Best Maintance Utility to Buy

Question

I regret I cannot decide which thread to post this so it may require re-assignment by the moderator. Each person I ask has a different preference of program, depending upon his individual need.
Is there a comparative study/analysis on all, or most, of the available utility programs for Mac X OS 10.4.7? I've used Norton, Tool Tech, Drive 10 et al but each has its limitations, one focusing on a single task over another at the expense of another task.
I'd like to get an analyis of the positive and negative points for each, or feedback from those who prefer one program over another, with a terse explanation of the reasons for their preference.
Thank you kindly for any counsel you can give me.
Jonathan Dorsch
San Francisco

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
The most important maintenance program your computer can get is a backup program as my FAQ explains:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
Mac OS X does most of its own maintenance. But if you don't have a backup, any of that maintenance could be for not as the hard drive could fail, or you could accidently misplace data, or the machine could get stolen.
As was stated, Norton Utilities is not available in a truly Mac OS X compatible version.
The advantage of Disk Warrior 3.0.3 is its ability to repair the directory. Though if your hard drive is dying it could cause its premature death. Apple's Disk Utility on your installer disks for Mac OS X has a Repair Disk function which does a very rudimentary Disk Directory repair. fsck is a built-in Disk Directory repair which is basically available to you when you don't have a disk with a directory repair program on it. See my http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html
The advantage of Techtool Pro 4.0.4 or later, is that it is a good hardware diagnostic utility which can supplement the Apple Hardware Test utility you get with your computer's restore disk.
The advantage of Techtool Deluxe 3.0.4 which comes when you buy AppleCare (sometimes an earlier version is shipped by mistake, so make sure you have the latest version when you get it) and Drive 10 (not sure which version if any of Drive 10 is Tiger compatible, but you need Deluxe 3.0.4 for Tiger) is that it is like Techtool Pro but simpler its diagnostic capabilities.
Neither Pro, nor Deluxe, or nor the Apple Hardware Test are able to diagnose all hardware issues, nor always detect bad RAM. But if any does, you can believe the RAM is bad.
Macjanitor is a free download with a nice graphical user interface to the management of Mac OS X's built-in logfile maintenance that happens if your machine is on in the middle of the night. I don't recommend doing any cache file maintenance as people have been known to create situations where cache files corrupt on their own with such maintenance programs. Until the reason for that is known if you think you have cache trouble here, ask here first how to repair it after you know your data is backed up properly.
Prosoft Data Rescue can if the directory isn't too badly munged recover information from dying hard drives that don't otherwise show in other utilities. But it would be better if you have a backup than have to rely on this program.