8 replies to this topic

[Richard Labelle]

Anyone could tell me if Techtool Pro is a good tool for the Mac?

I have a MacBook Pro 17" Core Duo 2 laptop and I am looking for a Mac utility
to help keep my laptop running smoothly.

If it is worth buing, do you know if it will be compatible with "Leopard"?
Looking at their web site, I did not find this information.

Thanks!

[Pastor Vinny]

Richard,

I have both Tech Tool and Disk Warrior.

They are both effective; I have a little smoother and simpler operation with Disk Warrior. Tech Tool has a lot more test features and optimizes the hard drive.

My experience is that Tech Tool will update to new systems much quicker than Disk Warrior. Disk Warrior was many many months in updating to Tiger from Panther.

Edited by Pastor Vinny, 28 March 2007 - 03:50 PM.

[rorygillespie]

I have to agree with Pastor Vinny.
I also have both.
Most of the Mac IT people I know depend more on Disk Warrior.

[Richard Labelle]

Thanks pastor Vinny and to you also Rory.

Greatly appreciated!

[Alistair]

I have used both, but when it really hit the fan Disk Warrior saved my hard drive.

I used to use TechTool for defragging and maintenance under OS9, but never saw the need for it under OSX.

But of course TechTool must have been updated since the heady days of troubleshooting INITs under OS 9, so that's not really a fair assessment of the two products. I still have and (unfortunately) sometimes use Disk Warrior. I do not have or use TechTool any more.

Having said that, Tech Tool DID have the BEST Easter Egg EVER created in any Mac app.

~A!

[Alistair]

Going back to your original question, keeping your Mac running smoothly, I would suggest you look at :

Tiger Cache Cleaner and
Onyx

and other system maintenace tools,as well as

TinkerTool and
TinkerTool System

to tweak and fine-tune various OS features.

Look for them at versiontracker.com or macupdate.com.

~A!

[davidmorgenstern]

Each tool has its uses. A version of Tech Tool Pro comes with AppleCare, so Apple thinks well of it. DiskWarrior seems to work sometimes and not others. And TechTool seems to keep up quickly with changes to the OS (maybe that's because of the Cupertino connection).

However, I suggest instead of worrying first about tuning performance, you look at cloning your current system--files, applications and system--to an external drive. The whole thing. This is kinda like backup but makes a perfect image of your system. If you need to keep working, you can just boot from the external drive. No worry about licenses or permissions or reinstallation.

I use SuperDuper! for this purpose and it works great. You can schedule it too.

I use a bus-powered FireWire/USB2 drive. After the first long clone, then the software just does the changes, much like an incremental backup.

daviD m.
(former editor of MacWEEK in the days)

Edited by davidmorgenstern, 07 April 2007 - 01:59 PM.

[Joe Weaks]

David's word about backing up is way more important than spending time with maintenance tools. SuperDuper ranks high as a backup solution mostly on account of it handling metadata correctly.
While outdated, I think the results of this test are still relevant.

Edited by Joe Weaks, 07 April 2007 - 11:32 PM.

[Julie Falling]

Hey - I've used TechTool Pro for years and have been very happy with it. Used it until I installed Leopard. I just checked and it has been updated to work with Leopard. (I am about to order it.) When I've had odd problems that weren't cleared up by rebooting, running TTP never failed to fix whatever was wrong. OS X is not supposed to require defragging, but I always did it. TTP will also maintain the directory.