TechTools or Disc Warrior?

TechTools or Disc Warrior? Which is the best utility for Tiger?

Hi, John.
I recommend having both Alsoft DiskWarrior 3.0.3+ (DW3) and Micromat TechTool Pro version 4.1.1+ (TTP4).
While both can build a new, optimized directory for a disk, I have found there are some disks that only DW3 can repair. DW3 is a "specialist" in disk directories.
Likewise, TTP4 brings a host of useful hardware testing routines that are neither in DW3 nor the Apple Hardware Test. TTP4 also includes an excellent disk defragmenter. Defragmenting is generally not required under Mac OS X 10.3 or later unless you perform an extensive amount of video editing or your disk is nearing full, in which case it can be useful. See Mac OS X: About Disk Optimization. TTP4's Surface Scan is also useful in determining if a disk has developed bad sectors.
If you own neither utility today, the initial investment may seem like a good deal of money, but compared to your data and your time, the cost of these utilities is insignificant in the the long run. I've found their upgrades to be reasonably priced for what they do.
Neither utility is a substitute for a comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution. But I've seen DW3 save more than one person's bacon and the suite of hardware tests and additional functions TTP4 bring to the table make both a worthwhile investment.
If you can only purchase one now, make it DW3. Add TTP4 when funds permit.
Better to have the tools and not need them, than to need them and not have them.
A good mechanic has more than one kind of wrench in their toolbox.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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Can't use disc warrior 4.4 with my iMac lion

I have tried pushing "c" when restarting the computer to boot from my Disc Warrior (4.4) disc but it is ignored. When I push the "option" button on startup to boot from the disc warroir disc I get the dreaded 3 beep sound and I have to turn off the computer. What is going on? I am using Mountain Lion 10.8.2.

My personal experience with Disk Warrior is that the latest major release of OS X does not get burned to their DVD. Therefore, if your hardware and operating system ship post-date to the DiskWarrior boot contents, the DVD boot may not support your hardware. Alsoft attempts to make this known on their site. This is why they recommend copying DiskWarrior to a bootable, physical disk other than your boot disk.
I have an external USB drive with Lion and DiskWarrior on it. If your iMac has a SD card reader, you could build a bootable OS X SDcard with DiskWarrior installed on it. Probably want the 16GB SD[HX]C size now.

Mac Mini - Disc Warrior - Will not respond to new startup Disc

Problem:
I ran disc warrior and rebuilt and replaced the directory simply as maint and to deal with a few crash issues. After quitting Disc Warrior I held the option key (on a new low profile Apple Keyboard - wired) to open startup disc assistant. Computer continues to boot from the disc. I cannot find a single way to change the startup disc from within Disc Warrior either.
I then determined that there is no power going to the keyboard until after the time period needed when holding the option key or even trying to use the firmware keyboard shortcut. I determined this by pressing the caps lock key. The green light on the caps lock does not come on until well after the initial startup sound.
Is there a way to open terminal when the computer is booted from a disc? Is there a way around this? I've tried unplugging every peripheral except the keyboard and the power issue still persists.
No matter what I do, the computer still boots from the disc. I tried opening system prefs from the apple menu but it is grayed out.
Any help would be great. Thanks

Unfortunately, this seems to be an issue with the new aluminum keyboards: they do not seem to allow you to access the Startup Manager. Do you have a wired mouse? If so, you could plug it directly to the Mini (just to be safe), start the Mini, press and hold the mouse button right after the startup chime until the CD ejects. The Mini should then boot to Mac OS X.
If you have an Intel Mini, it may be even easier: pressing and holding your Apple Remote's "menu" button right after the startup chime should have the same effect as using the Option key on a keyboard.

I used a Disk Warrior to rebuild my G4. When loading the program it wouldn't SU with the repair disc so I selected the Disc Warrior as my SU disk and repaired my hard drive but now I can't get the G4 to SU with anything but the repair disc. What do I do?

I used a Disc Warrior repair disc to rebuild by G4 Power Mac hard drive. It wouldn't
startup using the disc and the C key so I selected the Warrior as my startup disc, started up, repaired the disc and now I can't get the computer to startup on it's hard drive. It will only startup on the repair disc. What do I do to get back to normal?

Press the Option key at startup and select the hard disk.
(60933)

Using Disc Warrior for OS 9

I have a backup drive with 2 partitions. One partition is used for backing up my main drive with OS 10.3.9, the other is for my old OS 9.2. This 2nd partition is fragmented. When I try to optimize it with Disc Warrior for OS 9 I get the message "Disc cannot be rebuilt because this disc is shared with OSX". My question is how can I rebuild this partition? If I boot from the Disc Warrior cd I don't get the option of choosing the OS 9 program part of Disc Warrior. Can I just rebuild this partition booted in OS X Disc Warrior since it appears on the desk top?

Unfortunately, no. When Alsoft updated Disk Warrior to work with OS X, they left Disk Optimizer behind. It won't operate in OS X. You can rebuild the drive while booted into the OS X version of Disk Warrior, but not defragment it.
There are a few apps will defragment an OS X drive. Drive Genius, Tech Tool Pro and iDefrag.

Alsoft Disc warrior 3.0.2

A friend of mine went to the lengths of bagging Alsoft Disc Warrior 3.0.2 from a T-site to see if it could recognise the presence of my external hard drive.....it didn't do this.
I'm glad because if i'd forked out 60 quid for the actual Utility i'd be very very angry at this point...
Heres the link to my original thread :
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=397318&tstart=0
I'm still in trouble here... I've only had this Drive a week so i'm very upset as you can imagine.
Surely there must be something i can do... I've read other threads on here and it's disheartening that people have managed to rescue things but when i try the same tactics it doesn't work for me.
many thanks

Lase:
Download and run the (free) trial version of Data Rescue II to see if it can "see" the data on the drive. If it can, it's likely to be able to recover it if you purchase the full version, which will enable your ability to save what it sees from the scan.
Gary
1GHz DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MHz B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner

Disc warrior error code 2153,4903

Hi,
I am desperate in need of help. I have 1TB Seagate Backup Plus portable drive, where I saved all my kids pics on it, by accident I pulled out the drive before properly "ejecting" it. Now it is no longer recognized by my Mac air (newest version). I couldn't verify/repair it, keeps giving me this error message "some information is missing during internal look up". Then I purchased Disc Warrior software but I am having problem with it.
First I dowloaded the file, then drag the DiskWarrior icon to my desktop. I got to the step where it gives you two options GRAPH or REBUILD. I clicked on the REBUILD button then few minutes later I got this error "The disk is still in use. Quit all other applications, or restart from the Disc Warrior disc, and then try rebuilding again. Code (2153,4903).
At this point, I don't know what to do. Any suggestion would be very appreciated. PLEASE HELP!!! I can't lose all of my kids pictures
thank you

Thank you so much Csound 1 !!!
This solved my problem.

Final Cut will not launch and desperate for a solution

My Mac locked up when I tried to reboot and I had to press the on/off button to reboot it.
When it rebooted, it would not mount the two G-Raid drives. When I took out the Firewire lead from the Sony tape deck, the G-Raid drives appeared on the desktop. If I plug the firwire lead back in, I cannot open the raid drives, but if I remove it, I can open them and see the contents.
If I leave the firwire lead out, when I launch FCP it says it cannot find the firewire device. If I click continue, FCP just doesn't launch. If I plug the firewire lead in for the tape deck, then it still does not see it.
I have tried doing the same thing with a different lead, and using the camera directly, but that gives me the same problem. It looks like a firewire connection problem, but I've tried two different firewire ports on the computer. It's a holiday weekend in the UK and I've got to get the job finished for Tuesday! Desperate to resolve this issue.

Alan
Have you tried the basic maintenance procedures?
repairring permissions
deleting preferences
running disc utility applications; techtool or disc warrior
''My Mac locked up when I tried to reboot''
why did you do a reboot in the first place - were you installing software?
if so - try deleting the application to see if it has interfered with the system
I have G Raids, they are on a separate firewire bus from my VT deck:
G Raids are connected to a Firewire 800 card and the VT deck connected to the system Firewire port
Many users report poor performance or drives unable to mount when connecting the VT and drives to the same bus
regards

Can't Boot From Install Disc 1 ?

Holding down "C" at Start Up isn't working.
Most of the time I can't get Preferences > Start-Up to even "see" my Disc 1.
When I can get it to show up in Start-Up, and Select it, and Lock it ... it Still Won't Start Up from the Install Disc 1 ... and in fact usually ejects the disc.
Sometimes when I re-push in the disc, I get the message that a Blank Disc has been detected, "what do you want to do with it."
But, it shows up in Disc Utility, and when I run Verify Disc, it all looks good?!
The Disc has Mac OS version 10.4.8 on it. I'm running 10.5.7. I'm all up to date with my software.
Yesterday I ran the latest version of Disc Warrior. When I run TechTools 4.0 it seems to get stuck running Files. When I run Repair Permissions from Disc Utilities, it shows a fairly massive amount of issues. Running it over and over again doesn't seem to make any difference.
I WANT to run my Install Disc so I can run Repair Disc from Disc Utility ... because I'm having a number of issues ... and I seem to get the spinning rainbow a lot.
SUGGESTIONS ?! ... thanks ...

Disk Utility that can repair a 10.5.7 permissions is only found on the Leopard installer disc. Tiger can't repair Leopard when it comes to permissions, and may also have difficulty with the directory.
Secondly, if your MacBook Pro was purchased after October 26, 2007, it can't boot from any Tiger disc.
If your MacBook Pro was purchased prior, you can use the disk, but you'll want to follow these directions for hardware diagnostics:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303081
Only if your MacBook Pro has Tiger installed, should you use Tiger for the directory or permissions*:
http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html
Macs can only boot from the operating system that shipped with them, and newer retail operating systems. This means:
1. pre-October 1st, 2007 MacBook Pros can boot off:
- - the discs that shipped with them
- - retail 10.5 discs which look like * that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM.
2. October 1st through October 25, 2007 can do #1, and also use Upgrade and DropIn discs. Those disks were offered as a limited time mail order Up to date program, some were dropped in the box that came with them.
3. October 26th through November 14, 2007 can boot off the discs that came with them, and retail 10.5.1, 10.5.4, and 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
4. November 15, 2007 through June 29, 2008 can boot off the discs that came with them, and the retail 10.5.4, and 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
5. June 30, 2008 through December 14, 2008 can boot off the discs that came with them, and the retail 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
6. December 15, 2008 and later MacBook Pros can only boot off the discs that came with them.
Presumably when Snow Leopard comes out in September, all of the above will be able to use Snow Leopard because of the specs on http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

Techtool pro 4.1 compatibility with osx 10.4.6

Hi recently i updated to techtool pro 4.1 and since this time i have had a few problems. I erased the original edrive as advised and reinstalled the new edrive./ all was hunky dory everything working really well and quick. Then the phantom grey screen appeared at boot up. All keyboard function had no effect, no chime no whirring just freeze. So i zapped the PRAM and hey presto it kicked in allowing me to disconnect peripherals and as a precausiton i took out the techttol pro completely. since then and on reading other users comments ablout glitches i have been loathe to reinstall it but want trouble free computing ( as near as **** it) What do i do I have software whcih is touted initially as great and has conflicting reports. What do i do?
I use my mac for home use only and only have fotos and music and the odd lyric i have written. Q what is disc warrior do i need it?
Could this have nothing to do with the techtool software could it be a virus?
Many thanks for any comments or help you can afford me in this matter.
Alan

Hi Alan, Welcome to Apple Discussions.
I am running TTP 4.1.1 with 10.4.6 without issues. I don't use e-drive, never did so I can't help you there but there should be no conflict.
I can assure you with 99.999% certainty it is NOT a virus.
DiskWarrior rebuilds the directory and it does it in the same fashion as TTP and that is about all it does, so if you have TTP I wouldn't advise spending the additional $ on DW.
What does Disk Utility >> Verify Disk report?
What issues are you experiencing now?
-mj
[email protected]

Disc Utilities

Sure the Disk Utility program that comes with all OS's is grand and does the day-to-day maintenance for a Mac just fine, for more serious problems I have been using Tech Tool Pro.I am curious to know the following...
1. Are there any pitfalls related to installing an eDrive on a hard drive?
(True Tech tool Pro users will know what I am talking about here)
1.2 How does one delete an eDrive or re-partition it if the contents of the eDrive have been deleted? Is the only way to re format the entire drive?
2. Why do hear from full-time technicians that installing any such programs, be it Tech Tool Pro or Disc Warrior etc, on a hard drive a bad idea to do so?
Is it because one program may interfere with another if one was attempting to solve a problem with a specific utility program?
Thanks to all who join this discussion.

stuckless:
I am wondering what exactly do you mean by "backed up/CLONED on my external firewire HDD"
PowerPC platform Macs will boot from firewire external devices. I use a 250 GB external firewire HDD for backups. I have it partitioned so that I have one partition approximately the size of my internal HDD and one the size of my wife's Pismo's internal HDD. I back up my computer to the partition on the external firewire HDD making a bootable clone using a registered copy ($8.95) of SuperDuper. Registering allows me to take advantage of the SmartUpdates (cumulative updates) feature of SuperDuper.
Once your external firewire HDD is formatted Mac OS Extended before partioning (I can give you directions for this) SuperDuper makes a bootable clone. The clone means exactly that, an exact copy of the internal HDD. You can boot the computer from the cloned partition on the external HDD and run Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, Tech Tool Pro or whatever. It is even better than booting from the CD as the version of TTP on the clone is updated. That is why I no longer need an eDrive because my the clone of my internal HDD on the external firewire partition serves as a backup, an emergency boot drive, and a drive from which I can run maintenance routines, diagnostics and repairs.
For my Utility Disk, I have placed a 10 GB HDD that I had swapped out of my Pismo, in a firewire enclosure. I then connected it to my computer via firewire and installed and updated Tiger on it. Then I installed and updated TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior, Data Rescue II etc. It is the size of a passport (a bit thicker) and fits easily in my computer bag. I travel with this and can boot my computer from it and run diagnostics and repairs from the utility HDD in the enclosure.
OK, I'll stop here for now and let you ask questions for clarification, then we can continue.
Good luck.
cornelius

Disc Utilities..is less..more?

I'm about at the end of my rope trying to solve constant freezing of my MDD. I have run Disc Utility, Onyx, Cocktail, DiscWarrior, and TechTool Pro, just to name a few..and I have run them often (I routinely run Coctail every morning, at start up)..knowing that the machine will freeze-up in a matter of minutes, and I'll have to shut it down with power button. Is there such a thing as overkill with these utilities? Disc Warrior gives me a message that the "Original Directory is too severely Damaged and cannot be rebuilt. Disc not modified 2155-2179"..so I then just run TechTool, and it rebuilds it for me. Would anyone recommend installing new main hard drive and try a new, clean install of Tiger? That's my latest thought. I live in extreme southern Mexico, very remote..Mac service is out of the question and parts take forever to arrive, so I have to be a little creative. Any help/advice appreciated.
Dave in Xcalak
G4 Desktop Dual 1Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2GB ram, 9800 MacPro video card, Verax fans
G4 Desktop Dual 1Ghz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 2GB ram

H David-
Sorry to say, but the DiskWarrior report reigns supreme. Any data recording being done on that drive is in grave danger of being lost or corrupted. Also, continually running a drive with a damaged directory increases the potential for mechanical failure of the drive.
You are running on borrowed time.
You could try an overwrite of the drive with zero's, (using DW) re format and reinstall your OS. If that doesn't work, all you can do is as you said, get a new drive and start fresh.
One note about TechTool-though a very good piece of software, the hard drive repair feature is not what most consider to be good. It is often said that drive repair should be left to other programs, such as Disk Warrior or Drive Genius.
G4 AGP(450)Sawtooth Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2ghzPPC,1.62gbSDRAM, ATI9800, DVR-109,(IntHD)120&160,LaCie160,23"Cinema Display

How do I run Disk Warrior on new MacBook Pros?

I am trying to help my good friend who purchased a Late-2012 Macbook Pro 13-inch Core i5 2.5 GHz. It runs 10.8 ML. WIth reckless technical abandon, she swamped and corrupted her HD directory with repeated massive transfers of large-size photo files in and out of her laptop when the drive was already probably at least 95% full to capacity. She probably experienced repeated Out-of-Memory notifications as she would try to perform these ops while Photoshop was using almost all available free space on the same disk as Scratch Storage for its operations.
Suddenly she could not boot her MBP. She called Apple warranty support, and they convinced her the only thing she could do was to wipe the HD and reinstall the OS. Angry as **** about losing about 3 weeks of critical photo images since her last backup, she dutifully obeyed. She said the wipe operation took only a part of a minute.
So, with that background, I told her I felt the wipe was not a low-level erase at all, but just the most minimal erase procedure possible, and that I thought many of her old files may be recoverable with a tool like DiskWarrior if she did it immediately, before starting to reinstall applications and other content back onto the disk.Can anyone back me up on this?
Now, on to how I can try to do the recovery. She has considered sending the drive out to a "clean room" recovery service, but before doing so at great cost, I wanted to at least try a DiskWarrior directory repair. With no optical drive, she cannot boot from the Disk Warrior 7.X DVD, or create a bootable CD or DVD to run Disc Warrior for the same reason. How else can we force the MBP to allow the hard drive to be read by DiskWarrior? Can I load DW on a FireWire drive and use Thunderbolt-to-FW adapter on MBP to boot from it? Disk Warrior's website still says "The current DiskWarrior DVD cannot start up the new MacBook Pros introduced June 11, 2012. An updated disc that will also start up these recent Mac models will be released as soon as Apple, Inc. releases new startup files to Alsoft, Inc. and other developers." Do I still have to wait for something from Apple? Or can I put the MBP in Target Mode and run DW connected via FireWire (and Thunderbolt adapter) from my own MacBook running OSX Lion? And hopefully repair her directory? Is there hope here?

You'll need to install Windows on your Macbook. This can be done by either using Boot Camp (free, from Apple) or Parallels Desktop for Mac (free trial, $80 retail). Either approach requires that you own an additional copy of Windows (Windows XP sp2 for Boot Camp) which you will then install on your Mac.
In brief, Boot Camp sets up your Mac so you can boot into either OS X or Windows (but not have both running at the same time; you switch via a reboot), and Parallels creates a virtual machine in which you will run Windows while OS X is running. You're correct that you can't run Virtual PC on your Intel-based Mac. Parallels will give you that functionality on your Mac (and be a lot faster than Virtual PC in the process).
You might want to start with Parallels' free trial and see if that meets your needs for these CDs. Parallels doesn't require that you make changes to your partitions on your drive; it just installs an application and creates a virtual disk which to OS X is just another file (albeit a large one), and you don't need to reboot to switch back and forth between Windows and OS X. If it works, you're set.
If you have graphics adapter-intensive Windows applications (e.g., games or something that requires 3D acceleration), you'll be better off with Boot Camp, because the current version of Parallels does not support DirectX or 3D hardware acceleration.
Hopefully that will get you started. There's other info in the Discussions comparing Parallels to Boot Camp, but feel free to ask if you have questions.
Intel Mini 1.66 GHz, Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Vista and XP running under Parallels

Switched startup disc and now can't start...

i tried to boot up from an old disc warrior cd, and couldn't. i switched the startup disk in sys pref, and now can't start the computer at all (i keep getting the message "you need to restart your computer...") now i know i need a new version of DW, but how do i start up from my hard drive??
Thanks.

Here's something that should work:
Restart the computer in single-user mode by pressing and holding down COMMAND-S immediately after the chime until the computer starts to a black screen with white print. At the prompt enter the following commands pressing return after each:
prompt> /bin/df
(to get the /dev name of the drive)
prompt> /usr/bin/hdiutil eject -force /dev/drivename
(where you got drivename from df)
If you are successful you can restart the computer by entering "reboot" at the prompt (without the quotes) and pressing return.
If you are not comfortable using the command line you can also eject the disk manually by inserting a straightened large paperclip into the small eject hole located on the side of the optical drive slot.

An error occurred while verifying disc.

Hi, whenever I try to burn a CD (any brand) the burn goes through ok and when it gets to verify (any cd burning software) it says "This disc may not work. An error occurred while verifying disc."
I have reinstalled, clean installed, done everything even tried a NEW cd drive and got the same issue. So, I am sure it's a software problem.
When I do run a burn, this is what I get:
IWhat I have been doing is running the "Console" application from the Utilies folder to see what is going on.
This is the message I get:
Finder: Burn underrun protection is supported, and enabled.
Finder: Burn finished, Sun Feb 5 19:04:56 2006
Finder: Verify started, Sun Feb 5 19:04:56 2006
Finder: Discrepancy in block 68 at byte 42.
Finder: Source data: 31D5 2B31 E3B3 3B3B 1FD1 D2C8 52ED 1D51
Finder: Burned data: 31D5 2B31 E3B3 3B3B 1FD1 52C8 52ED 1D51
Finder: Verify failed, Sun Feb 5 19:04:58 2006
There is always a problem with byte 42 and the SOURCE DATA is always different from the BURNED DATA by one element.
Always in exactly the same sector of numbers digits. As you can see in the source data it reads "D2C8" and in burned data it reads "52C8"
Here is a message from a different burn attempt:
Finder: Burn underrun protection is supported, and enabled.
Finder: Burn finished, Sun Feb 5 18:39:42 2006
Finder: Verify started, Sun Feb 5 18:39:42 2006
Finder: Discrepancy in block 220 at byte 42.
Finder: Source data: 9F2F 059B 208F 5CD7 A197 EBB2 B35D BF53
Finder: Burned data: 9F2F 059B 208F 5CD7 A197 6BB2 B35D BF53
Finder: Verify failed, Sun Feb 5 18:39:44 2006
As you can see its the same byte problem and same problem with burned/source data.
I have no clue what to do - any advice would be great.
I have reinstalled a million times, clean install, everything.
Is it a byte problem? kernel problem? It's worked once or twice after a clean install but never again. It's been this way from the box and Apple refused to fix it. So now I am stuck hoping for some advice.
Thanks

The fact that it worked once or twice after a clean install suggests that you may want to defrag your HDD; esp. if you have only one and the OS is on the same partition as your data.
You will need TTP4 or Disc Warrior, etc., to accomplish this. Disc Utility cannot do it.
Personally, I never bother with verification. Unless the data is extremely sensitive, there's no real point. If the disc loads OK, and you can read/copy the data back to your HDD, that's what counts.

TechTools or Disc Warrior?

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