Disk Diag is a free, simple and efficient tool for cleaning your Mac. Disk Diag takes the hassle out of finding which files are clogging-up your Mac hard drive by instantly scanning and discovering what's taking-up space. Disk Diag scans your home folder for files that are no longer needed and displays the results using an easy to read 'Smart Gauge'. Disk Diag helps you to quickly find out how much disk space is used in your home folder by- Application Caches and Logs- Downloads and Mail Downloads folder- Items in your Trash- Browser Data for selected browsers- Large files- Application Leftovers- iOS Software Updates- Xcode generated files (for developers) For your convenience you can select such predefined groups and delete all their content. Disk Diag allows you to quickly scan your hard drive and check for files that can be deleted to free up space, a very useful tool for Macbook Airs or older Macs with limited space. If you haven't already, you should pop open Disk Utility, select your drive, and click the Info button. Ensure that the SMART status is 'Verified'.
Home > Articles > Apple > Operating Systems
␡- Data Rescue II
Editor's Note: Ryan Faas has updated this article for 2010. Be sure to also read The Top Mac Hard Drive Utilities, 2010 Edition.
Like this article? We recommend Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
When it comes to diagnosing and resolving problems with their computers, most Mac users rely on Disk Utility and the tools that come with Mac OS X. Disk Utility can resolve a number of problems—such as damaged hard drive directory structures and permissions problems with Mac OS X’s system files. However, Disk Utility doesn’t provide overly extensive hard drive repair and management options and it doesn’t provide any data-recovery features. Also, the tools found in Mac OS X’s Utilities folder don’t include extensive diagnostic tools. The limited capabilities of the tools that ship with Mac OS X can be augmented with a number of utilities offering advanced disk management, diagnostic, and repair capabilities. The five tools profiled here each have own particular strengths, but they all offer much greater chances of diagnosing, recovering from, and preventing major hardware, hard drive, or operating system problems.
Data Rescue II
Prosoft’s Data Rescue II is a tool that is designed to do one thing, data recovery, and designed to do it extremely well. Data Rescue II is for situations in which you need to recover critical data that has either been deleted or is stored on a damaged drive. It can work with drives that are failing because of corrupted directory structures (the most common hard drive problem) or because of physical problems with the drive.
Unlike hard drive repair tools, which work by attempting to repair or rebuild corrupted directory structures, Data Rescue doesn’t make any modifications to a drive. This enables it to have a greater chance of recovering data from a drive than the process of actually trying to repair the drive. Repairing a corrupted hard drive can often be successful, but if it fails, it can also result in further data loss. Data Rescue’s read-only approach means that it often has a better chance of recovering data than other tools.
Data Rescue ships on bootable CDs for both Power PC and Intel Macs, and it provides both an easy-to-use guided interface and an expert interface for advanced users. When attempting to recover data, it can sort available files by type, making locating and recovering specific items easier. It can be used to clone the contents of a damaged drive during recovery or to allow you to select only the files you need. The one requirement to be aware of is that Data Rescue II will require a second hard drive or partition to recover data to—this is required for its hands-off recovery approach.
If you are looking for a tool simply to recover data, there is no better tool than Data Rescue II. In fact, the ability to recover data and then simply reformat a problem drive using Disk Utility could provide consumers with a complete disk toolkit solution. The fact that it also offers you the ability to recover deleted files is icing on the cake, particularly for support professionals who often get asked to perform this type of miracle.
DriveDx will protect you from data loss and downtime
With DriveDx you need not worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.
You can know before your drive is going to fail, because DriveDx tracks more indicators of impending failure than any other product on the market for both SSDs and HDDs.
Early Warning System
You will have more chances to save your critical data before any data loss actually occurs.
Modern SSDs and HDDs support
When evaluating the state of various drives, DriveDx can use different heuristic algorithms depending on the drive model and even its firmware version.
Drive Self-tests
Will help to quickly identify if the drive is faulty.
Automatic Email Reports
User does not need to have physical access to a specific computer all the time, which is especially useful for all kinds of server rooms, data centers, etc.
This is one of the best investments you can make in your system. I recommend it highly.
DriveDx app warned of pending drive failure before it happened. Nice!!! @binaryfruit
DriveDx just warned of pending drive failure - second time @binaryfruit app has avoided server crash.
Mac Disk Drive
Advanced Drive Health Diagnostics
Regular diagnostic tools simply check the built-in S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive, which provides the user with little information about the actual state of the physical drive. As opposed to such tools, DriveDx analyzes the current state of the drive using all the drive health indicators that are most likely to point to a potential drive issue (for instance, SSD wear out / write endurance, I/O errors, pending sectors, reallocated bad sectors, etc). See competitive analysis against several popular products hereDrive Failing (Pre-fail) State Detection
Unlike most other tools, DriveDx detects not only “OK/Verified” and “Failed” drive health states, but also the “Failing (Pre-fail)” drive state. Thanks to that, you will detect problems much earlier than when using any other SMART monitoring utilities. This means that you have more chances to save your critical data before any data loss actually occurs. Learn moreReal-time Drive Health Monitoring
DriveDx runs in the background and periodically performs checks to determine the health of your SSD or HDD. When any issue or problem is found, it alerts you immediately. DriveDx acts as an “early warning system” for pending drive problems. As a result, you have more chances to save your critical data before any data loss actually occurs.Early Warning System
DriveDx features a special multi-tier warning system that will inform the user about deviations from the normal state of drive attributes. It constantly monitors each S.M.A.R.T. attribute (and its change dynamics) and starts continuously warning the user as the drive degrades. On the initial stages of drive degradation, the user will receive notifications of the Warning type, then Failing (means that this drive parameter is in a pre-failure state) and only then Failed. Learn moreDrive Self-tests
DriveDx allows you to start and control diagnostic self-tests of SSD / HDD. The primary goal is to quickly identify if the drive is faulty. Usually self-tests consist of a collection of test routines like electrical and/or mechanical performance tests as well as the read performance test of the drive. Depending on self-test type it does read scan of a small area or the entire media. Learn moreModern SSDs and HDDs Support
When evaluating the state of various drives, DriveDx can use different heuristic algorithms depending on the drive model and even its firmware version. One of the key advantages of the software is that the state of HDD and SSD drives is assessed using different algorithms, since many state indicators of HDD drives are not applicable or make no sense for SSD drives.Automatic E-mail Reports
The user can get problem notifications and drive status reports to email. Reporting can be configured on the basis of various criteria. Thanks to this feature, the user does not need to have physical access to a specific computer all the time, which is especially useful for all kinds of server rooms, data centers, etc.A modern, good-looking and user-friendly interface
DriveDx is one of the first drive diagnostic tools created in the true Mac style. All interface elements are clear and intuitive, so it will only take you a few minutes to learn the basics and start using the program. When a problem is identified, you will see a notification on the desktop and the status bar will show the status of your drives. Learn moreDrive Key Metrics Evaluation
DriveDx calculates various ratings of the current status of key drive characteristics (percent values):- SSD lifetime left indicator (in case of an SSD drive)
Hard Disk Diag
Disk Diagnostics Mac
Drive Free Space Monitoring
Mac OS X and applications might fail due to an inability to allocate storage space. In addition, low disk space might cause disk fragmentation. To avoid data loss and to ensure the continuous functioning of your computer it is important to monitor the amount of available storage space on your drive. DriveDx can automatically monitor free disk space and will alert user immediately if user defined free space threshold exceeded. Learn moreHard Disk Diagnostic Mac