyboard, and audio. These superfluous tests are available only under the expert interface and for good reason; you'll rarely (if ever) need them. Other specific tests, such as the RAM diagnostic, is especially useful when you suspect a RAM chip might have gone faulty, although free stand-alone utilities can perform similar diagnostic tests.
As far as a disk utility is concerned, TechTool Pro 2 is a solid utility capable of repairing virtually every kind of disk problem from Finder damage to volume structures. TechTool Pro 2 also includes Micromat's excellent Desktop File repair (available for free with TechTool) that allows you to create a new desktop file from scratch rather than simply rebuilding it. TechTool Pro 2 features detailed reports but much of the advice falls under the common sense category or is too vague to be of real use.
Disk optimization, introduced with an update to TechTool Pro 2 after it originally shipped, is not this utilities forte. I was unable to optimize any of my drives properly as it reported problems ranging from a lack of free space on a drive to perform optimization to simply being unable to optimize a drive for no particular reason, even after running the disk repair portion of TechTool Pro 2 on the drive.
At close to $100 TechTool Pro 2 is somewhat of a grab bag utility. It has a few very nice features, a solid disk repair segment, but also a lot of fluff. You do get what you pay for; you simply might not use it all.
DiskWarrior
When it comes to disk utilities, Alsoft is one of the most experienced companies in the Mac market. Despite having produced utilities for over a decade, DiskWarrior represents Alsoft's first venture in the disk repair playing field. DiskWarrior is revolutionary in both its approach to disk repair and its interface.
DiskWarrior's interface follows that of Alsoft's other recent utilities including PlusMaker and PlusOptimzer. The interface, which won an Apple Design Award, tightly follows the Mac OS' Platinum Appearance and requires a single click to work its magic at maximum capacity.
As a disk utility, DiskWarrior works as a directory optimizer and repair utility. Directories keep track of all the information on the disk and thus DiskWarrior is able to bring back files that may have been lost and repair damaged files, on top of optimizing the directories which makes for a nice speed gain, although it ends up being a very temporary one. DiskWarrior also fixes any problems with the master directory block or alternate master directory block, two aspects of a drive than any expert will be familiar with. For novices, this simply means that almost any disk problem will be repaired with DiskWarrior.
DiskWarrior also lets you see how the disk will appear after the changes are made, without actually making the changes. This lets you check and see that everything is ok or to observe whether a missing folder or file reappeared.
Being a one-hit wonder means that DiskWarrior does have its limitations. For starters, it doesn't inspect individual files for damage (only directories) thus a file with a damaged resource fork that could be causing trouble, for example, won't be flagged by the utility. Also, DiskWarrior's directory optimizing scheme is no substitute for a full fledged disk optimizer.
At $70 DiskWarrior is relatively expensive. For a few dollars more you can up the ante to Norton's solid performance or TechTool Pro 2's wide array of diagnostic utilities. DiskWarrior does make for the perfect utility for those users who looking for a simple method to keep their disks running in peak condition, which will always be a click away.
MacMedic
MacMedic 1.5 is currently in beta and thus will not be given a full review at this point. The original MacMedic was one of the first utilities capable of reading HFS+ drives. Unfortunately, it was laden with bugs that testers had overlooked. An update later, to version 1.1, made MacMedic a much more formidable utility but its reputation was still tarnished. Soon version 1.5, a free upgrade for previous users, will be ready and with it MacMedic aims to become the essential disk utility for the Mac market.
In its current state, MacMedic 1.5 looks like it just might achieve that lofty goal. It has an attractive and easy to use interface, creates detailed and understandable reports, and offers features beyond disk repair and optimization not found in other disk utilities. SpeedDisk, the HFS to HFS+ drive converter that received 5 stars has been bundled into MacMedic along with the awesome performance boost it gave drives after optimizing files and directories. Along with that, a regular version of Total Recall's Help! software is included which analyzes your system and setup for possible conflicts and potential problems. It will also generate a highly detailed system report on every aspect of your setup. MacMedic is also very fast needing less than 10 minutes to fully scan and repair a 2 GB drive. That includes examining each file, directory, and the rest of a disk.
Time will tell if MacMedic 1.5 will become a must-have utility; in the mean time, keep an eye on it.
Conclusion
All of these utilities are well designed and are bound to be effective at repairing the majority of your drive problems. Where they differ is in additional features and price and in that regard, the choice is yours. Norton Utilities offers perhaps the strongest repair and optimization utilities, but TechTool Pro 2 offers plenty of additional diagnostics. For simple and effective repair DiskWarrior can't be beat, although you get the least bang for your buck. MacMedic 1.5 will also be carving out its spot on the shelf soon.
Each one of the utilities that were evaluated has their fair share of user testimonials that claim one worked when none of the others didn't. Suffice it to say there are times when one utility won't be able to fix something but another can, and vice versa. If you're in dire need of repairing a severely damaged drive one is bound to work although none can be singled out. For routine maintenance, all are solid, so take your pick.
