Customer Reviews

Drive Genius 2

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I received this product yesterday and the version shipped was 2.0.3. I used it on my 1-year old MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.5.4. I had no problems running any of the utilities or booting from the disc. It defragged my drive beautifully (I was honestly surprised at how fragged it was), repaired my permissions, and checked for bad sectors on my hard drive (none - woo hoo!).

For those of you who purchased Drive Genius 2 that is not version 2.0.3, go to Prosoft's website and you can download the latest update for free, as well as get a free bootable disk, if needed. I think a lot of the people who left bad reviews never came back and updated them because the software does automatically check for updates and 2.0.3 was released in June 2008.

My PowerBook G4 has been a very dependable laptop. It has never given me any problems. However, it is four years old, has a limited hard drive capacity, 60 GB, and is slow compared to the new Apple models. After installing Leopard it started taking a long time to boot and was running slow with some programs having a hard time just opening. When I started seeing more and more spinning beach balls I knew it was time to do something.

That something was to run it through a utility program, which found some problems but was unable to correct them as I didn't have enough contiguous space to save even a 200 MB file, and though the program could tell me what was wrong it could not fix it.

What to do? I have two utility programs that I run regularly to keep up with the maintenance of my computers but obviously neither program was doing the defragmenting that was needed.

While searching the internet for a solution I discovered Drive Genius 2 by Prosoft Engineering. Drive Genius 2 is designed for Mac OS X and is the disk utility Apple uses at their Genius Bar to defrag your drive. (Part of the ProCare program offered by Apple.)

Drive Genius 2 contains a collection of tools to maintain, manage and optimize your hard drive. Here are a few of the things Drive Genius 2 can do.

* Analyze, Repair and Rebuild OS X directory information.
* Defragment OS X drives for optimum performance.
* Create high-speed backup clones of most devices.
* Securely erase drives.
* Add, delete or resize partitions without reformatting.
* Long range throughput tests for performance and diagnostics.
* Benchtests for comparing drive performance.
* Surface scanning to test for media faults.
* Low level sector editing for the expert users.

Drive Genius 2 comes on a bootable DVD which allows you to boot from the DVD and work directly on your main hard drive. You can also install the application to work on other internal or external drives.

I began the maintenance and repair session by making a bootable backup of my hard drive just in case something went wrong. I next booted from the DVD. The Drive Genius 2 user interface consists of colorful icons that allow you to choose the specific tool you want to use including Disk Information, Defrag, Benchtest, Repair, Integrity Check and Scan. Proceeding to the next page there are more tool icons including Initialize, Repartition, Duplicate, Shred, and Sector Edit.

I chose the defragmenting tool, selected my hard drive and clicked on start. The user's manual cautions that it will take between 30 minutes and an entire day to complete this process depending on the amount of fragmentation and the speed of your processor. My laptop barely meets the minimum system requirements for this software and it took 48 hours to complete the defragging process. A graphic appears as you begin this process and shows the extent of fragmentation of the hard drive and then another appears when it is finished. Wow, what a difference, the empty spaces were in tiny bits and pieces spread throughout the drive when it began and ended with the filled and empty spaces, respectively, in tight individual sections.

I ran the other repair sequences. Some minor disk structure repairs were done. Then I rebuilt the directory, where some corrections were also made. I ran all the test and repair tools. The tests and comparisons all looked good.

The bottom line - my laptop is back to running smoothly with no more spinning beach balls
and no loss of data.

Prosoft's customer service policy includes replacing a lost DVD or sending an updated DVD for a charge of just $5.00. They also offer unlimited free pre and post technical phone or email support.

There are some tools that are too advanced for me and I will probably never use in this collection of hard disk tools but the major maintenance and repair aspects of the software are well worth the investment. Prosoft suggests using this software to maintain and optimize your hard drive on a regular basis (every two to four months) to prevent major problems. I would recommend giving Drive Genius 2 a trial. A free demo is available to download
[...]

I was incredulous to find that the original copy of Drive Genius 2 that I received would not boot up an Intel Mac. I contacted Prosoft and they sent me not one, but two copies of the new, improved disk, which does work on my computer. Make you get the new improved version if you have an Intel Mac.

Drive Genius 2This is not a very helpful product.My MACBOOK PRO crashed. Drive Genius could not repair the drive or even boot the OS so that I could recover the files from the MAC HD. I then used Tech Tool Pro, was able to recover all my documents and files, then reinstall the operating system. Tech Tool 4 can be booted from a firewire drive, so it is much faster. The Drive Genius disc itself is not the current version, so if you do buy it from Amazon, you have to call the publisher, get a link and then burn a new DVD.

Drive Genius 2 arrived today. I installed it, and used it to check permissions. No problem. I booted from the DG CD, and set it to defrag.
It got to about 35% and signalled "Done." I knew it couldn't be, so I set it again to defrag. It said it couldn't, as the drive is corrupted! Something about an overlap. It now can't mount the boot drive, so the computer won't boot from its hard drive. I booted from the Disk Warrior 4.1 CD, but it was unable to correct the problem. Now I've booted from the TechToolPro 4 CD, but it doesn't look like it's going to work either. Intel iMac 20, OS 10.5 with the latest updates...

Product arrived on time. Packaging is kinda weird -- it's one CD, but comes in a double width DVD case.

Works exactly as expected EXCEPT the disk "cloning" feature will only work if it's not the STARTUP disc being "cloned" -- that's a bit annoying, since freeware applications (such as SuperDuper!) WILL do this. Also, some of the utilities are twins of ones that the OS already provides.

Also, the product has been updated -- update is available from the ProSoft website -- with features which aren't on the CD (the "SlimDrive" option, for example). I'll be figuring out how to create my own boot DVD with this feature, since, like the "cloning" feature, this can only be done on a disk that's NOT the Startup Disk.

Otherwise, it's exactly what I hoped it was -- and, since I'm not INTEL based (yet -- I have a G5 tower) -- I had no compatibility issues, and my system boots from the CD as expected.

One thing -- the software requires a SERIAL NUMBER which comes on a YELLOW sheet inside the double width DVD case. Make sure you keep that somewhere safe -- otherwise, at PRECISELY the moment you really NEED this software, you won't be able to use it.

Cheers!

I was pretty skeptical about using this software after reading the reviews. But I got it from a bundle deal and after the Mac Geniuses uses it so I gave it whirl. After running the part to that identifies files to remove I eliminated 3.5 gigs of space that I wasn't using. It worked great. A week later and I can't detect any problems it caused. I also ran the disc defrag. It also has worked well. I'd say its a great utility to have.

I bought this for my 2.4 ghz Macbook Pro running Leopard. It simply doesn't work. I tried it on an older Macbook Pro. It simply doesn't work. I called Prosoft and they said they know it doesn't work. They'll tell you they will send an email in 2 weeks when the problem is fixed. That was 2 months ago. Now, I called them and they still say the same thing. They basically sell a disk maintenance program that does nothing but lock up your Mac. Stay away. Stay far away.

Oh yeah, they won't take back opened software unless you buy it directly from Prosoft. So by the time you find out that you bought garbage, you're screwed.

Don't be fooled by the pretty screenshots- when it comes to technical prowess, the Disk Warrior team is lightyears ahead. Disk Utility was unable to partition my drive because of a lack of contiguous space. Drive Genius promised to be able to refrag and repartition (since i have plenty of free space available). This was a lie. Drive Genius was unable to resize my partitions, and completely screwed up my disk. It is now unbootable, unmountable, unbackupable. What a disaster.

Installed this product to defrag my HD on my MacBook Pro (OS-X 10), but it didn't work.
Cannot boot it from the CD and ProSoft support told me it's Apple's fault because they haven't provided the files they need to make a boot disk. It also doesn't allow me to select HD and here is the work around ProSoft provided:
"There is also a bug in the Leopard operating system that affects how it reads and writes data to a serial ATA drive, this is why you are seeing the red exclamation marks. That is a safeguard we had to put into Drive Genius to protect your data.

The current workaround for this issue would be to install Drive Genius onto a second Mac computer, connect the two computers together with a firewire cable, boot up the computer with the drive you are intending to manage into Target Disk Mode ( hold down the letter T at system power-on, and keep the T depressed until you see the firewire icon (a Y with a circle in the center) moving around on the screen ). Then you can run Drive Genius and select the drive in the Target Disk computer for
management."

Since the product description didn't say I would need a SECOND computer to use this software, I think it's misrepresented.
I'm returning this useless product...