This is for Jon Chuzi or anyone else who has input. I know a lot of people like Disk Warrior but this is what I found on some Amazon reviews. There were good reviews for sure but the bad ones scared me. Negtive Disk Warrior Reviews

Any one experience this kind of stuff?

All I can say is that I have never had a problem with Disk Warrior. There are always people who say negative things but, without knowing details about what happened, I can't speculate about where the fault lies. Maybe it's DW's fault and maybe something else was going on. I can only speak from my experience.

OK, thanks, Jon. I just emailed them with my concerns. We'll see what their response is.

Also, Jon, someone was saying the latest one (Disk Warrior 5?) is more difficult to use. I hadn't thought about it begin complicated. I already had to ask a million questions here to learn how to use stuff. Is it more difficult to use than Disk Utility?

Sorry for all the questions.

I think in this case we have some variation of "survivorship bias" going on. I suspect a great majority of the 1-star reviews are from users that had dead hard drives. DW won't help you if your hardware is broken.

Good to know. I just didn't like when they blamed third party software for all the problems. It seems like a lot of companies do that like Tivo if your Tivo isn't their brand (it happened to me). That's why I buy all matching TV, sound bar and DVD players so the company can't blame the other company for any problems.

To me, DW seems to be quite easy to use. Its interface is very intuitive.

I'm with Jon. ".... maybe something else was going on."

I don't pay much attention to the reviews of people who are not qualified experts who base opinions on lab tests, proper levels of expertise, et cetera. My reason is simple.

The Mac is an easy machine in which to goof around "under the hood" and therefore people are inclined to do so. However, because many are without any knowledge of what the consequences might be of a tweak here and a tweak there, they compromise their systems.

Then when they try to use a piece of software like DiskWarrior, the software has no idea what it's dealing with and is unable to perform properly. Of course, these people never place the blame on their goofing about....they blame, and bad-mouth, perfectly good software.

So, given I have an an untweaked system, I thought I'd give you some realistic information and got out my DiskWarrior. Using the USB flash drive provided by DiskWarrior, I've just completed a system rebuild. The software worked perfectly.


Nonsense...click, click, click and Bob's yer uncle.

Yeah, but you're techie smart!!

Good old uncle Bob. I really hope it's that simple.

You flatter me. I know just enough to be dangerous.

That must make me a terrorist!!

I'd say it's the latter. Coming to FineTunedMac to get guidance is always the best bet.

Some perspective on those bad reviews: V1 once posted that DW was about to erase the HDD he was working on when he noticed it in the old/new comparison.

Never skip the step!

But to give you some perspective on whether or not to spend $120 on DW I'll ask if anybody has actually NEEDED it recently, or is everybody just stuck in the periodic maintenance routine and using it solely for that purpose? I don't recall a single problem that's required DW's intervention having been posted in a looong time.

Back in the days when OS X was far less stable than it is today, when I didn't have an external bootable volume, and when DW could be acquired only by snail mail, I considered it to be an extremely worthwhile investment.

Today, those factors have been all but completely resolved, and DW can be acquired immediately upon need and is, therefore, unnecessary up-front insurance. (Just my take on it; I've never upgraded from DW v 4 or TechTool Pro v 6.)

The end of the world must be near — Artie and I in almost. complete agreement. 😀. I haven't used — or needed — anything other than Disk Utility in years. Due to old habits I have kept TechTool Pro current but since the file and disk optimization routines don't make sense with SSD drives and can actually be hazardous to their longevity, I will think long an hard before upgrading it again, even though it has several unique hardware diagnostic tools.

Darn it, Artie. Now I have to rethink stuff b/c of you and JoeMike! Also, I found out that the reason the Macbook Pro I am looking at is an open box and returned so soon is b/c the person who bought it wanted a touch bar instead so returned it to the shop for a different model.

Today, those factors have been all but completely resolved, and DW can be acquired immediately upon need and is, therefore, unnecessary up-front insurance. (Just my take on it; I've never upgraded from v 4.) [/quote]

Not if you can't get your Mac to boot up!! But I have learned I need an external drive in case that happens.

But to get us back on our divergent tracks, with rare exceptions (such as an external backup), I never worry about "What ifs?" until they become "Aw, s@#%, what the f^&* do I do nows!" So, in addition to running neither DW nor TTP, I"m not running Checkmate.

I'm glad you made that point.

I posted secure in the knowledge that everybody's got an external backup.

I just looked at those reviews.

The negative reviews (I've posted comments on some) seem to fall into two categories:

1. "This software is stupid and worthless and broken because my hard drive had a mechanical failure and this software couldn't fix it!" Well, um, yes. No software can repair a drive that has physically failed.

2. "This software is stupid and worthless and broken because I tried to use it on a disk that was formatted for Windows computers and it said it couldn't do anything!" Well, um, yes. It's a Mac disk repair program. It only works on Mac-formatted drives.

Also, I read where using things like OnyX and similar tools can wear out the SSD faster. Is that true? Should I never use them or very sparingly?

This is a good time to link to tacit's post in which he spelled out the life expectancy of a SSD in numeric, rather than "scare" terms.

Bottom line is that pretty darn near nobody will ever write enough data to a SSD to wear it out.

Wow, those Tacit and Virtual 1 posts are geeky to say the least. I do have a question. He kept saying recovery wasn't all that reliable from an SSD (I am paraphrasing). Does that mean recovery mode doesn't work all that well or is it just about, let's say the government, trying to recover something we've deleted.? I have to assume recovery still does what it is supposed to do.

"Geeky" is relative: my daughter, who's a certified Mac tech, calls me a geek.

tacit and V1 are both exceptionally knowledgeable, but tacit's writing tends to be more approachable...more easily digestible than V1's.

Your assumption is correct; "recovery", as V1 used it, means recovery of deleted data, not recovery in the sense of restoring your OS.

OK, thanks. That's good to know about the recovery. Also, if I was younger and looking for a career, a Mac Tech sounds so much fun.

100% agree. Although I used it a lot compared to most here, I did see problems maybe 1-2% of the time. Rare, but that's a lot of data to tank. Preview. Compare. Oh look, used space is going from 28GB to 3GB used. uh.... NO!

Here's the other less-known collars to that... You'll get this after clicking Rebuild if the volume was very nearly full:

"DiskWarrior has determined there is insufficient free disk space to perform a failsafe replacement. Continue?"

No No No No No No aaaand NO.

Cancel. Re-select and rebuild. Yes this usually takes another Bloody Ages since repair runs on very full drives always go slowly, but do it anyway. Preview. Clone from the preview to another drive or a backup folder or whatever. Just the Users folder if you must.

NOW click rebuild, and continue.

About 10% of the time, you will be very, VERY grateful you have that backup, as it will irreparably trash the drive and you will have to reformat it. Yes, been there, done that, didn't even get a postcard. Not fun.