Hands-On Report--DiskWarrior 3.0

From Dana Baggett,

As we previously reported, DiskWarrior 3.0 is shipping. My CD was sent via Priority Mail from Spring, TX on Friday, May 16, and arrived here on Monday, May 19. The contents of the box are basic. Just the CD in a protective case and the invoice. No literature. However, there is a complete 52-page manual in PDF format on the CD as well as a Read Me, a Quick Start Manual, Instructions on Installing DiskWarrior (Drag it from the CD into the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder on Mac OS X 10.2.1 or later), a folder of DiskWarrior CD Extras (about which more later) and a folder DiskWarrior for Mac OS 9 containing among other things DiskWarrior 2.1.1.

The installation instructions suggest running DiskWarrior 3.0 once from the CD before installing it on the hard drive. So, I booted up from the CD and ran the application. The familiar Mac OS X Aqua GUI came up and I proceeded to run the application.

The first message I got said there was a critical problem with a disk wrapper and did I want to fix it? Sure. It proceeded to repair the problem and then moved onward.

My immediate impression is that it runs through its routines relatively quickly. Of course I don't have a hard drive with a lot of data; the 20 gig test drive (actually 19.1) is about 1/3 full. Creation of a new directory took about 15 minutes. (My "bench test" was interrupted by the supper bell.)

A report was generated which states that nearly 3 million comparison tests were performed in constructing a replacement disk directory.

The DiskWarrior CD Extras contains a folder of AppleScripts including: Test Drive Hardware, Quit the Finder, and Rebuild Directory. The test drive script is used to check a hard drive that supports S. M. A. R. T.

As most users of DiskWarrior in its prior incarnations will attest, it has saved my bacon more than once. I'm delighted that I now have a version that runs native on Mac OS X.

As previously noted by Alsoft, Plus Optimizer is not included on the CD as a Mac OS X version is still under development.