• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Techtool Pro 4.5.1 or Protege? Great or Damaging Dud?

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Techtool Pro has been my favorite repair utility for many years. Apple even has given it away with Applecare.

However, in the past years there have been reports of crashes and disk not mounting after TTPro. I eventually put it second to last on my list:

1. Apple Disk Utilty
2.Diskwarrior
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Techtool Pro
10. Norton Utilities.

However, in recovering an impossibly crashed Lacie drive, TTPro proved its worth beyond all measure, so gfor that rare case, this one software, recovered sufficient of my data that the drives could be recovered by Norton, using all the tricks I could muster.

Still, for general use, TTPro has worried me.

Since July, TTPro is up to 4.5 and now to 4.5.1 and is worth us relooking at.

Rurther there is, Protege, a really interesting Gizmo, a self booting USB memory drive with the repair software on board and more.

"TechTool Protege is a compact, bootable diagnostic and repair tool. It contains the full-featured Macintosh troubleshooting program TechTool Pro, Micromat's disk partitioning program DiskStudio, as well as several other utilities on a compact, one gigabyte FireWire flash drive. Its tiny size makes it easy to carry at all times so that a user can test and repair Macintosh computers whenever the need should arise. TechTool Protege is able to:

Diagnose Macintosh hardware
Diagnose and repair hard drive problems
Optimize and defragment hard drive volumes
Rebuild volume directories
Recover data from damaged volumes
Repartition hard drives without losing data
And other diagnostic functionsMicromat used to be Apple's best repair utility. In the past several years, use became under attack by reports of crashes."


"Price and Availability
TechTool Protege and DiskStudio can be ordered through select dealers and resellers worldwide or directly from Micromat, Inc. The retail price for TechTool Protege is $229. DiskStudio is $49. Current owners of TechTool Protege may purchase the TechTool Protege CD Update from Micromat for $25. Current owners of DiskStudio may purchase a DVD upgrade for the same price."
http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=30&Itemid=85

So is it worthwhile and safe to use?

I'd love to hear as many reports as possible since we really need utilities.

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
I also like DriveGenius very much. In fact, after Apple Disk Utility, DriveGenius is next on my list. I keep Disk Warrior for those "last option" cases.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Alain Briot said:
I also like DriveGenius very much. In fact, after Apple Disk Utility, DriveGenius is next on my list. I keep Disk Warrior for those "last option" cases.

Alain,

A good point!

I forgot about Drive Genius! I've recently started to use it and it is indeed high up in quality.

However, TTP had such a respected status, now claims improvements. Has it improved?

They claim to be able to work with Intel and Power PC.

However, who actually has used it?

I guess I could try it on an old iMac, as I'm hesitant to use it on my G5 or G5 machines.

Asher
 

Andrew Rodney

New member
DiskWarrior, yes. It's a one trick pony but if you need that trick, it's awesome.
Techtool used to be good in the OS9 days, I haven't used the OS X version but the "buzz" isn't good.
Norton sucks, end of story.
Drive Genius I just got, seems very good. I purchased based on another photographer who used it to great success.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Not to divert this thread, but for those why might look to solve crashes, especially "kernel panic", when one gets a black screen with white text and a frozen screen.

Common first remedies:


1. Repair permissions and repair the hard drive by booting from your OSX installation Disc and going no further than choosing you language and selecting "Utilty" from the tool bar. Then Disk Warrior. Do this after any crash!

2. Still crashing? Remove all firewire drives you can! Also anything else if possible. Firewire drives in series can cause kernel panic, esdpecially with 3rd party RAM.

3. Still Crashing? Bad RAM possibly . Remove half of your non Apple RAM!

4, You are probably O.K.

5 Not? DriveGenius to be tried. (can be used at any stage earlier :) )

6. Still crashing. A whiskey then TTPro and /Norton Utility.

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Rodney is right on. Tech Tools Pro rocked in OS9 Days. I got the OS X version and sure, it "does" a lot of things --much more than any of the other utilities in fact-- but it makes no difference whatsoever after it has done all of that. In my experience it doesn't fix anything. Just checks a lot of stuff and tells you that its either working or not... big deal!

I also have Data Rescue and I don't think it is that useful. I haven't tried Norton because for a long time it didn't have an OS X Version. I think it now does so it may be worth taking a look at it again.

Right now, If I have a problem I go to, in order:

1- Apple Disk Repair utilities
2- if things are bad Drive Genius
3- if things are REALLY bad Disk Warrior

There's also another utility worth mentioning. It is less "automated" but does things that are quite unique. It's called Tiger Cache Cleaner and it is available from this link:

http://www.northernsoftworks.com/
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Good points, Alain.

However, data rescue is pretty good for getting back files on a damaged disk. Mac Janitor is necessar y is one closes down the Mac after work. OSX needs to do a lot of housework during rest times and this is not done when the computer is shut down!

TTPro, is BTW useful for getting a damage HD back on line sometimes to be able to them fix it enough with Disk Warrior for Apple Disk utility to repair sufficiently to get Data Rescue to find the files!

TTPro does a good job of wiing a HD, optimizing the files, repairing a whiole number of things, but until earlier htis year, anyway, introduces big screwup so that afterwards one MUST redo the directory and repair with whatever else one has.

So what I want to know without risking my computer is experience by anyone on TTPro 4.5.1 to know whether or not they have addressed the problems and restored TTPro to a worthwhile first line utility!

Asher
 
Top