I bought disc warrior for OS 9 last year and used it once to repair my 120 gig buslink. I just received the OSX upgrade version 3. What should I do with it? Should I install it and use it every day or every week to perform maintenance stuff or do I use it only to fix big occasional problems? Does it do disk defragmentation like the windows defrag thingy? I do not really understand its functionality. Could some of you tech heads tell me what's going on with this? I would be obliged.

Come on, I know one of my moderators has disk warrior.

I wish I did.

Shadowlord? Any help?
A note to the moderators:
What the heck? Where are you?

Ok--I did it myself. No problem.

Initally I was afraid to boot up from the Disk Warrior Disk thinking that it might mess up something and for a while I thought I had made a big mistake. It took my 17"FP 5 minutes to restart with that disk in there. It was rattling and shaking like I have never seen before.

Finally the disk warrior logo appeared and I did the Graph Test. It told me that 28% of the data on my Mac was "out of order" (I think that was the term used) So I hit the go (Replace) button and, vroom the directory was replaced by a new one identical to the old one except with the errors repaired and the data moved. Now when I do the graph test it tells me that 1% of the data is out of order. Thats good enough. I was surprised, there were a lot of errors on the report.

To optimize the Mac HD you must boot up from the CD. If you want to repair or optimize an external hard drive you can install the software on the HD and then run it from there. You don't have to boot from the CD if you are fixing an external drive. I did the same thing on my 15" and found that 33% of the drive was out of order. I'm gonna do the iBook next. Ain't skeered no more!!

PS: the computers seem to run a little faster.

I'd say, from what you said I think that it defraged your drive.

Yep--but you know what? it's not working on the iBook. The thing gets STUCK and just spins and spins-- for over an hour. I have tried it 3 times and all 3 times I have had to mash the power button to stop the thing. I'm sure that's helping my disk!! The iBook was 35% out of order. I never really noticed that it was doing poorly to be honest. Mostly I just use it to play music at work.

I have emailed tech support at Alsoft. I'll let you know what they say.

Tech support emailed me back and told me that it sounded as if Disc Warrior hit a bad spot on the drive. They recommended I use an Apple disc utility called "Drive Set Up" but I couldn't get that to work. So, I used the disks that came with the iBook and restored the software to "like new" condtion. Then I ran Disc Warrior again and it worked all the way this time. There was nothing physically broken or damaged with the hardware, just a software glitch I guess. Phewwww! Because I had called my Apple repair shop and they told me that it sounded like a hardware issue and it would cost $350 to have a new hard drive put into it.

Something strange though; Right after I reinstalled the new software, I did the Disc Warrior GRAPH test and it showed the the computer was 32% out of order. That seems weird to me because I would think that with a fresh install, the hard disk would be optimized wouldn't you? It wasn't.

But it is now thank heaven.

Well, I'm glad your macs are in working condition now.
The Sysop.
P.S.
That's a wonderful signature. Hope you're enjoying your helper powers.

No, if you used the restore disks, the system is not a clean install, the disks return the system to a like new condition but the install is far from clean, a data recovery app could recover some of the old data. Now a zeroing and install wipe all data and takes hours(and hour and hours, did it myself once, took around 11 hours!) but its a true clean install.

Now your bad sector is caused by a flaw in the hard drive platter, usually in a laptop caused by some shock that's enough to cause the read head hit the platter, or it could just be a manufacturing defect.

Thanks for the info there Duo. It looks like my iBook is in good condition after all. No physical problems with the hard drive. The disk is optimized at<1%.

I think I'll be getting a copy soon.

You betcha-- It was well worth the money. Since I started my Mac Maddness I have never been able to defrag a disk. Windows has the defrag app in the accessories folder so it's real easy to optimize your system. Mac on the other hand needs third party software to do a defragmentation. So, there's another hundred bucks tossed into the apple tree.

Yeah, but mi¢ro$u¢k bundles crappy ones that most people use and think that they don't need anything better, I own several utilities for window$ that I had to use to to keep things in perfect working order, I think I'm well over due for somme Mac apps.