Micromat TechTool Pro v3.0.2 Experience

"MicroMat mailed me TT Pro 3.0.2 CD as part of my TechTool Pro Quarterly subscription on Tuesday Oct. 24 from Santa Rosa, CA first class mail. It arrived here in Maine today. I decided to try it out on my iMac hard disk which, as you know, has both Mac OS 9.0.4 and Mac OS X PB mounted on the same partition. Alsoft's Plus Optimizer CD doesn't work because of OS X's invisible files but Disk Warrior does perform directory maintenance. TT Pro 3.0.1 CD also has performed both directory maintenance and disk optimization.

"Initially, I thought the TT Pro 3.0.2 CD was defective or the 3.0.2 version was degraded from 3.0.1 because, after booting from the CD, it would not dismount my hard drive to perform directory maintenance or disk optimization. It performed other tests routinely and found some minor file date errors which it fixed.

"Just to make sure it wasn't the hard disk itself that was the problem, I booted from the 3.0.1 CD and performed both tasks. Hmm. Before writing a negative report, I decided to try again. This time under Preferences in 3.0.2, I opted for Select All Volumes instead of Prompt User. And, immediately after, it dismounted the hard disk without a problem and performed both directory maintenance and disk optimization.

"One other possibility. On the first try with TT Pro 3.0.2 CD, it performed other functions on the hard disk before I tried directory maintenance and disk optimization. On the second effort, I went directly to directory maintenance and disk optimization. It shouldn't make a difference.

"Regarding performance of disk optimization, TT Pro 3.0.1 CD eliminated all file and disk fragmentation but stopped "unexpectedly" when it had almost completed optimization without further explanation. TT Pro 3.0.1 CD gives a graphical but no numerical report of its work. TT Pro 3.0.2 reported that there were eight discontiguous segments on the disk which it inherited from V. 3.0.1. It reduced those to four when it quit, citing scattered directory files. (I suspect they are invisible files since they don't show on the graph.) Of course this is a trivial matter, as further fragmentation of the disk under Mac OS 9.x is inevitable. (I have read that file fragmentation will not be an issue with Mac OS X.)"