DiskWarrior

[VerizonLover]

Is DiskWarrior really dead? Per this MacUpdate page, support is dead. But nowhere on Alsoft's site does it mention this.

Does anybody have definitive proof that development and support is dead, like a quote from Rusty Little himself?

Been a user since the v4 days, and been on v5 for what seems like forever...

 

[Darth.Titan]

DiskWarrior cannot rebuild APFS formatted drives. Considering APFS is the default drive format going forward, unless Apple releases full documentation for the APFS file format, DiskWarrior and other third party disk utilities are dead in the water. At least that's what everything I read says.
DiskWarrior and APFS

 

[chrfr]

Is DiskWarrior really dead? Per this MacUpdate page, support is dead. But nowhere on Alsoft's site does it mention this.

DiskWarrior 5.3 & APFS — ALSOFT

www.alsoft.com

 

[Fishrrman]

APFS (and Apple's refusal to issue full documentation on it) is going to kill off almost ALL Macintosh drive utilities.

I'll take a -guess- that this is by Apple's own design.

As for myself -- I still use (and will continue to use) HFS+ for all situations in which I can use it.

 

[bousozoku]

DiskWarrior cannot rebuild APFS formatted drives. Considering APFS is the default drive format going forward, unless Apple releases full documentation for the APFS file format, DiskWarrior and other third party disk utilities are dead in the water. At least that's what everything I read says.
DiskWarrior and APFS

Drive Genius from ProSoft Engineering is in the same boat, and it seems strange that Apple are set against allowing third parties' applications, which have fixed more major problems than Disk Utility ever did, to work on APFS. I can remember a number of times Disk Utility complained that there was a problem but wasn't capable of repairing the problem. Drive Genius took care of it for me.

 

[Marx55]

Apple is releasing APFS documentation under Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) --that is why they remain mute-silent-quiet about it!-- to developers like Alsoft (DiskWarrior), Micromat (TechTool Pro) and Prosoft Engineering (Drive Genius), so that they can release new versions to rebuild the directory of APFS disks. Hopefully, we will see them within this year.

And most importantly, since macOS 11 Big Sur runs on Apple Silicon (ARM-based), that opens a tremendous business opportunity for such companies to rebuild the directory of other Mac gadgets besides Mac, like iPod touch, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. The future prospects are exciting!

 

[ipedro]

Any news on this? My iPad Pro corrupted the file system of an encrypted APFS drive and of course, Disk Utility has no idea how to fix it. iBoy Software sees everything on the drive but recovery is $100 PER MONTH for a license... The stuff on the drive is archival and appears to be safely stored (though inaccessible) so I can wait until DiskWarrior comes out and I'll happily buy version 6 as DW has repeatedly saved my butt over the years.

Has anybody heard anything from Aloft lately?

 

[Dimwhit]

Apple is releasing APFS documentation under Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) --that is why they remain mute-silent-quiet about it!-- to developers like Alsoft (DiskWarrior), Micromat (TechTool Pro) and Prosoft Engineering (Drive Genius), so that they can release new versions to rebuild the directory of APFS disks. Hopefully, we will see them within this year.

Man, I hope so. Disk Warrior is a beast. I've saved a number of drives with that app. Best disk utility I've ever used.

 

[willybk3]

Man, I hope so. Disk Warrior is a beast. I've saved a number of drives with that app. Best disk utility I've ever used.

+1. Super utility!

 

[Marx55]

Probably we will see DiskWarrior 6 capable of rebuilding APFS disks within 3 to 6 months.

 

[docbot]

I still have a broken apfs ssd that needs rebuilding. I really hope this is true.

 

[Earl Urley]

See this page:

DiskWarrior 5.3 & APFS — ALSOFT

www.alsoft.com

 

[docbot]

yes, but this has been up forever with no new news for a long time :/

 

[Marx55]

New message from DiskWarrior web page:

What's in the works
The next major release of DiskWarrior (DiskWarrior 6.0) will include the ability to rebuild APFS disks and run from M1 (ARM) equipped Macs. Apple released a majority of the APFS format documentation in June of 2020 . Our developers are now using this documentation to update DiskWarrior in order to safely rebuild Apple File System (APFS) disks.
Source: https://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior5apfs

 

[Apple_Robert]

New message from DiskWarrior web page:

What's in the works
The next major release of DiskWarrior (DiskWarrior 6.0) will include the ability to rebuild APFS disks and run from M1 (ARM) equipped Macs. Apple released a majority of the APFS format documentation in June of 2020 . Our developers are now using this documentation to update DiskWarrior in order to safely rebuild Apple File System (APFS) disks.
Source: https://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior5apfs

I have never had to use DiskWarrior. However, if I ever have a problem with my M1 drive, or any other formatted APFS drive, it will (hopefully) be good to know DW and others like them will be able to at least give us a real shot at saving a drive.

 

[Marx55]

It is not only saving a drive, but also saving the data inside and the time involved. DiskWarrior is is jewel for HFS+ and I hope that we will have it also for APFS, even knowing the the latter is much stable than the former.

 

[ipedro]

I have never had to use DiskWarrior. However, if I ever have a problem with my M1 drive, or any other formatted APFS drive, it will (hopefully) be good to know DW and others like them will be able to at least give us a real shot at saving a drive.

Disk Warrior quite literally saved my career.

I had gone to the Caribbean to shoot a destination wedding and when I arrived, the couple asked me to document the entire trip, not just the wedding. I hadn’t accounted for a week of photos and couldn’t find a place that sold CF cards but no problem, I had my MacBookPro with me. I could load the photos in Lightroom and wipe the cards.

*RECORD SCRATCH*
Narrator: “Don’t do that kids. Now back to our story…”

On the flight back, my Mac went blank. Checked the battery, 70%. Tried to boot up. Wouldn’t go. We landed and I plugged it in. Booted into safe mode: “No hard drive”. Gulp.

After weeks of agony and swapping between telling the couple or getting plastic surgery and running away to Europe, I got advice about transplanting the platters to an identical drive enclosure. That worked — partially. My Mac recognized the drive and saw that there was data on it. Couldn’t make sense of the ones and zeros.

More advice: recovery pros use Disk Warrior. Hastily paid what I thought was an exorbitant licensing fee which turned out to be the most value I’ve ever got out of an app. Within minutes, the directory was rebuilt and there they were: every single photo from the entire week, just a few non essential pics with scrambled digital artifacts.

Currently, I have an encrypted APFS drive that my iPad Pro kept unmounting unprompted. After so many times, it eventually corrupted the directory and won’t mount. Nothing super essential but recovering the drive would save me a lot of time. Another app is asking for hundreds of dollars to recover the drive and can indeed see the files. I’d rather give my money to Aloft than give into ransomware. Patiently waiting for version 6 which I’ll gladly keep in my toolbox for the future.

 

[profcutter]

Wow, you actually moved the platters from one drive to another? Did you have access to a clean room? That’s wild stuff.

 

[ipedro]

Wow, you actually moved the platters from one drive to another? Did you have access to a clean room? That’s wild stuff.

I called a bunch of places, wanting to get my drive recovered. I got quoted as high as $8K to get my data back. When I asked why it was so expensive, this guy went into minute detail what they did: “see, we have to use a clean room to remove your platters and put them in a new working drive”. I thanked him for his time, hung up and went to work on replicating what he said they did, sans clean room, just canned air for cleanup before closing the drive.

It turns out there’s an atmospheric pressure rating on spinning hard drives. What likely happened was that we momentarily superseded that rating when there was a sudden surge in air pressure in the cabin. I remember my ears popping at the same time as my Mac shut off.

That probably caused the platters to wobble beyond their design and broke the motor. The arms also scratched the platters. Luckily for me, the scratch must’ve missed all the important data, other than perhaps the directory which Disk Warrior corrected.

Lesson 1: never ever erase memory cards until the client has their photos in their possession. Shoot on two cards at once, main in RAW, backups in JPGs. For added safety, FedEx yourself the backup cards separate from your flight. Yes, I’m that paranoid now.

Lesson 2: Using a computer with a mechanical drive on a flight is risky, even though everyone seems to do it totally unaware of what might happen. I travel with my iPad Pro now.

 

[Nacho Varga]

I have been a Tech Tool Pro user for a number of years, and it has always worked fine for me, including with APFS-formatted drives. Luckily, the very, very few disasters I have had did not need TTPro. All I needed to do was to either 1) do a full, complete recovery from my most recent SuperDuper! backup, or 2) do a clean, fresh installation of the latest version of the Mac OS I was using (had the installation file on my SD backup), and then migrate needed files, folders, settings, etc. from that SD backup.

But it would certainly be good if Disk Warrior can "get back in the game", and especially with M1-based Macs.

 

[profcutter]

I called a bunch of places, wanting to get my drive recovered. I got quoted as high as $8K to get my data back. When I asked why it was so expensive, this guy went into minute detail what they did: “see, we have to use a clean room to remove your platters and put them in a new working drive”. I thanked him for his time, hung up and went to work on replicating what he said they did, sans clean room, just canned air for cleanup before closing the drive.

It turns out there’s an atmospheric pressure rating on spinning hard drives. What likely happened was that we momentarily superseded that rating when there was a sudden surge in air pressure in the cabin. I remember my ears popping at the same time as my Mac shut off.

That probably caused the platters to wobble beyond their design and broke the motor. The arms also scratched the platters. Luckily for me, the scratch must’ve missed all the important data, other than perhaps the directory which Disk Warrior corrected.

Lesson 1: never ever erase memory cards until the client has their photos in their possession. Shoot on two cards at once, main in RAW, backups in JPGs. For added safety, FedEx yourself the backup cards separate from your flight. Yes, I’m that paranoid now.

Lesson 2: Using a computer with a mechanical drive on a flight is risky, even though everyone seems to do it totally unaware of what might happen. I travel with my iPad Pro now.

Wow, when I was shooting video for documentaries, I kept it all on encrypted external hard drives. That started when we transitioned from tape to cards, and 8 gig P2 cards were 1600 USD a piece. I got into the encrypted external habit, and moved on to encrypted external SSDs. You can’t keep all your original footage on SD cards, because you’d be bringing home a suitcase of them.

I’ve never heard of someone actually doing a platter transplant, that’s amazing. I’m sure you were too busy to take pictures, but I’d love to see that.

 

[ipedro]

I have been a Tech Tool Pro user for a number of years, and it has always worked fine for me, including with APFS-formatted drives. Luckily, the very, very few disasters I have had did not need TTPro. All I needed to do was to either 1) do a full, complete recovery from my most recent SuperDuper! backup, or 2) do a clean, fresh installation of the latest version of the Mac OS I was using (had the installation file on my SD backup), and then migrate needed files, folders, settings, etc. from that SD backup.

But it would certainly be good if Disk Warrior can "get back in the game", and especially with M1-based Macs.

So Tech Tool Pro can recover the directory of an APFS drive? How were they able to do it without the documentation from Apple that DiskWarrior was waiting on?

I don’t need my drive recovered in a hurry so I’m waiting for DiskWarrior but if I get tired of waiting, maybe I’ll get Tech Tool Pro. Are we sure they do the same thing and do fully support recovering APFS drives?

p.s. my drive is an encrypted APFS. I have the password.

 

[miscend]

Between Techtool Pro, Diskwarrior and Disk Drill Pro. Which is more reliable?

 

[pdxrevolution]

So Tech Tool Pro can recover the directory of an APFS drive? How were they able to do it without the documentation from Apple that DiskWarrior was waiting on?

I don’t need my drive recovered in a hurry so I’m waiting for DiskWarrior but if I get tired of waiting, maybe I’ll get Tech Tool Pro. Are we sure they do the same thing and do fully support recovering APFS drives?

p.s. my drive is an encrypted APFS. I have the password.

Tech Tool Pro doesn't use anything other than Apple's fsck to check APFS disks. There's no documentation that allows developers to build disk repair/defragmenting tools for APFS. Tech Tool Pro does have its own tool to fix HFS+ drives. One perk of Tech Tool Pro is that it provides an easy way to make a utility disk on an external disk or flash drive, and when booted from that, you can do a more thorough repair of an APFS disk than when booted from the drive that needs to be repaired. However, that's not unique to Tech Tool Pro. If you know how to create an external boot drive, you can run the same fsck tool that Tech Tool Pro runs.

APFS (and Apple's refusal to issue full documentation on it) is going to kill off almost ALL Macintosh drive utilities.

I'll take a -guess- that this is by Apple's own design.

As for myself -- I still use (and will continue to use) HFS+ for all situations in which I can use it.

This is such a difficult decision in 2021. For spinning hard disks, HFS+ is significantly faster than APFS, especially with large files. Because APFS is designed for SSDs (which can be read/written at equal speeds anywhere on the SSD), there is no need for APFS to write files to sequential spaces on the SSD. Rather, APFS needs to focus on writing to each block a relatively equal number of times, so as not to wear out portions of the SSD faster than others. That's really bad for spinning hard disks, since having file blocks all over the disk increases seek time, as the actuator arm moves all over the disk to find the parts of the file.

BUT, as a Mac user for 30+ years, I have found APFS to be considerably more reliable than HFS+ ever was. I have never had a corrupted APFS drive, having used it on SSDs, hard drives, and RAID volumes. For HFS+ drives, no consumer tool could touch DiskWarrior. It was truly a lifesaver and well worth its price. The problem was that you actually needed it: HFS+ became corrupted all the time. I don't store 4K raw video on my drives. I imagine that if I did, APFS might be too slow for that kind of editing. But otherwise, I am more than willing to trade the extra speed of HFS+ for APFS's stability.

 

[Koelpien]

What I have heard from Alsoft when inquiring about an upgrade from 5.2 to 6.0, is that 6.0 is outside of the "free upgrade" window of two months for purchases of earlier versions. So that means no new releases before mid-July, probably later.