[Macworld]

Post your comments for Expo Notes: The search for TechTool Pro 5 here

[AndrewRodney]

The one feature I'm intrigued about is this trash history. Does it work like TrashMagic which stores the data for a fixed period, allowing for full recovery? I don't want help recovering those files, I want to recover them.

[griffman]

I wasn't able to get an in-depth look at that feature while in the booth -- but as soon as we get a review copy in house, I intend to take a look at it in detail.
-rob.

[DownLowSturgen]

A trash history? That would be great if I climbed into my Delorean, and flew back to 2006 when it would actually be useful. Cos, um, I have a view of my entire hard drive's history.
And, defrag? Really? First of all, OS X defrags files under 20MB on the fly. Secondly, there is plenty of information on the interwebs about why the most safe and effective defrag is an erase and install.
Seriously, who needs TTP5? This is just bloatware marketed to switchers that don't know any better.

[hillstones]

I stopped using TechTool Pro at version 2! I thought that was a useless upgrade. TechTool was useful as a free version in the Mac OS Classic days for zapping PRAM, deleting and rebuilding the Desktop file, etc. Apple's Disk First Aid does just fine for disk repair, and if you are not getting kernal panics often, your memory is just fine.

[DownLowSturgen]

Zapping PRAM - I forgot about that one!

Here's a great reference about OS X "voodoo":

http://daringfirebal.../2006/04/repairpermissionsvoodoo

[JonlL]

I switched over to Drive Genius and have been very happy. Really like data rescue, has saved my butt on more than one occasion.
Plus, to many paying updates for the TTPro.
Your dead on about the memory issue. I had an issue and just used my mac disk to run memory test, Apple hardware test. Found the problem. Just remember to test one chip at a time.

[alansky]

I am also a former TechTool Pro user who thinks the program's relevance has dwindled over the years. It's great, though, for people who like to "play with the controls"!

[Grapho]

I use Time Machine :-), to recover my deleted files.

[Kazoo]

I'll admit to not having used techtool in quite some time but it is one of the first programs I fire up when I start having problems that are hard to explain. I usually start with disc utility and see if it can correct any issues and then move to techtool to run more tests. I have v4 and like I said I don't use it very often. I'm not sure yet if I'll update to v5.

[JonlL]

Time machine is fine, as long as it's your main drive; but when you have multiple drives and they crash or some directory problem etc, you will need something else that can recover your data.

[Jeter2Fan93]

Disk Warrior, FTW.

[DownLowSturgen]

Ahahaha! You win!

Stay tuned for the next Macworld review: virus software

[leicaman]

Drive Genius, Disk Warrior and TechTool Pro have their place. One fixes things the other two doesn't. So it's good to have all three. If you can afford it.