AAUG Reviews

by Richard Geiger, AAUG Member

DiskWarrior version 4 by Alsoft is a software utility program that rebuilds your Mac directly and repair permissions on you Mac and it also monitors for hardware drive errors. Alsoft states that directory issues are one of the main causes of problems on the Mac so rebuilding your Mac’s directory can solve many of the problems users have with their Macs. The difference between DiskWarrior and other programs is that it rebuilds your Mac directory not just repairs it. The program is designed for a specific function and executes very well.

The program comes on a CD and can be installed in the Mac application utility folder so that the program can monitor drive issues and rebuild external drives. The program will run on Intel or PowerPC based Macs. If you need to run the program to repair damage to you bootable drive you will need to run the program from you CD which is a very slow boot.

I tested DiskWarrior on three different Macs running Mac OS 10.4.10 (Tiger). If you are thinking of purchasing the program for Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) I would check with Alsoft before purchasing it to ensure it is compatible. Two of the machines I tested were Intel based Macs and one was a PowerPC G5 tower and the program worked fine on all three machine. Before testing the machines two of the Macs where having ball of death issues and force quit issues. The first computer I ran DiskWarrior on was MacBook Pro. The program found 50 or so directly errors and rebuilt the directory. After running the program I found the MacBook Pro booted faster and have very few force quit issues. I also rebuilt the directly on a G5 tower and it seemed to clean up the stability problems. The computer had problems with Microsoft Excel crashing and hanging before the repairs.
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