I'm going back to TTP 6 because it's the version I had, and I'm wondering how much of its functionality is either no longer possible or no longer necessary as a result of, possibly on top of earlier OS changes, Apple's having locked down the system volume? (I'm not up to doing a side by side comparison of v 6 and v 14 on my own.)
Clone a volume (Figure 2; Disk Utility can do this, too, but with fewer options);
Perform a surface scan of a hard drive, checking every byte for bad blocks;
Perform a SMART check of a hard drive, confirming that the on-board electronics are working and properly reporting drive health (Figure 3; Disk Utility can do this, too, but with less information on results);
Perform a check of volume directory corruption (again, Disk Utility can do this, too, but with less detailed results);
Perform a check of file integrity;
Perform a memory test of RAM (Figure 4);
Perform a check of video memory;
Rebuild and repair a volume directory;
Defragment a drive (Mac OS X does this automatically, but not with the same manic sense of completeness);
Optimize a volume to consolidate free space;
Recover files from a damaged volume, or in certain cases, from the trash;
Securely erase data (Disk Utility can do this, too, with fewer options);
Enable or disable file system journaling (Disk Utility can do this as well);
Verify and repair disk permissions (Disk Utility does this, too, but with less detailed results)
Scan your local networks, and report on all devices found, their IP address, and what services and ports are active (Figure 5);
Perform a check of your monitor and verification of iSight functions;
Perform a check of your sound system and speech synthesis functions;
Create an eDrive (electronic drive partition that can be used as an emergency startup partition; Lion automatically creates an emergency startup partition);
Offer detailed, exportable reports on all test functions.
In other words, does it still provide the troubleshooting functionality that made it a more or less "must have," or has that functionality fallen by the wayside and been replaced by attractive but less useful options? (And the same goes for DiskWarrior and Drive Genius.)
When TTP was available on disc only because Apple wouldn't allow a d/l of the boot sequence, paying the upgrade price was almost mandatory, but since it became available as a d/l, there's been no need to pay for new versions before you
needed them.