AAUG Reviews

by Sally Donaldson, AAUG Member

Macs have become master-mind’s and to keep them running smoothly really takes advanced technology such as DiskTools Pro. This utility is the “army knife” for the Mac, because it is the only utility that allows us to schedule when to defragment files, and scan bad sectors, then repair them as well as to backup the volumes. DiskTools Pro will find and repair broken aliases, and keep a repair and maintenance log.

Having DiskTools Pro installed on my Mac makes inserting the original disk unnecessary. When opening the DiskTools Pro Application, the Main Task Menu appears immediately. For the Mac user, opening a new box of tools is exciting and making choices among them is difficult. I’d like to “select all” and order “run” then go to sleep and awake the next morning to a speedier, leaner, cleaner Mac. In one section of the manual, this seems possible, but in another I am lead to believe that it is not. This requires more investigation on my part.

Testing more than one volume at a time is possible. Shown in the left column are the external disks that are active as well as your main volume from which you are working. You may select one from any of the volumes then start the task of your choice among twelve tools to work your Mac.

I chose to begin with Defragment All Files. This task ran for about sixteen minutes, so I had went back and forth to my office from doing yard work etc. To my dismay, my computer reported that 275 Fragmented Files were found and the same number was not Defragmented.

I ran the program again. That time the report was 275 Fragmented Files found, and 226 were Not Defragmented. I don’t understand this part of it. I will call Macware help line. I will try running the Defragment All Files again.

Scan Files for Bad Sectors was more successful because none were found. No Broken Aliases were found. Only three Broken Symbolic Links were found. I presume that they were repaired.

Other tools that are available but as yet untried by me include: Verify and Repair Volume, Test Data Transfer Integrity, Device/Volume Information, Backup/Restore, and Benchmark Volume.

S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics checks various hard disk indicators for health and reliability.
Alert Notifications can be set to alert you at various times or your choice, or can be turned off completely.

Analyze Capacity Usage will reveal what kind of files are consuming the largest portions of your disk. In addition, you can request a showing of the largest files so that you can decide to remove them or to achieve them. This is one of the more interesting tools in this set. It list’s every file and the size space it uses. This tool can keep one busy for several minutes, just from curiosity.

Of course, there is a Settings and Preferences file. Options in the Preferences File are limited to Sounds to be played when Task has been successfully completed and/or fails.
One choice is to Display Disk Number in Volume List, or not to show it. Application has two options, Require Admin Password at Startup, and Automatically check for updates.

All in all, DiskTools Pro is a valuable asset to any Mac user. I feel much more comfortable having yet another Tool to help me keep my Mac clean.