Prosoft Drive Genius vs. Alsoft DiskWarrior

Although I've only used Disk Warrior and have no experience with Drive
Genius, Prosoft Engineering's Web site has a chart that compares
Drive Genius, TechTools and Disk Warrior. According to the chart, it
looks like Drive Genius has a lot more features than Disk Warrior.

<http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius_info.php>

Alsoft just announced the Leopard compatible version of Disk Warrior.
So they may be one step ahead of Prosoft in this aspect.

<http://www.alsoft.com/>

--
____________________
Ryoichi Morita
Coarsegold, CA
http://www.rjmorita.com

I've used both on my Quicksilver. Since I'm not a deep-system techie, I can't say which works better. I did like the fact that Drive Genius, according to its progress window, repaired the volume directory repeatedly until it verified that all repairs were made.

However, on my MacBook Pro, neither CD would boot the machine (neither of my versions were Intel-compatible). I discovered that both products allegedly had versions that would boot my machine, Alsoft's a $20 shipped update CD, Drive Genius a $5.00 downloadable disk image that could (supposedly) be burned as a bootable CD. I first got the Drive Genius download, burned the (supposedly) bootable CD, and tried to boot the MB Pro. It ground away for a long time, then finally dropped into a kernel panic while still on the grey apple screen. Not too useful.

I then ordered the Disk Warrior CD (the brand-new Rev 42, which will be Leopard-compatible once I upgrade to Leopard). When it came, I stuck it in the drive, and it too ground away for a very very long time, but finally did boot the computer and the repairs all ran fine, if the log can be trusted (which I'm assuming it can be).

On the grinding away while waiting to boot from a CD, I've experienced this quite a bit. On burned disc images. The Mac OS X, retail or included with a computer, discs fair much better. I'm not exactly sure why but I suspect it has something to do with boot optimization on the Mac OS X CD/DVDs and also something to do with how "burned" CDs work during boot. Just my observation. Take it with a large salt lick.


--
Michael

At 8:56 AM -0800 1/28/08, Jolin M Warren wrote:
>Back in TidBITS #707 (24-Nov-03), David Shayer did an excellent
>comparison of disk directory repair utilities. Based on this, and its
>reputation elsewhere, I bought DiskWarrior and used it very happily
>for many years.
>
><http://db.tidbits.com/article/7451>
>
>However, I am now at the point where I need to upgrade DiskWarrior
>and last year I came across a review in MacUser that placed Prosoft's
>Drive Genius slightly ahead of DiskWarrior. I'm not too concerned
>about the extra features in Drive Genius, but it apparently was able
>to repair more than DiskWarrior. This got me thinking that maybe I
>should buy Drive Genius instead of upgrading DiskWarrior.
>Unfortunately I cannot find any sort of review of Drive Genius by
>David Shayer, though various Macworld (UK and US) and other reviews
>seem to like Drive Genius.

Thanks for the great feedback. Unfortunately, I haven't played with Drive Genius enough to have a valid opinion on how well it works.

David

On Jan 29, 2008, at 2:55 PM, Michael Krzyzek wrote:

> On the grinding away while waiting to boot from a CD, I've
> experienced this quite a bit. On burned disc images. The Mac OS X,
> retail or included with a computer, discs fair much better. I'm not
> exactly sure why but I suspect it has something to do with boot
> optimization on the Mac OS X CD/DVDs and also something to do with
> how "burned" CDs work during boot. Just my observation. Take it with
> a large salt lick.

As superdrives age, one of the first things you'll notice is delayed
mounting with homemade discs. A new drive will probably read them fine.

Have used Disk Warrior on iMac's (flying saucer), G4 & G3. It has worked well.

Have used Disk Genius on iMac. It was able to boot and repair a drive on an iMac that refused to boot from Disk Warrior. Disk Genius has a very nice and rather fast disk optimization feature that seems to work well.

Ryoichi Morita wrote (05:19pm Jan 28, 2008 PST):

[begin quote] Although I've only used Disk Warrior and have no experience with Drive Genius, Prosoft Engineering's Web site has a chart that compares Drive Genius, TechTools and Disk Warrior. According to the chart, it looks like Drive Genius has a lot more features than Disk Warrior.

<http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius_info.php> [end quote]

The info in that comparison chart is not completely correct, it contains at least 2 errors regarding DiskWarrior. It states that DW doesn't come on a bootable disc, which is untrue:

<http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/boxcontents.html>

Further it claims that DW doesn't fix permissions. Since version 4, which isn't _that_ new, it does:

<http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/details8.html>

Regards, Vincent

PS

Although the forum software promised otherwise, a quote of the message I'm replying to wasn't included automatically and inserting it by hand didn't work out the way I intended: I found out I need to use '&gt;' in order to get a '>', but couldn't get the line ends to match up. What am I doing wrong?

I used DasBoot to create a USB jump drive containing Disk Warrior, which
boots in mere seconds.

Hi hoping someone here can help me.

I have recently bought DiskWarrior 4.1 for my iMac which is a G4 running 256 MB SDRAM.

I have 93.70 GBs on the machine and have installed the DW.

Having done all that I can boot from the disk and run the graph. I then click to 'rebuild' and half way through it stops and says.....

"This cannot be rebuilt, there is not enough memory. Restart DW and try rebuilding. If you report this error, please mention error code 2154......

Can any of you give me any help please I am fresh out of ideas.

Thank you Carolyn

Wrote Carolyn:

I have recently bought DiskWarrior 4.1 for my iMac which is a G4 running 256 MB SDRAM.

I have 93.70 GBs on the machine and have installed the DW.

Having done all that I can boot from the disk and run the graph. I then click to 'rebuild' and half way through it stops and says.....

"This cannot be rebuilt, there is not enough memory. Restart DW and try rebuilding. If you report this error, please mention error code 2154......

DW's complaint about "not enough memory" is a useful clue. For current versions of OS X, 256MB of RAM is about the bare minimum --or maybe even a bit below the minimum. DW needs RAM in which to build the new directory structure, and if your HD is well filled, your iMac's 256MB may well be insufficient.

So treat your iMac to some more RAM. DW will most likely finish the directory rebuild, and everything that uses virtual memory will run faster.

--Ham

On 10-Feb-2008, at 22:59, Darki wrote:
> "This cannot be rebuilt, there is not enough memory. Restart DW and
> try rebuilding. If you report this error, please mention error code
> 2154......
>
> Can any of you give me any help please I am fresh out of ideas.


Well, there's not enough memory.

Depending on your iMac, another 512MB or RAM would cost between $25-60
(the most expensive is the old PC133 RAM, the cheapest is the newest
PC2700 RAM)


--
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and quick
to anger.

On 2/10/08 at 9:59 PM, barnabynetspace.net.au (Darki) wrote:

>I have recently bought DiskWarrior 4.1 for my iMac which is a G4
>running 256 MB SDRAM.

That isn't much memory to run OS X in.

>I have 93.70 GBs on the machine and have installed the DW.

I assume this is number (93.7 GB) refers to the free space on
you hard drive. If so, this should be more than adequate.

>Having done all that I can boot from the disk and run the graph. I
>then click to 'rebuild' and half way through it stops and says.....

>"This cannot be rebuilt, there is not enough memory. Restart DW and
>try rebuilding. If you report this error, please mention error code
>2154......

>Can any of you give me any help please I am fresh out of ideas.

Almost certainly, the only viable solution is to install more
ram into your G4. I would think 512 MB is almost a bare minimum
for OS X. I suggest installing as much ram as your machine will
allow. This should improve performance of a lot more than just DW.

Hi Carolyn!

You haven't mentioned what operating system
you're using, but I'm going to assume it's Mac OS
10.4."something"?, "Tiger". (I think you would be
having the same problem with "Panther", the
previous "new" operating system!) Are you running
"Leopard", the newest Mac OS? That's the most
memory intensive of all the Mac operating
systems!


There may be a more "technical" reason why you're
getting this "low memory" warning, but it might
be just as "it" says. I'm aware that Apple sold
and continues to sell -(and resellers "resell") -
new (and used) computers with what really is a
bare minimum of memory. Of course, Apple - in the
"fine print" - recommends more memory, which they
are happy to provide at extra cost, of course.
But in Apple's ads, (trying to compete with
"PC's"), they try to make their
"system-as-designed" product offerings as
stripped down as possible. An Imac with but 256MB
of ram is woefully "underpowered".


It's not at all too difficult to add new memory
to an Imac. It's relatively cheap, from many
sources, online. Good directions are available
there, too. Alternatively, shouldn't cost too
much to have somebody do it for you.


Regardless of what's going on with DiskWarrior, I
urge you to bring your memory up to at least four
times what you've got installed right now. I run
Tiger on two vintage G4's, ("Dual Processor",
admittedly. I have a G5, doing the same "things",
with 2.5 (or 3!) GB of ram.), doing nothing more
complicated with the three machines than word
processing and surfing the internet. One gigabyte
of ram, is just, for me, "sufficient"! You might
consider doubling the amount of ram you have
installed now, but with it so cheap, I urge you
to do more than doubling.

Also, don't hesitate to call the DiskWarrior
people, for help. They are a wonderful company,
responsive and coooperative. There may be a way
for you to run DiskWarrior with what little ram
you now have! (It will take forever!)


But whatever happens, you should know that trying
to run a G4 Imac - (or "G4-'Anything'") - on a
mere 256 MB or ram is going to be an exercise if
not in "futility" than "patience" beyond belief-
particularly for relatively "complex" repair
programs like DiskWarrior- which need ram as much
to function as to function at better than a
snail's pace.

Good Luck!
Steven

On 2008-02-11, at 18:59, Darki wrote:

> I have recently bought DiskWarrior 4.1 for my iMac which is a G4
> running 256 MB SDRAM.

I agree with the other posters than more memory is the way to go. If
that's really not possible there's another method if you have access
to second Mac: you can put your Mac into FireWire target disc mode
(holding down 't' at startup), at which stage your nice Mac pretends
it's nothing more than a big external hard drive. Now you can plug
your Mac into the borrowed Mac with a FireWire cable and repair it
from there.

Be sure to follow Alsoft's advice about running DiskWarrior under
Leopard (i.e. run the new version only).