DISKWARRIOR 5 REVIEW SOFTWARE
DISKWARRIOR 5 REVIEW PLUS

The first is the ability to show a graph of your disk directory and a graph of how an optimized directory will look. Advanced OptionsДЄlong with the ability to rebuild the disk directory, DiskWarrior includes three advanced features. If you use the CD-ROM drive to boot from the system CD, you will have no disks from which DiskWarrior can be run. If you have one of the newer Macs and donвЂ™t have a second hard drive or some sort of removable media (Zip drive, super floppy drive, etc.), you could be out of luck with the downloadable version. Then, you must run DiskWarrior off another disk.

DISKWARRIOR 5 REVIEW SOFTWARE

Typically, this would be the system software CD that you either received with your computer or purchased when upgrading to the latest system. If you purchased the downloadable version of DiskWarrior, you need to supply your own startup disk. When you boot up and run DiskWarrior off this CD, you can then repair your drive. One of the advantages of the shrink wrapped version of DiskWarrior 2.0 is that the CD contains a bootable system folder. You must start by booting off another drive. Repairing the startup disk is slightly more difficult. Finally, clicking вЂњReplaceвЂќ will overwrite the old directory and finish the process. From the report screen, you can preview the new disk directory to make sure all the files were preserved and undamaged. Select the drive you want to repair from the pull down menu and click вЂњRebuild.вЂќ As long as this drive is not the drive containing DiskWarrior or the startup drive, DiskWarrior will run through the first eight steps of the rebuilding process.ДЄfter the eighth step youвЂ™re presented with a report that gives you a rundown of the drive, which includes any errors or notes that the user should be made aware of. After launching DiskWarrior, you see the вЂњDisksвЂќ tab. If rebuilding damaged disks is all youвЂ™re interested in doing, you can be up and running in under five clicks. This optimization of the directory tends to result in faster boot and file access times. Finally, when DiskWarrior moves files around in the directory, it places them in a logical order. This lets you make sure all your files are intact.

Second, DiskWarrior gives you the opportunity to see what the new directory will look like before overwriting the old directory. First, you eliminate the risk of accidentally creating new problems when focusing on the individual problems with the drive. There are several advantages to this approach. In the disk world, this means examining the entire disk directory, moving files around in the directory, cleaning out the damaged sections, and creating a new directory. This tailor would look at your old, damaged pants and sew you a new pair based on how the old pants should have looked. Sticking with our analogy, DiskWarrior would be a new type of tailor. Going back to our tailor, after he has sewn up every hole, you try on your pants, only to realize your pant legs are sewn shut. According to Alsoft, the problem with this approach is that many of these programs accidentally damage something else while fixing a problem. Think of this as the tailor sewing up the holes in your pants as he comes to them. Most maintenance programs look at individual problems and try to fix them without looking at the problemsвЂ™ relations to the whole. I suppose the best way to describe disk maintenance software is to compare the programs to a tailor. The root and the result are usually the disk directory. Along with this shared root, crashes also have a shared result. Although the causes of crashes are numerous, they generally have a shared root. Sometimes two programs just donвЂ™t get along, or sometimes Jupiter and Venus line up in such a way that the resultant vector of their combined gravitational fields is just strong enough to scramble the next sector your hard drive is going to read. There are a variety of reasons why computers crash. That line is not the reason this man is wise, but it seemed like a decent way to start a review of AlsoftвЂ™s DiskWarrior, a program designed to save you from those crashes.

DISKWARRIOR 5 REVIEW PLUS

Requirements: 68020 processor, System 7.1 or later (8.1 or later for rebuilding HFS Plus drives and the DiskWarrior Extension), 16 MB RAMДЄ wise man once told me something along the lines of вЂњThe closer you are to your deadline, the more likely your computer will crash.вЂќ Granted, anybody who spends any amount of time with a computer eventually deduces this.

List Price: $69.95 ($29.95 for DiskWarrior 1.x owners)

Diskwarrior 5 review