It usually finds something to repair, although a lot less with OS X than it used to turn up in Mac OS Classic. I like to run DiskWarrior on my Macs every few months whether there is any suspicion of directory issues or not, and especially before doing a full system version upgrade. Click the triangle labeled Ownership & Permissions and then uncheck the box labeled Ignore ownership on this volume. To do this, select the CD icon and choose Get Info from the Finder’s File menu. ![]() However, if only the CD is available, it works perfectly well other than the slow boot process.Īctually, you can run Disk Warrior from the CD without starting up from the CD, but you will first need to change your Mac’s default handling of the CD’s ownership and permissions. Another way to go is to connect two Macs with a FireWire cable and the machine to be checked by DiskWarrior booted in FireWire Disk Mode. I also keep a copy of DiskWarrior on my external FireWire hard drive, which has OS X 10.3.9 installed that will boot any of my three current Apple ‘Books. I have bootable installations of OS X on two of my PowerBook’s three hard drive partitions, so I can run DiskWarrior from either with a minimum of inconvenience, although I did check out the CD boot method for test purposes. You can’t rebuild the directory on a disk that you’re booted from, so in order to use this method, you will need either a second partition on your hard drive with another installation of OS X, or a bootable external hard drive. ![]() My preferred mode of operation for using any version of DiskWarrior is to install it and run it from another hard drive or partition volume. Once loaded at long last, the actual directory rebuild executed satisfactorily quickly, but you can take a long coffee or bathroom break or something waiting for the bootup. The bottleneck is waiting for the machine to boot from the DiskWarrior CD, which on my 1.33 GHz ‘Book took about ten minutes. When you are booted from the DiskWarrior CD, you can launch DiskWarrior Preview by clicking the Preview button in the DiskWarrior Report window.ĭiskWarrior 4 does its stuff quite quickly - even a 40 gigabyte partition on my G4 PowerBook took only about five minutes. Instead, DiskWarrior has a Finder substitute called “DiskWarrior Preview,” that allows you to preview repairs to your disk directory. This improvement makes it possible again to run a DW directory rebuild unattended.ĭiskWarrior ships on a bootable CD that has a special version of the OS X System Folder licensed from Apple that does not contain a Finder. DiskWarrior 3 was a vast improvement on version 2.1 for rebuilding OS X disk directories (although version 2.1 was plenty quick on Classic drives’ directories - I just ran it on my wife’s WallStreet PowerBook last week), but version 4 streamlines the process even more, also eliminating the inconvenient necessity of entering an administrator password at mid-point in the rebuild process - an annoyance introduced with DiskWarrior 3. The difference you will notice the most with version 4 is speed. If your Mac is running Mac OS 9.2.2 or earlier, DiskWarrior 2.1 is still available for purchase directly from Alsoft. Unfortunately, DiskWarrior 2.1 is no longer bundled on the DiskWarrior 4 CD, as it was up to and including DW 3.0.3. ![]() There are other refinements and improvements that make version 4 a desirable upgrade even if you’re still happily running a Power PC Mac. ![]() However, DW4 is more than just a MacIntel compatibility upgrade of DW3. DiskWarrior 4 is the first Universal Binary version of this software. The reason, of course, is Apple’s switch to Intel processors. Consequently, the release of DiskWarrior 4 only a couple of years after version 3 came on the scene is an extraordinarily fast upgrade turnaround for this product. The OS X native version 3 didn’t debut until 2004 (happily, DiskWarrior 2.1 worked just fine on OS X desks, albeit agonizingly slowly, until Apple terminated Classic bootability and directory format changes in OS 10.4 Tiger rendered DiskWarrior 2, and indeed the early versions of DiskWarrior 3 obsolete). The original DiskWarrior for Mac OS Classic, first introduced in 1998, only ever made it to version 2.1. Is your ‘Book ailing? Apple computers and the Mac OS are pretty reliable, but once in a while even Macs can have problems, and when the issue is disk-related, the tool I turn to first (and usually last) is Alsoft’s superb disk diagnostic, maintenance, and repair utility, DiskWarrior.ĭiskWarrior, AlSoft Inc.’s flagship software product, acclaimed by many (including this writer) to be the hands-down best Mac OS disk maintenance utility, doesn’t get updated very often. 'Book Mystique Review: AlSoft DiskWarrior 4.0 - Mac Disk Diagnostic, Maintenance, And Repair Tool Home > Columns > Charles Moore The 'Book Mystique
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