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Disk Utility Alternative for OS X

H

hollowman82

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 12, 2015
8
5
Hi everyone

Does anyone know of a good 3rd party disk utility for OS X ?

The original disk utility doesn't always fix my hdd issues, but when I plug it into a Windows PC it fixes it.

The new El Captain Disk Utility is pathetic!

Any suggestions will be appreciated.
 
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sometimes i get errors, like lost files or dir's. I just want to run a simple scan and fix file structures.

Disk Utility should do this, but its not for some reason.

The hdd's are being used via a 4bay USB enclosure.
 
hollowman82 said:
Hi everyone

Does anyone know of a good 3rd party disk utility for OS X ?

The original disk utility doesn't always fix my hdd issues, but when I plug it into a Windows PC it fixes it.

The new El Captain Disk Utility is pathetic!

Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Click to expand...


From the terminal run "fsck". This has been THE disk scan and fix utility on Unix systems for a long time. I think it was written about 36 years ago in 1979. Many other utilities are only front ends that internally launch and run fsck. If you run it yourself from the terminal you get to specify quite a few options. fsck is already installed on your Mac.

To learn how to use fsck read the manual page by typing (no quotes) "man fsck" at the terminal. It will print quite a lot of information

One question: You said something about plugging the disk into a Windows system. What file system are you using. I hope not "MS-DOS (FAT)" That is so unreliable not even Microsoft uses it any more. Memory cards still use that but they require routine reformatting. It you want the disk to be reliable you should be running OS X Extenuated with journalling.
 
Hi Chris. The file format is NTFS ... I'll give fsck a go, thank you for that info.

I installed disk warrior and it gives me this message

Directory cannot be rebuilt. The file system is unsupported

I'm assuming I get this message because its NTFS and disk warrior is built for mac only and will only support mac formats ???
 
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NTFS is a Windows file system ... that's why Disk Utility can't do anything with it and Windows can. So there's nothing wrong with Disk Utility. It's not supposed to handle NTFS. Macs can't even write to NTFS drives without a special third-party driver. The NTFS thing would've been a helpful tidbit to know. There aren't any Mac utilities for that. You'll want try driver support software like Paragon NTFS: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/features.html
 
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Sorry, I should have mentioned that i do in fact have paragon NTFS for mac installed... I've been using it for years.
I'm writing to these NTFS HDD's for many years and didn't have any issues...

Perhaps there is something else wrong...
[doublepost=1461661829][/doublepost]mhafeez, yeah i got that installed... thanks still same issue
 
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I cannot open DiskWarrior with this error: The 'com.Alsoft.DiskWarrior.prefs' file is corrupt or write protected. But i cannot find this file in the Preferences folder within the Library folder.
Anyone know how to solve it?
 
thanks for hijacking my post ..... ;)

I just come to notice that paragon has its own disk utility in SYSTEM PREFERENCES >> NTFS for MAC OS X

I can't say it works well either.

2016-04-27 09.24.14 pm.png
 
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Hint: near the head of this page, you can edit the subject of your topic to make clear that it's about NTFS.

hollowman82 said:
… paragon has its own disk utility in SYSTEM PREFERENCES >> NTFS for MAC OS X

I can't say it works well either.
Click to expand...

At Paragon NTFS for Mac® 14 – Full features I see:

Check NTFS utility - checks NTFS partition integrity and fixes errors, creates and displays a status report about the NTFS file system
Click to expand...

Is that Paragon's careful way of saying that its software might fix an error affecting the integrity of a partition (a partition map issue, for example), but can not fix an error affecting the integrity of the file system?
 
Just my opinion, but messing with file system utilities in a non-native, available only because of third party software drivers, is pretty crazy. If you really must mess with an NTFS drive on a Mac, install a small bootcamp or VM installation for this maintenance. Could be as simple as a minimal XP install.
 
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@BayouTiger smart thinking, although some types of error that are reported whilst checking the file system may relate to an underlying problem with hardware. If the wording of the report is not explicit about that possibility, and if an installation (of Windows, for example) is made to another part of the affected disk, then the writes for that installation may be enough to worsen the situation.

Whilst http://askubuntu.com/a/58764/25036 notes –

Windows' chkdsk is the authoritative NTFS repair tool. …
Click to expand...

– it's equally worthwhile to be aware of solutions that do not require Windows. A few other things in Stack Exchange, in no particular order:
 
hollowman82 said:
Hi everyone

Does anyone know of a good 3rd party disk utility for OS X ?

The original disk utility doesn't always fix my hdd issues, but when I plug it into a Windows PC it fixes it.

The new El Captain Disk Utility is pathetic!

Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Tech Tools Pro.
 
I also use Paragon NTFS for Mac. It is a very solid software. In the previous version you could run disk scans with Disk Utility but not in the latest El Capitan version.
I have noticed that the scan option included in the Preference Panel of Paragon NTFS is not that good.
My advice? If you need to scan a NTFS partition do it under a Windows environment with the native CheckDisk. Just mount the partition on a Windows VM on VMware Fusion or Parallels, or mount the disk in BootCamp if you use it.
If this is not possible take the disk to a PC with Windows and do it from there.
 
hollowman82 said:
sometimes i get errors, like lost files or dir's. I just want to run a simple scan and fix file structures.

Disk Utility should do this, but its not for some reason.

The hdd's are being used via a 4bay USB enclosure.
Click to expand...
Hi,
if you mean that you use a USB hub/multiplexer, take care:
I used one to service 3 hard disks and corrupted them all.
APPLE told me that concurrent USB traffic via such hardware is not supported.
Since then I have each disk on its own port; no problems any more.
;JOOP!
 
Sciuriware said:
Hi,
if you mean that you use a USB hub/multiplexer, take care:
I used one to service 3 hard disks and corrupted them all.
APPLE told me that concurrent USB traffic via such hardware is not supported.
Since then I have each disk on its own port; no problems any more.
;JOOP!
Click to expand...
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My diskutility stopped working on my Mac, yes NO joke- disk utility freezes when selecting specific and broken RAID volumes that i have. If you use Paragon it will actually execute the fsck commands based on the disk volume UI appropriately, so i don't see it doing anything wrong there or out of the ordinary. Also it was able to access, mount, delete, and verify a volume that Disk Utility could not for some reason.
 
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