BEWARE: Drive Genius 2.0.2 ate a partition. 2.0.2 is beta at best.

Question

Before you hassle me about making backups, don't bother. A disk utility like Drive Genius should require backups for when unforeseeable occurrences (power losses, disconnection, etc.) happen. When the application crashes itself- there are more issues than just the data loss : stress of time loss to find a repair scenario that works or (if you have one) restoring a backup after repairing the drive (non-productivity, messed up workflow which for a designer is just the worst because you completely lose your place in pipeline), financial loss for a worthless application you will never trust again, general bad day feeling.
DO NOT DEFRAG!!!! I will never touch this software or anything from ProSoft again. I don't trust them and I think this 2.0.2 update is a horrendous step backwards from what was once a decent application for directory repair.
I can't believe in all my experience I made the mistake of purchasing/trusting Drive Genius 2.0.2 with my MBP.
Defrag is EXTREMELY dangerous. On a perfectly clean running MBP 10.5.2 with TechTool Pro reporting everything to be perfect I decided, hey, why not give a defrag a try- prosoft must have be legitimate in including this feature? NO!
No processes running at all other than drive genius and system processes Drive Genius crashed at 59%. The crash corrupted the directory structure to the point that Disk Utility cannot mount the drive or repair citing "B-Tree" problems. Disk Warrior cannot rebuild and cannot see the drive otherwise. Thank God this was an external drive but I still have lost 460GB of data and to say I'm furious is an understatement. These files are my personal data (graphics, renderings, movies, etc, etc). As many people know who work in design, working from a MBP is tricky without large external drives. Backing up several of these is **** and often neglected. Maybe this will teach me a lesson though ...
I can understand Drive Genius 2.0.2 saying that power failure can cause data loss in the warning before you defrag, but, when Drive Genius itself is crashing and destroying a partition I just can't forgive. This application is a POS. If Apple is really using this at the Genius Bar I'm going to think twice about ProCare in the future.
A disk utility application that crashes itself (log shows this) is frightening. What was intended to optimize a computer has now cost me several hours without any avail. I am about to throw in the towel and accept responsibility in being stupid enough to run software like this.
Maybe ProSoft should have considered spending more time on the application than the lame 3D interface which just escapes me as having a purpose or benefit in a disk utility. It just seems against logic to have 3d Graphics running during any disk process. I don't want it. I want a graph of the progress ... IF ANYTHING.
I highly advise discretion in using this application. Save yourself the money and stress. This release is worhtless.

Answer 1

I fully concur with this post. Drive Genius is a piece of expensive "crap." No, I did not back up my drive because I did not know how and couldn't find a "simple" solution at the time, until I found Superduper nearly a year later. DG "defrag" app wiped out my pictures and I have NEVER been able to recover them even tho' I have kept the drive available until a good recovery app comes along. DG documentation is as useless as their 'support.' I bought the app from OWC and haven't been back since. Once burned, I NEVER go back. That's my way of a protest!
The lesson in this, for me, is to NEVER defrag your drive on OS X, no matter what the documentation says. It shouldn't even be offered as an option.
Currently, I'm having trouble with Disk Utility resizing a partition. The documentation simply doesn't tell how to do it to make it work successfully. This feature is one reason I bought Leopard. Now it doesn't work for me. The one good thing is that it didn't erase the data on my primary drive, but the the partition I wanted to resize is now lost to me. In my view, this feature is also "beta." Why does ANY software developer design an app without thoroughly testing it? That's just like starting a preemptive war without checking out the consequences. Bummer!!!