Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Norton is dead as most you know. It will work on 10.2 or earlier but Norton SystemWorks does not work on any Mac OS after 10.2 very well. Norton had one thing going for it - it did a nice job of repairing B-tree catalog errors and directories - when things started going wonky, if you ran Norton, it would clear things up for a while. The other features might've worked well 5 years earlier but in the end (even though they updated them to run under OSX) were of dubious value - defragmentation, file recovery etc ... especially in the end when you no longer boot from the Norton CD, it was all rather useless and in case you hadn't noticed, the Norton UNINSTALLER only runs under OS9 so if your Mac can't boot OS9 (Classic), you can't remove all those invisible files they leave scattered around.
DRIVE GENIUS looks like the best replacement for Norton. I had a drive go down - it wouldn't mount but since APPLE's DISK ULTITY could "see" the drive, the drive was fine, it was just a matter of restoring the directory. DRIVE GENIUS was the only Mac utility that could recover the directory. My only complaint would be that under REPAIR, there are submenu choices - for some odd reason REPAIR did not repair it but REBUILD did. It would seem that users like us do not really care if you rebuild or repair - as long as you can get the directory fixed so it shows up as an HDD, all is good in the world, right?
In addition, you get other features such as DEFRAGMENT, DUPLICATE, SECTOR EDIT, SHRED, INTEGRITY CHECK, BENCHTEST & SCAN. Of course, Defrag, Duplicate and Shred are pretty obvious as to what they do. Sector Edit is for advanced users - you get to look at the underlying raw hex (?) of the data on the drive so if you feel comfortable doing that. Integrity Check & Scan seems to do the same thing in checking the underlying hardware of your HDD.
DRIVE GENIUS has a pretty nice user interface and you get a constant feedback on when it's doing repairs/rebuilding. That is an EXCELLENT feature. When you are wondering if your data is still intact, you want to know what the utility is doing. And you can boot off the CD - presumably not Intel Macs as it's 10.4
It is not perfect though. For drives that Apple recognizes as drives (you get the query if you want to initialize/eject or ignore) - I was able to get the directory fixed on an IDE USB drive but not an IDE Firewire drive so if you are in the same situation, you might need to plug it in as a USB drive versus in a firewire enclosure. But since it was actually able to see and repair the USB drive, I consider that a victory of sorts plus the the interface is much more re-assuring than the interface of TechTools Pro or DiskWarrior.
TECHTOOLS PRO is now much nicer looking and now feature laden. If you have a couple Macs and quite a few HDD's as I do, you'll most likely want to get it to have it handy to do some things that DRIVE GENIUS does not do. One advanatge is that it can actually test the hardware of your Mac including memory, cache, etc ... unfortunately, it still has the same old "feature" of the old TechTools in that it launches into the test mode as soon as you click on SUITES (what they call hardware tests if choose to do them altogether). For the unintiated, this can scare the crap out of you as when it gets to the video test, your screen changes color in rapid succession (at least it's faster than before) but it's still scary and disconcerting because they do NOT tell you it's about to happen! The other main choices are TESTS, PERFORMANCE, TOOLS & SAFETY. Tests is actually the hardware test that does not scare you. You actually have to press the start button before it races off to check your mac itself. PERFORMANCE lets you optomize the drive or fix directories. TOOLS is actually a nice addition - it is broken down into multiple parts: eDRIVE which lets you create a bootable partition. Aparently you can create this partition even if you haven't physically partitioned your main HDD - frankly, I'm a little too leery of messing with this feature to try it on my main HDD but good luck if you're brave enough. You can also create a duplicate on another HDD. In addition under TOOLS, you get DATA RECOVERY, WIPE DATA, AUDIO & VIDEO testing. The last choice is SAFETY which offers under it: PROTECTION SETUP which is nice as you can back up your directory info; DIAGNOSTICS SETUP which creates an auto schedule for checking up on your Mac & HDD; SMART SETUP for auto notification when your drive is about to have problems and ALERT so it can email you.
To be honest, I had bad experiences in using TechTool's (before it went Pro) in using to fix directories. Like other people, it seemed to have ended trashing most of my files so I can't vouch for its ability to repair anything but the diagnostics and early warning setup are unique to the Mac in one package so if you are really dependent on your Mac to start up & run everyday, it's probably worth getting the diagnostics and eDrive feature - when you actually have a directory problem though, you are probably better off running DRIVE GENIUS first.
One other nice feature of TECHTOOLS PRO is you actually get a printed manual. DRIVE GENIUS is a PDF - unless you print it out, not real useful when you can't access your Mac.
The third main Mac utility in this genre is: DISKWARRIOR. It's main feature is that it has the SMART warning system also to let you know when you might experience a HDD failure. It has some rudimentary repair/rebuild feature but I ran into two main problems. It's hard to tell exactly what it's attempting to do. The progress bar doesn't move very much but the main problem is EXACTLY what you do NOT want out of a utility ... It tells you there is directory problem but it could not fix it. Not what you want when the HDD does not mount. Since it doesn't less than DRIVE GENIUS with only about 30% of its features, you should get DRIVE GENIUS first - for critical users, they might also want to get TECHTOOLS PRO and of course, for those who have mission critical apps they must get to - it doesn't hurt to have DISKWARRIOR around.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Micromat TechTool Pro 4 (Mac)
This is the eagerly anticipated Universal Binary version of TechTool Pro that will run on both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs. It fully supports the hardware changes introduced to the Macintosh platform with the introduction of the new MacIntel chipsets. All of the features of the program that were previously available for PowerPC based Macs are available for Intel-based Macs as well. This includes the innovative eDrive (emergency startup partition) feature of the program, found nowhere else. In addition to Universal Binary support, the new release will also include some significant program enhancements, including improved Disk Controller test routines. Unlike most application software, more than a simple re-compile of the program was required to support the new Intel-based Macs. Because TechTool Pro works with the computer hardware at the lowest levels, it was necessary for Micromat to completely re-engineer the software from the ground up. In order to support the new models, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is required to run the program. TechTool Pro ships on DVD for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. The DVD will automatically boot the correct system version. No product comes close to TechTool Pro for ensuring that all of your hardware and software is operating at peak performance. No other software gives you the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your valuable data is protected by the latest technology. With a single mouse click, TechTool Pro can automatically run a series of sophisticated tests that will troubleshoot almost any problem you are having with your Macintosh.
Click here for more information about Micromat TechTool Pro 4 (Mac)
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