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Drive Genius

WebHead

WebHead

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 29, 2004
498
118
I've been meaning to purchase the latest version of Drive Genius but it's not yet compatible with Sonoma. I figure the next version of macOS might be out by the time they get around to updating it.

I've read previously that DG is basically just a more detailed front end for Disk Utility. Is that correct? If Disk Utility gives a drive a clean bill of health, is that enough?
 
There are drive utilities out there which are compatible with Sonoma. What features specifically are you looking for?

WebHead said:
If Disk Utility gives a drive a clean bill of health, is that enough?
Click to expand...

Disk utility tells you whether it sees any current problems. It doesn't predict future problems which could be shown by SMART data.

If you have a 3-2-1 backup strategy in place probably not worth worrying about it.
 
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What are you hoping that Drive Genius will do for you? Disk Utility (either when running macOS or booted to recovery mode) will do repairs that are possible. DG seems to be one of those apps which had a bright past (with flakey HFS+ format disks) but has little future.

Better to put your effort into backup strategy so that you can recover from disasters.
 
gilby101 said:
What are you hoping that Drive Genius will do for you? Disk Utility (either when running macOS or booted to recovery mode) will do repairs that are possible. DG seems to be one of those apps which had a bright past (with flakey HFS+ format disks) but has little future.

Better to put your effort into backup strategy so that you can recover from disasters.
Click to expand...

Thanks yes, I'm doing that too, I just liked DG's ability to identify bad blocks (even though that could be inconsistent and throw up false positives).

Oh, and doing scans with DG is an excuse to dig my backups out of storage and spin them up every six months.

I'm also using Drive Dx to check the SMART statuses so maybe that's enough?
 
One more thing, I have a 20TB RAID (in RAID 0 mode) but Drive Dx only recognises one of the two drives. Which makes me nervous about the other one...
 
WebHead said:
Oh, and doing scans with DG is an excuse to dig my backups out of storage and spin them up every six months.
Click to expand...
I prefer to retire old HDD and keep important data on my active disks which are getting at least daily backup to off-site cloud storage. I recommend either that or copy to archival cloud storage - e.g. Amazon Glacier.
WebHead said:
I'm also using Drive Dx to check the SMART statuses so maybe that's enough?
Click to expand...
I too use DriveDX, and that provides warnings of impending physical hard drive failure. That is sufficient for me as I only keep active disks and all are formatted APFS and have at least two backups. But DriveDX (and SMART status in general) provides no protection against inconsistencies in the file systems which used to be relatively common with HFS+ or FAT format disks.
 
gilby101 said:
I prefer to retire old HDD and keep important data on my active disks which are getting at least daily backup to off-site cloud storage. I recommend either that or copy to archival cloud storage - e.g. Amazon Glacier.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the amount of data I want to back up - 15-20TB - makes both those prohibitive (for me, at least). As the price of cloud storage comes down that may become an option.


gilby101 said:
But DriveDX (and SMART status in general) provides no protection against inconsistencies in the file systems which used to be relatively common with HFS+ or FAT format disks.
Click to expand...

I also plan to employ hash files to detect data changes, but yes, that's getting complicated.

Thanks for the input!
 
HDFan said:
If you have a 3-2-1 backup strategy in place probably not worth worrying about it.
Click to expand...

Oh, one last point, I also plan to have at least a 3-2 strategy by using both HD and BD-R. The optical discs *should* retain their integrity for decades (they're the non-organic-dye type).
 
I used Drive Genius for years, but APFS is where it can't be used.

Apparently, Apple won't cooperate with any drive utilities developers, as I haven't found any that can handle APFS volumes.
 
WebHead said:
Unfortunately the amount of data I want to back up - 15-20TB - makes both those prohibitive (for me, at least). As the price of cloud storage comes down that may become an option.
Click to expand...
I see your problem there!

WebHead said:
I also plan to employ hash files to detect data changes, but yes, that's getting complicated.
Click to expand...
When I decide it is important I use this script:
Code: 
#!/bin/bash
# Create _sha256tree.txt with checksums for each file in tree
# Excludes file starting with . or ^
# Uses /tmp for temp files
# May fail with some chars in file names
# Check with shasum -c _sha256tree.txt
# Based on https://superuser.com/questions/458326/sha1sum-for-a-directory-of-directories
#
# Create two temp files
tsort=$(mktemp /tmp/shar256srt.XXXXXXXX)
tsh=$(mktemp /tmp/shar256sh.XXXXXXXX)
# Get sorted list of files excluding starting with . or ^
find . -type f \! -name ".*" \! -name "^*" \! -name "_sha*" | sort > $tsort
# Create script to shasum each file
awk '{print "shasum -a 256 \""$0"\""}' $tsort > $tsh
# Run scrip to create file with the shasum of each file
bash $tsh > _sha256tree.txt
# clean up
rm $tsort
rm $tsh

Also easy to wrap in an Automator action and call from Quick Actions on a directory.

Howard Oakley https://eclecticlight.co/ prefers a hash stored as an xattr with each file and has apps to help with that.
 
WebHead said:
Unfortunately the amount of data I want to back up - 15-20TB - makes both those prohibitive (for me, at least). As the price of cloud storage comes down that may become an option.
Click to expand...

Not an issue, at least in the U.S. Backblaze and Crashplan offer unlimited backups for ~$120 a year.
 
bousozoku said:
I used Drive Genius for years, but APFS is where it can't be used.

Apparently, Apple won't cooperate with any drive utilities developers, as I haven't found any that can handle APFS volumes.
Click to expand...

gilby101 said:
I see your problem there!


When I decide it is important I use this script:
Code: 
#!/bin/bash
# Create _sha256tree.txt with checksums for each file in tree
# Excludes file starting with . or ^
# Uses /tmp for temp files
# May fail with some chars in file names
# Check with shasum -c _sha256tree.txt
# Based on https://superuser.com/questions/458326/sha1sum-for-a-directory-of-directories
#
# Create two temp files
tsort=$(mktemp /tmp/shar256srt.XXXXXXXX)
tsh=$(mktemp /tmp/shar256sh.XXXXXXXX)
# Get sorted list of files excluding starting with . or ^
find . -type f \! -name ".*" \! -name "^*" \! -name "_sha*" | sort > $tsort
# Create script to shasum each file
awk '{print "shasum -a 256 \""$0"\""}' $tsort > $tsh
# Run scrip to create file with the shasum of each file
bash $tsh > _sha256tree.txt
# clean up
rm $tsort
rm $tsh

Also easy to wrap in an Automator action and call from Quick Actions on a directory.

Howard Oakley https://eclecticlight.co/ prefers a hash stored as an xattr with each file and has apps to help with that.
Click to expand...

HDFan said:
Not an issue, at least in the U.S. Backblaze and Crashplan offer unlimited backups for ~$120 a year.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips!

And good to know about the Backblaze plan as they're probably the only cloud storage I'd trust outside Amazon.
 
Although Crashplan can handle unlimited backups I have found a soft limit of ~16 TB. They have a lot of maintenance programs which run and as you start exceeding this number your spend most of your time in maintenance rather than in backing up. I have about 4x this amount in Backblaze. Only limitation is upload speed which means it took months to upload all of the data. Haven't tried a restore so would be rather interesting if the whole amount had to be restored.
 
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HDFan said:
Haven't tried a restore so would be rather interesting if the whole amount had to be restored.
Click to expand...
Waiting for lots of zip files to be created and then waiting whilst they download and then restoring to the right places. Restore is one of the weaknesses of Backblaze. :(
 
gilby101 said:
Restore is one of the weaknesses of Backblaze. :(
Click to expand...

I thought it was one of their strengths, as compared with other services. They will restore to an 8 TB hard drive and refund the purchase price if you return it in 30 days.
 
Last edited:
HDFan said:
I thought it was one of their strengths, as compared with other services. They will restore to an 8 TB hard drive and refund the purchase price if you return it in 30 days.
Click to expand...
I was thinking of restores of anything less than everything. When I tested it, this had to be done via web browser and involved selecting files/folders to restore, BB creating a zip file with what you requested, and then (some time later) being able to download the zip file. And at some point sending your encryption password to the BB servers.

A dog's breakfast compared to restores from Arq or Crashplan.

How well does the HDD restore method work internationally? I assume (wrongly perhaps) that it would be quicker to download 8TB over the Internet.
 
Some very rough tests with CrashPlan and BackBlaze restores of a ~1 TB folder.

1. Backblaze downloaded a folder directly to disk, as did CrashPlan
2. Backblaze was way faster than Crashplan, running up to 70 MBs vs KB/s. Within minutes I had 13 GB of Backblaze restores vs 4 MB for Crashplan.
3. Don't use Arq due to expense of other cloud storage services
4. Don't know how HD restore would work internationally. Good question for BackBlaze.

Interestingly both restores seem to be running from what looks like the same location (on a high level map) in Kansas.
 
One last question, if I have two identical backup volumes and want to periodically check for file corruption, would a diff utility be suitable? Would that compare the contents as well as the metadata?
 
WebHead said:
if I have two identical backup volumes and want to periodically check for file corruption, would a diff utility be suitable? Would that compare the contents as well as the metadata?
Click to expand...

How were the backups created?
 
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