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| DiskWarrior, Version 3.0 | |
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Despite the advances in operating systems and backup technology, hard drives sometimes fail and data is lost. For law offices, preventative strategies are critical. DiskWarrior, Version 3.0 is a one-trick pony application worth the full-price admission ticket. Not only does DiskWarrior rebuild and optimize your hard drive’s directory, but it has hardware monitoring that uses internal diagnostic routines built into disk drives by their manufacturers to detect and track how often a drive exceeds its tolerances. The more frequently the drive exceeds its tolerances, the more likely the drive is to have a hardware malfunction. This application repairs all disks regardless which Mac OS it normally uses. It only matters which OS you start up from to run DiskWarrior. The application is an indispensable tool for any law office. A hard drive directory is an index of the data contained on your hard drive. When your computer crashes, an application locks or there is a power failure, the potential for directory corruption exists. In addition, as hard drive mechanisms wear out, data becomes fragmented and could be lost. DiskWarrior remedies this problem. Boot from the DiskWarrior CD or from a hard drive in which DiskWarrior is installed to run a maintenance session. DiskWarrior can’t rebuild a directory on the active start-up drive or on the same drive where the application is installed. The DiskWarrior CD automatically will boot OS X when starting up from a G3 or G4. For older PowerPC-based Macs not capable of running Mac OS X, the DiskWarrior CD will start up an earlier version of the Mac OS, allowing these customers to run DiskWarrior Version 2.1, also included on the DiskWarrior CD, but it will not start up the recently released G5s. To repair my G5 directory, I launched DiskWarrior on my 12-inch PowerBook then started my G5 in the FireWire target mode. This was cumbersome, but Alsoft promised an update CD soon. Once launched, you must request DiskWarrior rebuild the directory. It builds a new replacement directory using the data recovered from the original directory. You can review the report and preview the data of the proposed hard disk. It then compares the old directory with the new one, points out the errors and gives you the option to install the new, rebuilt directory or cancel the rebuild, leaving the disk untouched. It does this using basically a one-button approach. This differs from the approach taken by Norton Utilities, which patches errors on the existing directory, but does not replace it. On a new, reformatted 40GB hard drive running Mac OS 10.2.6 on my 12-inch PowerBook, DiskWarrior took approximately five minutes to evaluate and build a new directory. Expect longer times for larger hard drives, particularly those with thousands of files. Although Version 3.0 is significantly faster, the number of files on the disk and the degree of corruption in the old directory govern the length of the maintenance session — most directory rebuilds take less than 10 minutes, according to the company. DiskWarrior can forecast drive failure by accessing the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Report Technology feature found in most recently made hard drives. SMART will determine if the drive has exceeded or is about to exceed its operating tolerances, thus providing an early warning about potential hard drive failures. SMART is compatible with Serial Advanced Technology Attachment drives, such as those found on Macintosh G5 desktops. However, it didn’t work when I tested the feature on my G5 drives, and it currently only supports external drives formatted as Mac disks. You also can elect to install the Automatic Diagnostics utility when running DiskWarrior. This permits you to manually run SMART diagnostics routines on your hard drive or establish a schedule to automate the process. DiskWarrior’s directory rebuild function technology has safeguards to preserve your data if the process is unexpectedly interrupted. For example, if the power fails when the directory is being rebuilt, it doesn’t damage your data because only the directory is affected, not the data. The old directory still will be there if the process is inadvertently interrupted. DiskWarrior 3.0 performs maintenance routines on Mac OS Standard and Extended hard drives. It also will evaluate “journaled” format hard drives available on Panther, which are designed for server applications. It also is substantially faster, up to 300 percent in some cases, than previous versions. One downside is the absence of PlusOptimizer 1.3, which optimizes and defragments data (not directories) on your hard drive. This now is a separate application. Alsoft said PlusOptimizer 1.3 will not run natively in OS X and was not included. |
Alsoft Inc. Price: $79.95; discounts available for multi-user network license DiskWarrior will repair any Mac hard disk regardless of the version of the OS it normally runs. Both version 3.0 and 2.1.1 are included on the CD. Version 3.0 must run under OS 10.2.x, and Version 2.1.1 can run under OS 9, 8 or 7. Reviewed by David A. Saraceno, a practicing attorney and owner of Pixelcraft Studios, a presentation graphics consulting firm in Spokane, Wash. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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