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Ailing Mac? Try Drive Genius 3
When your Mac starts acting unreliably your first line of defense is Apple's Disk Utility, but that solves a small number of problems, such as permissions and disk verification and repair. A good second line of defense is Drive Genius 3 for Mac from Prosoft Engineering. Drive Genius offers repair and maintenance utilities you can use to make sure your hard drive runs at maximum efficiency. This US$99 suite of programs includes the following modules: Information, Defrag, DriveSlim, Repair, Scan, DrivePulse, Integrity Check, Initialize, Repartition, Duplicate, Shred, Benchtest, and Sector Edit. When you launch Drive Genius you can choose any one of the available utilities from a set of icons displayed across two screens. Each module presents an option to choose a drive, volume or files and folders on the right, depending on the utility's purpose. Options available for each utility appear in the main window with simple instructions. A question mark icon on the bottom right opens the help file. The simple Preferences offer three options. You can choose to show the custom animation of data moving around a disk as a tool works, check for updates, and turn on email notification when a tool finishes its task. This last preference is a subtle reminder that many of the functions take a significant amount of time to run. The Modules The Information module provides a complete description of your hard drive, probably more information than you want. The balance of the modules are best run after you backup your data, in case of unexpected problems. Scan, Integrity Check, and Benchtest run read and write tests on your hard drive. They check for bad blocks, the health of your hardware, and in Benchtest, test the drives read and write speeds. As these tests sort of hammer on your drive, any electrical interruption or serious drive problem can result in data loss. That's one good reason to make sure you have a good backup or copy of your drive on hand. The Duplicate module can create a backup for you, but as with many of these tools, it will not copy your current start-up drive unless you start from a different drive. Duplicate creates a bit-by-bit copy of your drive, so you must use a blank drive of equal or greater size to use it. Personally, I prefer Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to backup my drives, but including a backup module in Drive Genius just makes sense. It's actually best to use the Drive Genius startup disk from which to run most of the tools. These tests chew through quite a bit of time, so make sure you run the programs when you don't need the machine for a number of hours. The problem I often solve using Drive Genius 3 is a slow drive and one that mysteriously is eating up space at a surprising rate. That's where DriveSlim and Defrag come in handy. DriveSlim is useful to search for large files, duplicate files over 1 MB, Unused Localizations (language files you don't need), Universal Binaries, and Cache and Temporary files you no longer need. I'm not quite sure I understand how it works though. I wasn't happy with the way DriveSlim displays the information, I found that it showed duplicates that were not, but only with files over 320 MB. On one drive, using Mac OS X 10.6.8, it listed both duplicate files and on another, in OS X 10.8, it listed only one file and I had to search for the duplicate in the Finder to see where it was stored. I then manually removed the file stored in the wrong folder. I'm sure that's not the way the tool was designed to work, but I was not confident to just check a box next to the DriveSlim found file and have it decide which file to keep, where to alias that file, or where to back up the file. You can choose which of the files to locate, but if you choose to act on only one type of file, you must run DriveSlim again to work on another type of file. Time consuming to say the least. Even though most people claim you don't need to defragment a Mac-based hard drive, the OS actually only defragments files that are less than 20 MB. If you create or edit sound, video, or photographic files, you may have some hefty sized files on your drive(s). As Apple states in one of its manpages for XSan: "There are two major types of fragmentation to note: file fragmentation and free space fragmentation." "A file extent is a contiguous allocation unit within a file. When a large enough contiguous space cannot be found to allocate to a file, multiple smaller file extents are created. Each extent represents a different physical spot in a storage pool. Requiring multiple extents to address file data impacts performance in a number of ways." In short, if pieces of the file you want to use are scattered all over your hard drive, it is working harder to deliver that file to you, slowing your workflow, and potentially reducing the lifespan of your hard drive. In checking a couple of my hard drives I found movie files that were divided into over 2000 fragments and photo files with over 100 fragments. When you run Defrag the files are concatenated into one whole file and the free space is moved to one area. I did test defragmenting my startup drive, not a recommended action to take, but I have a current backup. Drive Genius reboots your Mac into the Command Line and runs the defrag command, which also repairs your drive and reboots your Mac when its done. It worked fine, but a bit unnerving to watch. The Repair module seems to duplicate the functions of Disk Utility, such as verify and repair disk errors and permissions. It will also rebuild the drive's catalog file. The rest of the modules are aimed at setting up your drives. You can Initialize a drive and format it for GUID (recommended for Intel Macs) or use the old Apple Partition Map. You can also Repartition a volume, but not your start up drive–unless you start off the Drive Genius 3 disc. Partitioning lets you divide one drive into multiple volumes. I seem to be one of the few people who still partitions my drives and use this function when I first use a new drive. Explanation of initializing, partitioning, and Sector Editing your drive are beyond the scope of this review, but you can find more information on the Drive Genius site and in the Help file. One word of caution, if you do not know exactly what you are doing, never use Sector Edit, because it can corrupt the drive and render files useless. Last is the newest module, added in Drive Genius 2, DrivePulse. This module loads into your Apple menu bar and monitors your drives in the background. I found it unnecessary on my new iMac, but have used it in the past on older machines. It checks for fragmentation, and file and physical drive problems. On my new iMac most of the drives I loaded yielded a Pending status. It checks drives when the machine is idle, so it doesn't interrupt your work. You can turn it off from the menu item or within Drive Genius. Conclusion The one thing Drive Genius will not do is run any tests on a drive that has serious physical problems, which is a shame. I started my tests using a 160 GB Iomega Ego that had trouble mounting. Anyone who deals with drives knows that clicks means ensuing death, but usually you have a little time to remove your files before the drive goes belly up. Well, this drive with three partitions fell off my desktop within 5 minutes. Drive Genius could see it initially, but would not run any tests and I couldn't recover anything from it. Drive Genius 3 is especially useful if you create or edit very large files. For this review, I tested version 3.2.2, but have also used version 1 and 2 in the past. The price of Drive Genius pales against the cost of a new hard drive. At about $7.60 per module, it helps you keep your machine lean and mean and working at peak efficiency. Requirements: Intel-based Mac OS X 10.6.8 to 10.8.x 1 GB RAM Does not support Drobo drives Limited support for FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS, and Software RAID Upgrade from competing product for $75
Add a clone partition to your backup drive
In case you missed it, March 31st was World Backup Day, a big topic of discussion on the last few Talkcasts, which culminated in a visit by the team at Dolly Drive. Inspired by the conversation, I wanted to create a clone-sized partition to mirror my SSD. I had an extra external drive on my desk but, like most, it already had some important data on it. In this video I will show you how to add a partition to an existing drive so it can be repurposed to make a clone of your boot drive. I'll be using Dolly Drive Revo, a free Dolly Drive 10 GB Account and Disk Utility in Mountain Lion. The actual cloning can also be done with Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper! if you prefer. Warning: Before you attempt any disc-related modifications, please be sure to have a backup of the data contained on that drive.
HTC explains decision to skip Android 4.0 for Desire HD: we'd rather not wipe your data
HTC dampened a few spirits when it dropped the Desire HD from its Android 4.0 upgrade list. The company might feel your pain, but it claims to have a good reason for denying the update that it's been doling out elsewhere. There's no way to shoehorn a new version into the device like there was for the Desire's leap to Android 2.3, the company says. Fitting all that Ice Cream Sandwich into the Desire HD would require repartitioning the internal space, and repartitioning risks overwriting personal content; needless to say, the company isn't keen on explaining why it might nuke our family photos just so we can run Chrome. Even if that weren't an issue, a nebulous set of "other technical limitations" might not rub upgraders the right way. All of the explanations add up, although it's nonetheless easy to sympathize with Desire HD owners now stuck in Gingerbread land -- especially as owners of the closely related Thunderbolt aren't being held back.
PSA: Nook Tablet can be repartitioned in-store, Android app adds comic support
Did you take umbrage with Barnes & Noble's efforts to hoard all your Nook Tablet storage for its own content? Well, the book seller has made good on its promise to reassign a portion of your 16GB hard drive, opening up 8GB for personal content and leaving 5.5GB for Nook Shop content. As we said before, you'll need to physically take your Nook Tablet to the bricks and mortar outlets to get the storage tweak. Readers that decided to go for other Android-laced tablets have also been gifted with a Nook app update, adding support for comics and related graphical literature -- just make sure that the slab is running Android 2.2 or higher.
Barnes & Noble offers to repartition Nook Tablet storage, concedes you may need more than 1GB
Are you one of the many infuriated with Barnes & Noble over how it partitioned the storage on the Nook Tablet -- leaving you just 1GB for you own files? Well, it looks like the company has learned from its mistakes. While only about 5GB is free to load with apps and media on the new 8GB model, just 1GB of that is reserved for Nook Store content. That's in stark contrast to the 16GB version which set aside a full 12GB for Nook Store downloads. Thankfully, B&N is offering to retroactively fix the boondoggle. If you visit a brick and mortar shop starting March 12th, a support rep will gladly help you repartition the internal storage, freeing up more than just one of the 13 available gigabytes for personal use. Having to bring it to the store is a bit of pain, but we suppose it's better that getting stuck with 12GB of Angry Birds and e-books.
Lion: Diving into your Recovery partition
I spent a good deal of the afternoon diving in where no sane person really wants to spend a lot of time -- in my Lion recovery partition. It's not hard to get there, and it's quite a curious place when you do. [For those commenters wondering about the use of photos rather than screenshots to illustrate this post, it's hard to take screenshots on a system where the boot volume is read-only. –Ed.] The Recovery volume is a small slice of your hard drive that gets partitioned off during your Lion install; it's not optional, because that's actually where the OS gets installed from. You can view the contents of the Recovery volume by mounting it with the command-line diskutil tool, as John Siracusa points out; the regular Disk Utility app is thoughtful enough to keep it hidden. To restart in recovery, reboot your computer and hold down Command-R after the chime (you can also use the traditional Option-key holddown, which will show all your bootable volumes including Recovery). Before long, the gray linen background appears and the Mac OS X Utilities window pops up. The OS X Recovery partition includes a number of built-in utilities to handle system recovery tasks. The Utilities window allows you to Restore from a Time Machine Backup Reinstall OS X Use Disk Utility to repair or erase your hard drives Browse with Safari to get online help. Choosing the Safari option opens a web browser that immediately takes you to a basic help page. This help page is stored locally on your recovery partition at the following link: file:///System/Installation/CDIS/Mac%20OS%20X%20Utilities.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/RecoveryInformation.html You are not limited to Apple pages, however. The reason I was able to get that link up there isn't because I wrote it down. I copied it to memory, and pointed Safari to Earthlink's web mail page and simply e-mailed it to myself. I had no problems accessing any of the (admittedly limited) pages I tested. From there, I explored the Mac OS X Utilities > Utilities menu. Located off the main help screen and in a windows sub-menu, you can manage your firmware password, test and fix connectivity issues or access the Terminal for command-line management. Of course, I had see what Terminal had to offer. Turns out that your entire file system mounts, if it can. You can navigate to your user folders and access any material located there. I did not try it out myself, but I imagine you could attach a USB drive of some kind and copy files over if you needed to. There is no authentication here, so it's also possibly a bit of a security hole for anyone with physical access to the system. (For those who are concerned about physical access, don't forget about FileVault and/or an Open Firmware password to keep things secure.) The Recovery boot volume is read-only, and has a very limited set of files and features. You're actually running from the system image stored in BaseSystem.dmg, which gets mounted by the startup executables inside the com.apple.recovery.boot directory. That doesn't mean you can't run Nethack from your recovery partition. Just make sure your install is set up to run completely on another drive -- which mine is. (Also, don't forget to re-compile it from scratch. The PPC version no longer works on Lion.) Once you're done exploring, boot your way back to your primary partition and let your Recovery partition rest -- hopefully for a long, long, long time.
Dev Juice: Help me recover my beta partition
Dear Dev Juice, I was in the Lion beta program. Now that 10.7 is about to release I want to reclaim the small partition I added to my laptop that I was using to test it. How do I do this? Shawn Dear Shawn, Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) makes it easy to recover OS partitions assuming you have a standard scheme where you partitioned off a chunk of your drive to host the beta. Assuming you did just that, you'll have a primary partition occupying most of your disk, and a secondary partition after that. Back up everything you can, especially on the second partition. Boot on your primary partition that you have now updated to Lion. Open Disk Utility and select your hard drive (not the partitions under the hard drive) and open the Partition tab. Your layout should have the primary partition on top, the secondary below it. Select the secondary partition and delete it by clicking the - (minus) button. Make sure you read the messages that Disk Utility presents you. You only want to remove the secondary partition, you do not want to affect the primary. If you get any message other than something like 'this will only remove the secondary partition and leave the primary unaffected', stop and re-group. Otherwise, go ahead and perform the removal. (You did backup, yes?) Next, resize your primary partition to reabsorb that extra space. Edit the Size field by entering 9999 GB (or whatever). When you press return, Disk Utility will automatically change that to match the actual available space. Click Apply. It can take several minutes for Disk Utility to verify and apply the changes. But it is able to make the changes (as it did with the original partition) in-place. You will not need to reboot afterwards, although you may want to just for sanity's sake. Good luck and happy developing!
A weekend with FireWire
My MacBook Pro and I had a bit of a rendezvous this past weekend. She's a 15 inch Core Duo with 2GB of RAM. Although she'll occasionally get as hot as a toaster oven (leaving red marks on my lap at times) and mooed like a cow when we first met, she's been a consistent workhorse for me. But her hard drive needed a transplant. Sick of her sluggish performance and hard drive clicking noises, I decided that it was time to fix her up. So, I replaced her 320GB hard drive with, surprise, a 320GB hard drive -- this time a Fujitsu model instead of the Toshiba it replaced. Not because I thought the Fujitsu was any better than the Toshiba it'd be replacing, but because it was the least expensive drive I could find. Although the hard drive installation went successful, it wasn't without its fair share of bumps along the road. Hopefully, the bumps I experienced could provide many some guidance on what to do as well as what not to do when upgrading your hard drive.
Some Inspiron Mini 9s shipping with partition issues
Early Dell Inspiron Mini 9 customers who sprung for a larger drive may want to check their partitions -- Dell apparently used a static 4GB Ubuntu image during some initial manufacturing runs, leaving the OS in a 4GB partition and the remainder unused. The problem's been fixed now, but if you were unlucky enough to get one of the wrongly-formatted units, Dell's saying that you'll need to restore from the System Restore disk, but there are some live partition options out there if you're feeling brave.[Via Boy Genius Report]
Camp Tune lets you adjust your Boot Camp partition
Paragon software has made available a pre-release version of Camp Tune, a new utility for resizing your Boot Camp partition without destroying data. While the Leopard version of Disk Utility is now able to perform partition resizing, it is not able to resize a Boot Camp partition without erasing it (although you could back it up and restore it if needed). Camp Tune runs as a bootable Linux-based CD which allows you to boot your Mac and reallocate disk space between your Boot Camp and HFS+ partition.Camp Tune for Mac is presently in pre-release and is being offered as a free download (registration required). The download is a disk image that must be burned to a CD or DVD. Needless to say, you should have a backup for both partitions before using any software of this sort.[via Macworld]
