How much is too much (system tools)

[bcburrows]

Quick query guys....

I have all sorts of 'tools' to keep the mac at her best, but am starting to think I need to reduce the clutter. Any thoughts and opinions would be much appreciated

I have:

Tech Tools Pro 8, not yet bothered to upgrade to 9 as not sure what benefit I have already, thoughts?

Data Rescue 4 - never needed it as am thoroughly backed up, but think my multi-backup policy makes me unlikely to upgrade....

Drive Genius 3 - currently an offer to upgrade to v.5 but any benefit with this at all? Not sure I ever sure saw much benefit with 3, and with the inbuilt SSD, and my back up policy...is it more cash down the drain.

Disk Warrior 5 - Saved my bacon once, wouldn't be without it

Adware Medic - its free and comes recommended, so why not....

CleanMyMac v3 - seems to do the job, so likely to keep and update as needed

Really appreciate any sensible thoughts, opinions
- Upgrades
- Uninstalls
- Other software

This is my work computer and my data is key, losing it is not an option, and also ideally would need to minimise any downtown should I have a hardware/software issue

Cheers

 

[madeirabhoy]

spookily similar to what i have, and like you I'm not sure if to upgrade anything as i don't really use any of them.

 

[960design]

Quick query guys....

I have all sorts of 'tools' to keep the mac at her best, but am starting to think I need to reduce the clutter. Any thoughts and opinions would be much appreciated

I have:

Tech Tools Pro 8, not yet bothered to upgrade to 9 as not sure what benefit I have already, thoughts?

Data Rescue 4 - never needed it as am thoroughly backed up, but think my multi-backup policy makes me unlikely to upgrade....

Drive Genius 3 - currently an offer to upgrade to v.5 but any benefit with this at all? Not sure I ever sure saw much benefit with 3, and with the inbuilt SSD, and my back up policy...is it more cash down the drain.

Disk Warrior 5 - Saved my bacon once, wouldn't be without it

Adware Medic - its free and comes recommended, so why not....

CleanMyMac v3 - seems to do the job, so likely to keep and update as needed

Really appreciate any sensible thoughts, opinions
- Upgrades
- Uninstalls
- Other software

This is my work computer and my data is key, losing it is not an option, and also ideally would need to minimise any downtown should I have a hardware/software issue

Cheers

Wow! I just use the iCloud to store my 'Source' files. Never had an issue. Get a new MBPr and iMac every three years ( offset by 1.5 years ). Publish to staging server.

So documents in three places.
Working files on computer and in iCloud, production on staging server.

 

[HDFan]

For me Diskwarrior is indispensable. Same thing for Paragon Disk Manager as I have a lot of disks. Much more useful than Apple's Disk Utility where I can't even seen the full disk names as the disk frame isn't resizable (haven't done the Sierra upgrade). Techtool is nice when trying to figure out random failure issues, but to be frank it has never really helped me much.

 

[the Rebel]

Diskwarrior is by far the best tool for repairing corrupted drives.
However Drive Genius is a great supplemental.

 

[Alrescha]

This is my work computer and my data is key, losing it is not an option, and also ideally would need to minimise any downtown should I have a hardware/software issue

Since I purchased a UPS, I have never needed any of these tools. Certainly drives fail due to age, but in my experience once that happens it is best to just throw them away. Backups are of course a requirement.

A.

 

[HDFan]

Since I purchased a UPS, I have never needed any of these tools. Certainly drives fail due to age, but in my experience once that happens it is best to just throw them away.

I've got a UPS but have to rebuild even new disks at least a couple of times a year. Time Machine backup disks seem to be the most prone to failure. I think what happens is that finder hangs for some reason on a disk (usually on a network drive), causing writes on other drives to fail and so they become corrupted. As I have a lot of drives open (11 at the moment) I admit that the problem is somewhat self-inflicted.

 

[bcburrows]

I've got a UPS but have to rebuild even new disks at least a couple of times a year. Time Machine backup disks seem to be the most prone to failure. I think what happens is that finder hangs for some reason on a disk (usually on a network drive), causing writes on other drives to fail and so they become corrupted. As I have a lot of drives open (11 at the moment) I admit that the problem is somewhat self-inflicted.

I also have a UPS, but have my SSD and four attached HDD's..Never had a power surge but more worried about corruption/failure. I have had some videos corrupted from my pre-back up days and have never been able to properly recover these.....

I did think I was being a little crazy, and likely - moving forward will keep

-Disk Warrior - I think it is fantastic
-CleanMyMac
-CarbonCopyCloner

Any just let the other apps 'retire'

 

[Partron22]

Been using Macs since 1984. I have none of the tools you listed.
I use Appcleaner and Malwarebytes. Pacifier.
They seem to be enough for my purposes.
I regularly mess around in Terminal and tend to script a lot.
I don't run a lot of Login Items - FastScripts, AndroidFileTransferAgent, that's about it.
Over the years, these types of things seem to account for most catastrophic problems.
I also run SuperDuper! backup regularly, along with my Time Machine.
What's your second backup approach?

Unless you're being deliberately hard on your Mac, and there are reasons to do that, you should not need most of what you have.

 

[liya1201]

I also have a UPS, but have my SSD and four attached HDD's..Never had a power surge but more worried about corruption/failure. I have had some videos corrupted from my pre-back up days and have never been able to properly recover these.....

I did think I was being a little crazy, and likely - moving forward will keep

-Disk Warrior - I think it is fantastic
-CleanMyMac
-CarbonCopyCloner

Any just let the other apps 'retire'

This is pretty much what I am doing now. I have
DiskWarrior
Carbon Copy Cloner
Time Machine

Although I've owned other Tools but I don't see a point to keep upgrading them...

 

[Tech198]

Adware Medic - its free and comes recommended, so why not....

CleanMyMac v3 - seems to do the job, so likely to keep and update as needed

Cheers

"It's free so why not" that statement alone will get people in trouble very quickly as the drive fills up, with none of that stuff, and instead just kw what u install.


Any modem OS, does a better job without any "help" Even on Mac...

To me, the only thing u may want is Onyx, to go through the logs to clean these up as the Mac doesn't delete any logs (console logs etc at all), if u want

You can clear the "Logs" folder yourself in %user profile%/Library.

But the best is only install apps you use... If you do that there is no need for most of these cleaning stuff.

For what u do automatically using tools, I can do the same manually, and probably do allot better job, because u have no idea what these tools also do as well, or miss. They only "clean" do by known folder structures eg. Caches, library, but may miss files in Preferences are the most common in your and may miss other files in "different" locations, the tool may not even be aware of..

Having multiple tools to 'close-that-gap' is not a valid point either. Only human knowledge is..

 

[Partron22]

I've used Onyx. It's OK. Been a couple OS iterations since I last played with it, but it seemed a decent App, not prone to causing weird crashes or installing unwanted bloat. With regard to such additions, I've really come to prefer a Minimalist approach.