DiskWarrior

[VerizonLover]

According to this page, it's as if Alsoft no longer exists as a company. The manufacturer link on the page takes to a 404, and the main site seems to indicate that "Visco" (whomever that is) has pivoted to video games and strategy guides.

Alsoft's phone numbers and email addresses go nowhere, yet their website is still active.

This link states:

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.

Unless otherwise stated, I think it's safe to assume they have gone out of business.

 

[0128672]

I haven't used DW for 10+ years at least. I didn't realize it was even still around.

 

[dogface1956]

According to this page, it's as if Alsoft no longer exists as a company. The manufacturer link on the page takes to a 404, and the main site seems to indicate that "Visco" (whomever that is) has pivoted to video games and strategy guides.

Alsoft's phone numbers and email addresses go nowhere, yet their website is still active.

This link states:



Unless otherwise stated, I think it's safe to assume they have gone out of business.

That's too bad, Diskwarrior has been one of my go to utilities for disc issues since forever, Alsoft was never really fast at updating DiskWarrior but it has been around since 1986 and always worked well for me, it only did one thing, but it did that one thing rebuild your disk extremely well. I also used Font Juggler/Master Juggler back in the day. Sad days when an old time Mac Developer closes down, maybe 6.0 will someday see the light of day, but I would say it does not look promising.

Visco Entertainment is a game distributor for Sony Playstation, Microsoft XBox and Nintendo WII and Switch so they have no history with Mac Software either games or utilities and they don't do development they just sell to other resellers.

 

[Fishrrman]

Diskwarrior is a dead product.
APFS killed it.
It's time to move on.

Alsoft was a good company in its day, but that day has passed by.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Diskwarrior is a dead product.
APFS killed it.
It's time to move on.

Alsoft was a good company in its day, but that day has passed by.

Indeed! Since I understand Apple have not released the necessary details for third party apps to rebuild an APFS Directory, the only place to move on to is Disk Utility First Aid. TechTool, Drive Genius etc use the same fsck routine as Disk Utility though they would like you to think otherwise with statements of APFS compatibility.

In HFS+ days the third party apps each their had their own magic sauce and sometimes one worked when the others didn't, and were generally more capable than Disk Utility, but since APFS I have stopped buying them.

 

[mr_roboto]

Indeed! Since I understand Apple have not released the necessary details for third party apps to rebuild an APFS Directory

Not sure that's true anymore, but the real issue for DiskWarrior on APFS is that its directory rebuild tech was very closely related to how HFS/HFS+ works. It's not at all clear (to me anyways) whether APFS needs a similar tool.

In fact, I've never felt the need to buy and use DiskWarrior on HFS in all my years of owning a Mac. I know there's lots who swear by it, but after the MacOS X transition, I always got along just fine on the built-in tools. (And rarely had FS corruption to begin with.)

 

[mr_roboto]

That said, this thread puzzles me. Why are we putting flowers on Alsoft's grave because some random listing on Microcenter's website claims DiskWarrior is a "Visco" product and has a dead link to Visco's website? Alsoft's own website still exists, claims copyright 1997-2022, and says nothing about shutting down or selling out to Visco. Alsoft's twitter account doesn't tweet much but has a tweet as recent as July of this year promising "DiskWarrior 5.3 will be released for Apple M1 & M2 Processors."

 

[Mike Boreham]

Not sure that's true anymore, but the real issue for DiskWarrior on APFS is that its directory rebuild tech was very closely related to how HFS/HFS+ works. It's not at all clear (to me anyways) whether APFS needs a similar tool.

In fact, I've never felt the need to buy and use DiskWarrior on HFS in all my years of owning a Mac. I know there's lots who swear by it, but after the MacOS X transition, I always got along just fine on the built-in tools. (And rarely had FS corruption to begin with.)

I think you could be right that Apple has released the necessary info. This Alsoft page has this:

"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".

But surprising and maybe suspicious that it has taken over two years and nothing showing. Maybe the "majority" wasn't enough.

Maybe you are right that APFS does not need a rebuild tool. AFAIK fsck is a repair tool. First Aid has solved issues for me. Maybe fsck is all that is needed.

 

[haralds]

In its days, there have been several occasions where DW saved my disks and info.

 

[mi7chy]

Alsoft's phone numbers and email addresses go nowhere, yet their website is still active.

Unless otherwise stated, I think it's safe to assume they have gone out of business.

Alsoft's toll and fax numbers still work so signs that they're still in business. You should remove the rumor since you're legally and financially liable.

 

[deconstruct60]

But surprising and maybe suspicious that it has taken over two years and nothing showing. Maybe the "majority" wasn't enough.

Documentation telling you that it is a muich harder tasks isn't really going to make the task easier. If the metadata really has gotten damaged so bad fsck can't fit it ... it was very messed up. APFS does check sums on the metadata so if it is really blow away you are in sad shape. (APFS is not so diligent about protecting users' file contents, but "data about how the data is organized" is protected.) APFS also fragments files as it does copy on write. If you go to other copy-on-write file systems ( ZFS , etc. ) you aren't going to find 3rd party utilities like Diskwarrior there.


The other problem was that APFS was not a static, completely finished file system. Each version has a bootstrap code that you could load as get started with the file system.. So the 'mess' they'd be trying to clean up would have different structures to deal with depending upon the version. (and if the version stamp got blown up in the damage. Now not sure which version it is. )


"rebuild the catalog" would be not just restore the lead version of the file system. It would have to restore all of the snapshots present and versions of those files/metadata also to be a completely accurate rebuild. That is substantively different task that what the HFS catalog tracked.

Maybe you are right that APFS does not need a rebuild tool. AFAIK fsck is a repair tool. First Aid has solved issues for me. Maybe fsck is all that is needed.

fsck is really a wrapper on macOS that calls a very specific 'fix' program for that specific file system. (and First Aid is mostly a GUI wrapper around fsck )

APFS is primarily written for SSDs which fail in different ways than older HDDs did. The way the changes are written to the catalog are pragmatically at less risk now so need for possible use is way down also.

 

[maflynn]

The manufacturer link on the page takes to a 404

I'm not getting a 404

And the link you provided from microcenter shows that they have stock - another sign that the company is not defunct.

Perhaps the microcenter link is or was malformed?

 

[Marx55]

Alsoft has always taken a lot of time to release new versions of DiskWarrior. For instance, seven years from 32- to 64-bit. Expect DiskWarrior 6 for APFS in due time. The weird thing is that they have not released DiskWarrior 5.3 yet, since it is for HFS+ (not for APFS), so it should not be hard to develop. It seems that key engineers no longer work at Alsoft. Is Rusty Little (Alsoft/DiskWarrior Project Manager) still there?

 

[deconstruct60]

Alsoft has always taken a lot of time to release new versions of DiskWarrior. For instance, seven years from 32- to 64-bit. Expect DiskWarrior 6 for APFS in due time. The weird thing is that they have not released DiskWarrior 5.3 yet, since it is for HFS+ (not for APFS), so it should not be hard to develop. It seems that key engineers no longer work at Alsoft. Is Rusty Little (Alsoft/DiskWarrior Project Manager) still there?

Not working on it or hardly anyone wants it?


Starting with macOS 11 (and continuing into 12-13 )

"... APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred format for a Time Machine backup disk. If you select a new backup disk that’s not already formatted as an APFS disk, you get the option to erase and reformat it. If the disk is a Mac OS Extended format disk that contains an existing Time Machine backup, you aren’t asked to erase and reformat the disk.
..."

Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac

Use Time Machine on your Mac with a Time Capsule and with USB and Thunderbolt disks.

support.apple.com

There are relatively few new HFS+ time machine volumes being created. The 5.3 'features' are:

"...

What Will Be Coming Soon​

• DiskWarrior 5.3 will be released to provide compatibility with macOS 11 Big Sur. DiskWarrior 5.3 will be a free downloadable update to previous versions of DiskWarrior 5.
• Support for Mac’s equipped with the M1 chip (ARM).
• Rebuild of HFS+ Time Machine backups and External Volumes formatted in MacOS Extended (HFS+) format.
• DiskWarrior Recovery Maker 1.5 for creating a bootable DiskWarrior USB Flash Drive.

What Will Not Be Possible in DiskWarrior 5.3​

• Rebuild of the Startup Disk will not be possible due to the APFS filesystem.
• Rebuild of Time Machine Volumes in the APFS format.

..."

macOS 11 Big Sur — ALSOFT

www.alsoft.com

The M1 version wouldn't be able to do much with the default internal drive in a Mac. Mainly effective upon just older external drives that were in HFS+. Users with new Macs who hook up a 'blank' drive will be walked through a process to create a AFPS Time Machine drive. 5.3 does nothing for that.

Not sure why M1 systems were added to the feature list. Seems like a better allocation of effort would have been to get 5.3 onto the Intel macOS 11 sooner rather than later. At this point, macOS 11 is only going to critical security updates.

macOS 11 introduced the 'sealed system volume' so the OS doesn't run on anything but AFPS. ( and the tool could not really do much to fix that sealed drive anyway even if had something to understand AFPS fundamentals ). Even on macOS Intel, the boot, system drive isn't going to be covered. Primarily, all can do is point at older drives and drive that deliberately avoid the default paths to putting an APFS on a drive.

If they got 5.3 running on macOS 11 the tool couldn't repair the drive it was running on. If your recovery drive fails also how do you repair or make another?

Anyone who has access to an older mac that runs 10.15 and a DiskWarrior Recovery boot usb drive can take external disks and just hook them to it. If the external drives are the only primary targets at this point, then substantially changes the requirements. Probably got "wish I had support on macOS 11" requests, but how many folks actually had hard pressing requirements for it? [ Sure there are a narrow subset of users with internal 3.5 HDDs in HFS+ , but mostly likely good for just external drives. ]

If they wanted to do 5.3 they shouldn't have put much effort into doing "6". If the more vocal user base was hyperactive about v6 then wouldn't make much sense to put major effort into 5.3 , if mainly trying to keep them happy (as opposed to addressing it in technical order. )

 

[Marx55]

Alsoft via Twitter announced in November 2021 that DiskWarrior 5.3 was going to be released soon. On January 2022 they said that it was in beta testing. It should have been released many months ago. Remember that DiskWarrior 5.3 is for HFS+ (not APFS), for which all documentation has been available for decades. Obviously, something terrible has happened at Alsoft, and that points to key engineers no longer working there, for whatever reason.

 

[Fishrrman]

From reply 14 above:
"What Will Not Be Possible in DiskWarrior 5.3
Rebuild of the Startup Disk will not be possible due to the APFS filesystem."

Then, really...
What's the point of DiskWarrior, any more...?

If it can't fix your internal startup drive on an m-series Mac, what purpose will it serve?

It was great in its time, but DiskWarrior is done.
APFS and "system on a chip" killed it.

 

[DearthnVader]

I much prefer low level drive recovery tools that just operate on the bit level and are completely independent of drive formatting like Spinrite.

Sadly Spinrite uses FreeDOS so it won't be available to run on AppleSoC.

 

[Marx55]

From reply 14 above:
"What Will Not Be Possible in DiskWarrior 5.3
Rebuild of the Startup Disk will not be possible due to the APFS filesystem."

Then, really...
What's the point of DiskWarrior, any more...?

That is for DiskWarrior 5.3. DiskWarrior 6 will do it.

 

[mr_roboto]

I much prefer low level drive recovery tools that just operate on the bit level and are completely independent of drive formatting like Spinrite.

Sadly Spinrite uses FreeDOS so it won't be available to run on AppleSoC.

That's not a "sadly", we don't want SpinRite. It's extremely overrated and does nothing a few scripts and low-level UNIX tools like 'dd' can't do. It's also basically irrelevant for flash storage.

SpinRite's author, Steve Gibson, has proven over and over that he's just a fame-addled self promoter. Once the market for SpinRite had died down a bit, he tried to pivot his business to security, but kept shooting himself in the foot by making lurid claims about imminent doom which had absolutely no basis in reality and made him a laughing stock among real security experts. Like the time he tried to say the entire Internet was about to be exploded by hackers because Microsoft put a feature into Windows XP which allows applications to send arbitrary packets. (This did not happen.)

 

[deconstruct60]

I much prefer low level drive recovery tools that just operate on the bit level and are completely independent of drive formatting like Spinrite.

The "bit level' is not really going to help. Modern data storage ( SSDs which APFS is primarily targeted to) and Copy on write/ snapshots and/or resilient file systems ( again APFS ) do not really store data is a very simple predictable 1:1 fashion. The virtual, 'logic' block you tell the SSD to store does not have to be stored in the same physical location each time. So 'where' that data is actually located is up to a logical-to-physical metadata mapping that the SSD keeps internally that is not in the SATA/NVMe interface to read back. Without that, you just have a jumble of file blocks.

Similar with Copy-on-write. The file system stores multiple version of the contents of the file. Which file block version is still the latest and which one has been mapped out is all dependent upon a relatively complex metadata storage. Bit level copying of an entire drive isn't necessarily if do the capture in the middle of a transaction that is doing a significant update.

it is akin to going to the disk(s) underneath a highly level RDBMS and just copying the data in an uncoordinated fashion to what the DBMS is doing. That is not likely going to be a totally coherent snapshot of the data.

Sadly Spinrite uses FreeDOS so it won't be available to run on AppleSoC.

The default internal drive of a Mac is self encrypting. Even if had some UEFI boot path through a 3rd party bootloader. Unless the tool can unlock the drive, just looking at some AES-512 encrypted bits with no de-encryption key isn't going to buy you much.

Even for HDDs. New technologies SMR , SSHD , HAMR ... don't behave (or store data) like HDDs from 3 decades ago. caching and logical-to-physical block mapping are not entirely the same methods as before.

 

[Marx55]

Update: Alsoft said on Twitter (26th September, 2022):
We are in testing phase of DiskWarrior 5.3 for Current versions of macOS. This will support the rebuild of HFS+ formatted Volumes on newer versions of macOS & Apple Silicon based Macs.

The shocking thing is that they said exactly the same on January 2022 (nine months ago!). As said above, something terrible has happened at Alsoft, and that points to key engineers no longer working there, for whatever reason.

 

[ahurst]

That's not a "sadly", we don't want SpinRite. It's extremely overrated and does nothing a few scripts and low-level UNIX tools like 'dd' can't do. It's also basically irrelevant for flash storage.

SpinRite's author, Steve Gibson, has proven over and over that he's just a fame-addled self promoter. Once the market for SpinRite had died down a bit, he tried to pivot his business to security, but kept shooting himself in the foot by making lurid claims about imminent doom which had absolutely no basis in reality and made him a laughing stock among real security experts. Like the time he tried to say the entire Internet was about to be exploded by hackers because Microsoft put a feature into Windows XP which allows applications to send arbitrary packets. (This did not happen.)

Specifically, ddrescue operates at the block level and is easily installed with brew (or on any Linux distro).

Fantastic piece of open-source software, I’ve used it for everything from recovering the contents of a failing Windows 10 SATA HDD to imaging the contents of 30-year-old SCSI drives from 68k macs.

 

[Earl Urley]

Not to get anyone's hopes up, but Alsoft tweeted this reply back in November:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592751091489583104

And also this, not three weeks ago:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1612875713748824064

 

[majus]

Alsoft is still very much in business. All their phone lines, including Tech Support, are still live.

 

[Earl Urley]

DiskWarrior v.5.3 was just released!! And it will run on Apple Silicon Macs!

DiskWarrior 5 Update — ALSOFT

www.alsoft.com

DiskWarrior 5 Version 5.3 Update

Update DiskWarrior 5 to version 5.3. All users of DiskWarrior 5 should download this update. (日本語はこちら)

New Features in 5.3:

Supports OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion through macOS 13 Ventura when rebuilding Mac OS Extended volumes.

Now runs on Apple Silicon M1 & M2 Macs to rebuild Mac OS Extended volumes.

No longer requires a kernel extension (KEXT) to operate in macOS 11 Big Sur and later.

Now runs within the macOS 11 Big Sur (and later) Recovery environment on Intel Macs. Previously worked only in the Recovery environment of macOS 10.15 Catalina and earlier.

Supports Dark Mode in macOS 15 Catalina and later.

Numerous updates to keep pace with security and other changes in the latest versions of macOS.

Increased minimum requirements to include Intel 64-bit and Apple Silicon Macs running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later.

Well, it still only fixes HFS+ volumes, but at least this gives me hope for v.6.0!