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Micromat seems to have a yearly paid upgrade whether we all need one or not, and too few free bug fixes in the meantime. Furthermore, with Snow Leopard in the offing, I can't help but think that this upgrade is coming too soon and may be a waste of money for those who have version 4, which does its job pretty well.
Micromat has a poor record for releasing timely upgrades in response to Apple OS releases. That may not be entirely the company's fault, but since I expect to see Snow Leopard released sometime this summer or early fall I don't want to buy a program I can use for just half a year or less and then be forced to wait for what will probably be another paid upgrade to support Snow Leopard. With no compelling new features, I give this one a big thumb's down.

Based on the mentioned test, in which Disk Utility fixed what TT Pro and DiskWarrier could not, the latter should be reduced to a four-mice rating. Didn't Macworld run such a test when DiskWarrier was being evaluated?

At the very least, it should be mentioned that when you buy an AppleCare Protection Plan, you get a copy of TechTool Deluxe for free...

Re: SMART Test Temperature Changes & Seagate Drives
Rob, the drive you mention giving a temperature change near failure on the SMART test may be actually fine. There is a known issue with Seagate Drives that cause failure warnings on the SMART temperature change test. I had the same near failure reading with a brand new Seagate 2.5" 7200 rpm drive in my 17" MacBook Pro (Unibody). Searched the web and found that it was a known issue with Seagate Drives. Some disk utility software lets you disable this parameter reporting on a Smart Test when you have a Seagate HD

context said:

I ran the exact same test on several disks with DiskWarrior when I reviewed it. I discussed this with Rob when he did his test - I even gave him the same code to corrupt the catalog as I used - and was surprised that DW didn't fix it...

Kirk

So we've got reports of an important recovery function that doesn't work, other functions that are slow and of minimal impact to system performance... and we're giving 4 stars? I owned version 4 of this product and while it's comprehensive, some of the tests are more or less for show / are things that in 20 years of using Macs, I've never seen fail on my machine or anyone else's. Really all you need is good drive recovery software and even that is now marginalized by Time Machine. Isn't great to use a system that is so stable (relatively speaking) that most diagnostics aren't necessary? ;)

I have both DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro 5, as well as Drive Genius 2.1. I remember reviews in the past and comparisons that said when you have Apple's Untilities, TechToo Pro and Disk Warrior, amongst them all you should be able to fix anything. That no one tool fixes everything. So I got them all. :)

I put Drive Genius and Disk Warrior on my eDrive and they all work together perfectly! Well, don't use two at the same time.

And because these programs take a long time to do their jobs, it's good the eDrive includes Safari, so you can browse the web while the tools are doing their jobs. On my 8-core Mac pro, it's no problem performance-wise. Which reminds me of a cool visual feature of TechTool Pro - it shows how hard each core is working as it does its job. Not necessary, but interesting.

It doesn't matter if it's compatible with Snow Leopard. Just use the eDrive created in Leopard and the machine won't have any problems, unless Snow Leopard includes ZFS in the non-server version. That I would not mess with using any of these tools.

It is annoying how slow Apple is at sending OS updates to these companies. But they are also slow at getting the updates working because such tools require extensive testing. Something I appreciate, but wish happened much faster.

Message was edited by: leicaman

Not a fan.
Bought it and it failed to detect a flakey SODIMM. I was able to confirm that stick was bad after swapping with another machine.
My hard disk is failing and Apple has agreed to replace it. But, TechTool Pro says the disk is fine.
I would rate it 2 stars at best.

If TechTool Pro and DiskWarrier could not repair what Disk Utility (free) can, how can you give this a 4 star rating???
I gave up with TechTool Pro 2. A pretty interface doesn't make a program useful. You don't need a program to tell you if memory is bad, etc. If you have bad memory, you will know within minutes. A program can't anticipate future failures. It can't tell you that your disk is going to fail. It can't tell you that your memory is going to go bad. It is a bunch of BS marketing.
Building a rescue partition won't help if the drive has a mechanical or software failure. You never know, your rescue partition may become corrupted as well. HP and Sony do this instead of shipping CD's. I have seen plenty of disk failures in which the main partition is fine, but the rescue partition has a bad block and cannot create the CD's or boot. Then where does that leave you?
The only TechTool that was useful was version 1, back in the Classic days. Deleting and rebuilding the desktop file and zapping the PRAM were two essential troubleshooting tasks. Sometimes rebuilding the desktop wasn't enough, it had to be deleted and a new one created, which TechTool was the program of choice.
TechTool Deluxe with AppleCare is useless as well. Does nothing more than Disk Utility. You seemed to indicate that most of the tests are not needed, so how can you recommend people to spend money when Disk Utility may be all they need?

leicaman said:

Sorry you spent money on those utilities. I hope your eDrive that you are now relying on doesn't fail. Your programs won't be able to anticipate any failure in the future. Routine backups to another drive or other media is your only proven method of recovery. Don't rely on a single disk and a variety of questionable programs to restore your data. You're playing with fire. This article should open your eyes to realize that TechTool Pro and DiskWarrier could not repair catalog damage, but the free Disk Utility could. Rule of thumb...backup, backup, backup.

Um, what are you reading? leicaman is not complaining about anything let alone expressing any buyers? remorse. He has stated that it is a good idea to have multiple utilities where disk recovery is concerned and that is a matter of fact. None of the utilities he is using are questionable. TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior and Drive Genius are staple system/disk utilities for the Mac that have been around for years.

I have real mixed feelings about TTP.
The good. They saved my rear end by detecting a bad memory chip, and I they have repaired countless minor problems with my disk drives.
The not so good. The tools are inconsistent. The disk check tool tells me that the volume is perfect. The optimization tool says that the volume has problems, and I need to go back and fix the problem first. I've reported all of this to MicroMat, with no result. I've purcha$ed updates, after I reported the problem, and the problem remains. MicroMat doesn't seem to think that it is a problem.
As someone else has stated above, I just don't like MicroMat's upgrade policies. I'm really tired of paying a $25 media fee to get the latest update, when other vendors allow me to download the DVD image, and burn my own DVD. Especially when the update doesn't fix the problems I was having.
All in all, I haven't upgraded my TTP4 to TTP5, mostly because I've lost faith in the utility and value provided by MicroMat.

I dunno. I've been thinking for years already that with TechTool Pro, less would be more. The current product reminds me of the saying "jack of all trades, master of none." The only time in recent memory that I actually asked TTP to do something, it failed to recover accidentally erased files that were easily recovered by Data Rescue II. I'm not impressed, and I'm not buying.