Re: For OS 10.4, do I need to have a 3rd party application do HD maintenance?
- From: Mark Conrad <NoSpamDammit@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2005 22:36:31 GMT
In article <rowbotth-D17922.10310207082005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Rowbotth
<rowbotth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Any thoughts on this? Any helpful advise would be welcome.
Here is my 2 cents worth :)
What is advisable for _you_ to do depends a lot upon exactly how you
operate there.
As everyone knows, or _should_ know, stuff on a hard disk can get
corrupted over time, for various reasons that I will not go into here.
If you are lucky, such corruption will not occur.
For example, I have OS 10.4 on an ext' LaCie pocket drive, and have not
done _any_ maintenance on it for months, even though I use it almost
daily. Still works just ducky despite no maintenance.
By contrast, my int' drive gets "maintained" religiously, practically
every couple of days. It has OS 10.4.2 on it in a 20 GB partition,
along with a whole bunch of applications.
I do _not_ use DiskWarrior, BTW.
(do I hear loud screams out there?) <g>
I heap all sorts of indignities upon that OS X partition, such as
trying new app's that I don't know how to install or run, and using
Unix utilities from the Terminal window that I generally do not know
how to properly use.
As you can imagine, I often do severe damage to OS X, damage that not
even TechTool Pro can recover from.
I don't care, because I have reliably backups that will restore OSX to
its previous condition in minutes.
In "normal" running of my int' drive, I keep a sharp eye on what I am
doing. If I am doing something somewhat shaky, or if OS X "hiccups"
or even looks like it might want to hiccup, I stop whatever I am doing,
log out, boot up from my external LaCie pocket drive, and do immediate
"maintenance" on my internal drive.
A typical hiccup might be where I get a spinning beach ball and have to
resort to a force-quit.
I use the latest updated version of TechTool Pro, which right now is
version 4.0.4
For minor repairs, I generally just run the "Volumes" test, then I
rebuild the directory. (using TechTool, _not_ DiskWarrior)
That is 99 times out of a 100.
In the rare case when TechTool's directory rebuild feature shows major
directory damage, I do not mess around trying to repair the directory
with DiskWarrior, because I realize that there is no guarantee that
such a repair will fix all the files that may have been damaged.
This issue of not being able to fix all the files is very serious, when
it comes to non-text files that can't be verified by just looking at
them.
For major repairs, I just restore the entire OS X partition, takes
about 5 minutes.
What about any recent text files? I periodically saved them to a data
partition while I was working on them, about every 5 minutes.
(one click of the mouse from the File menu)
If I have reason to suspect major damage, then I do other TechTool
tests, of course. (RAM tests, disk tests, file tests, hardware
components tests, and even sometimes resort to using a seperate utility
"memtest" to test RAM from single-user mode)
Bottom line, TechTool Pro version 4.0.4 is more than adequate for my
simple needs, because the directory rebuild is almost as comprehensive
as DiskWarrior's.
In the rare, rare, rare instance when it has been four and a half
minutes since I saved a text file, and my OSX directory blew up and I
absolutely _needed_ that data that had not been saved to another
partition, then I might go out and buy the latest version of
DiskWarrior in a vain attempt to try to reclaim the file.
Keep in mind that according to older Google reports on all the existing
maintenance utilities, that even DiskWarrior failed to reclaim a file
that another utility managed to salvage.
What was the name of the other utility? It was "Disk Doctor" from the
suite of Norton Utilities.
(...and no I do not recall the URL of that website review, look for it
yourself, people)
....however, for your own good, avoid Norton Utilities like the plague,
because it is noted for damaging OS X files.
Mark-
.
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