Micromat TechTool Pro 4.6.1 Diagnostic Utility Macintosh Universal DVD UPGRADE

by Micromat

Product Features

• Diagnostics & Repair - TechTool Pro includes options to thoroughly check various hardware components, drives and other aspects of your computer system. One of the most important tests is the S.M.A.R.T. test, which checks for impending drive failure
• Includes routines that can search a damaged drive and attempt to recover valid files to another location
• Safety feature can be configured to protect your drives by automatically creating backups of critical drive directory data
• One of the most innovative features of TechTool Pro is the eDrive. It's a bootable Mac OS X partition containing TechTool Pro and a small copy of your system that you can use in an emergency or for regular maintenance
• Works with OSX Leopard

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• ASIN: B000294HBM
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 21, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,127 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #59 in Software > Operating Systems > Macintosh
  • #83 in Software > Utilities > Backup

Product Description

Upgrade for TechTool Pro 4 owners. This is the eagerly anticipated Universal Binary version of TechTool Pro that will run on both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs. It fully supports the hardware changes introduced to the Macintosh platform with the introduction of the new MacIntel chipsets. All of the features of the program that were previously available for PowerPC based Macs are available for Intel-based Macs as well. This includes the innovative eDrive (emergency startup partition) feature of the program, found nowhere else. In addition to Universal Binary support, the new release will also include some significant program enhancements, including improved Disk Controller test routines. Unlike most application software, more than a simple re-compile of the program was required to support the new Intel-based Macs. Because TechTool Pro works with the computer hardware at the lowest levels, it was necessary for Micromat to completely re-engineer the software from the ground up. In order to support the new models, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is required to run the program.
TechTool Pro 4.5.1 ships on DVD for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. The DVD will automatically boot the correct system version.
No product comes close to TechTool Pro for ensuring that all of your hardware and software is operating at peak performance. No other software gives you the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your valuable data is protected by the latest technology. With a single mouse click, TechTool Pro can automatically run a series of sophisticated tests that will troubleshoot almost any problem you are having with your Macintosh.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have Utility for Optimization. 2nd tool in my utility toolbox, September 1, 2006

By 

J. Silberman "jsmail951" (Bergen County, New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Micromat TechTool Pro 4.6.1 Diagnostic Utility Macintosh Universal DVD UPGRADE (CD-ROM)

I recommend this product for optimizing any drive and volume structure repairs and much more in conjunction with Disk Warrior for maintaining and repairing the directory and Drive Genius for a complete device (drive) backup. This is a multi-architecture DVD version. It will allow use on all Macs, not just Intel based. I purchased this before my intended macbookpro order. Have not used on Intel based Mac yet. I use it for its improved optimization features mainly.

Lots of great features for testing and maintaining optimized drives. THE ONLY CHOICE for optimization in my opinion. Always backup first. The boot partition feature is a nice feature but I highly recommend using a LaCie or other trusted external drive to boot from and do maintenance. It's just easier, faster, and safer. Not to mention an uninterrupted work flow if you still want to do a few things on your Mac while this process is running.

Before Tiger, I was using Disk Warrior optimization which was a forced thorough but extremely safe optimization. Since Tiger indexing no longer permitted Disk Warrior optimization I moved on to TechTool Pro 4.04. It was great on external drives, but unfortunately not as thorough in pre-optimization scanning as Disk Warrior. I had developed bad blocks on my PowerBook G4 1g 60g drive. So after optimization, it wouldn't boot. Terrifying at the time, I was able to recover almost everything. After Apple sent a replacement hard drive (in warranty replacement 5400rpm) I swapped it for a 7200rpm drive and used the apple drive as a backup in a firewire external enclosure using Drive genius to duplicate the drive. (NEVER USE drive genius for optimization of boot drive, drive will not boot after optimizing) Drive Genius does a great job of volume and device copy or cloning. It is not bad for creating and moving partitions without erasing existing partitions.

Don't use for optimization. Dangerous. Prosoft Data backup provides the best backup/optimization solution. You can optimize and backup at the same time in far less time. Instead of the longer process of moving data around on one drive, copy it to a blank, or reformatted drive. Boot from the other drive and repeat the reformat of your original and start the clone process. You now have a backup and an optimized main drive, awesome. Oh, it does great on all the other kinds of backups and cloning methods that don't involve reformatting. Cloning to existing data allows for minimum amount of backup time due to the choice of adding data that is missing and removing data that is no longer on the source drive. The result it a fast clone that only copies the missing files while removing the ones you removed from the source. The result does result in fragmentation, but that is a secondary matter that is easily corrected by regularly scheduled downtime cloning with the reformat target first approach, and then reversing the procedure to clone back to the original source after reformatting that drive. Really much faster, and safer across the board. I've had no data trouble ever since I stopped using defragment programs, too risky and waste to much time.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars After Norton Utilities crashed my Mac, September 5, 2005

By 

R. Rollman (Indian River, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Micromat TechTool Pro 4.6.1 Diagnostic Utility Macintosh Universal DVD UPGRADE (CD-ROM)

Norton Utilities crashed my Mac and it took about a week to get it back. After that I looked for a utility program for the Mac. I can't say it has performed any restoration because I haven't had any crashes or file corruption. But it has more features than any other disc utility I've seen and the amount of tests it makes is impressive. I have a lot more confidence in it than other utility programs.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Which version is this? The original was dreck . . ., February 5, 2006

By 

Solomon Davidoff "Dr. D." (Allston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Micromat TechTool Pro 4.6.1 Diagnostic Utility Macintosh Universal DVD UPGRADE (CD-ROM)

I understand that there are still some REAL big version issues with Techtool Pro 4 . . . Eeven though the product says it's X compatible, until you get beyond version 4.0.4, it's not Tiger (Mac 10.4) compatible, etc. (I got burned this way - it says it creates a bootable cd, but when you get it home, and opened, it says this won't work with Tiger). Which version is this?