Drive Genius 3

by ProSoft Engineering

Product Features

• DrivePulse - Monitors the overall health of your drive, alerting you to possible issues before they become major problems.
• Runs as a 64-bit application on Mac OS 10.6 or later with a compatible 64-bit processor.
• Provides even better defragmentation of your files and even more fragmentation information in a new user interface.
• Support for hardware RAID and Apple's software RAID.
• Enhanced Repartition - Add, delete, hide, expand or shrink OS X partitions so you can organize your drive more efficiently.

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B003JZN5KK
• Item model number: 59100
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 29, 2010
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (147 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #7 in Software > Utilities > Backup
  • #74 in Software > The Mac Software Store

Product Description

Is your Mac running slower? Is your hard drive filling up and you don t know why? Are you seeing the beach ball more and more? Try Drive Genius 3 the best hard drive utility on the Mac platform - DrivePulse Defrag DriveSlim Repartition-on-the-fly and Scan are only a few of the award-winning features of Drive Genius 3.  Drive Genius 3 now includes DrivePulse the easiest way to monitor the overall health of your drive. Optimize your drive with Drive Genius 3.  Yes this is the same product used by Apple at the Genius Bar to defrag your drive!Features: Repair - Quickly fix corruption and errors to get your damaged drive up and running fast. Sector Edit  - Fine tune all aspects of your system with direct advanced byte viewing and editing. Information - In-depth report of specifications and space utilization of all drives or OS X volumes. Initialize - Easy high level OS X formatting to prepare new hard drives for use on your Mac. DriveSlim - Free up more space on your hard drive. Benchtests - Comprehensive speed tests and graphical parisons. Shred - Stop prying eyes with DoD pliant (5220.22 - m) secure erase. Removes all traces of data from free space & deleted data on any drive or OS X volume. Clone - Fast and easy volume or entire drive cloning. Integrity Check - Comprehensive hardware verification tests. NEW DrivePulse -  Monitors the overall health of your drive alerting you to possible issues before they bee major problems. NEW 64-bit - Runs as a 64-bit application on Mac OS 10.6 or later with a patible 64-bit processor. NEW Enhanced Defrag - Provides even better defragmentation of your files and even more fragmentation information in a new user interface. NEW RAID Support - Support for hardware RAID and Apple s software RAID. NEW Enhanced Repartition - Add delete hide expand or shrink OS X partitions so you can organize your drive more efficiently. NEW Scan - Realtime bad-bl

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Fully Compatible with i5 and i7 Macs - Overall Great Product June 14, 2010

By S. Fernandez

Just wanted to update the user community that the current shipping version of Drive Genius 3 will not boot from DVD with the newest Macs released after July 2009 including the i5 and i7 laptops. See the excerpt below straight from Prosoft's website. Drive Genius 3 is an excellent product. I have been using DG since version 2. However, much of the functionality is only available when booting from the DVD. Without this ability, the software is very limited. You can monitor your drives, but you can not repair them.

"...At this time, the current boot technology provided by Apple is based off the 10.5.8 operating system and is capable of booting machines released up to June of 2009. Apple has not released a new DDK to help support machines newer than June of 2009, which include i5 and i7 machines. This means the newest machines will be unable to boot from the current Drive Genius 3 DVD until Apple releases the new Disk Development Kit."

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Drive Genius 3 saved the day! June 10, 2010

By D. Everett

I upgraded from Mac Genius 2 to 3, after reading the review in Mac User (26:11).
I got a hard drive corruption warning, not picked up by either Mac Genius 2 or TechTool 5.
Attempts to restart the computer from DVD (either pressing C or ALT) failed, with Mac Genius 3, TechTool Pro 5, original Mac OS installation DVD and a replacement Mac OS DVD from Applecare.
Attempts to backup from Time Machine also failed.
Applecare (second call) recommended returning my iMac for a replacement hard drive.
David at Mac Genius customer service recommended connecting the poorly iMac to my MacBook Pro via firewire (new style, smaller connector), and restarting the iMac in Target disc mode (restart pressing T) and using Mac Genius 3, installed on the MacBook Pro, (Mac Genius 3 has a 3 user agreement), to repair the iMac hard disc.
I am very happy to report that this has worked and the computer runs perfectly, with no warnings.
David explained that the current disc development kit released by Apple, will only allow Macs released before June 2009, to boot from DVD. This issue applies to all developers who use Apple's boot disk technology to run their software, including Alsoft (DiskWarrior) and MicroMat (TechToolPro). Apple has simply mentioned that the latest disk development kit will be released soon, but they have not provided us a release date.
ProSoft Engineering (Mac Genius 3), have put me on the update list to receive the updated version of the DVD boot software as soon as Apple release it.
TechTool Pro 5 contains the option of an e-drive, to restart without using the DVD, however this option was not available because I also run BootCamp. You get an error message if you attempt to set up e-drive on a Mac also running BootCamp....
Applecare didn't appear to be aware of the DVD boot issue and it wasn't mentioned in the Mac User article.
I am very impressed with both this product (Mac Genius 3) and the level of customer service from ProSoft Engineering. Read more ›

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Support May 11, 2010

By Russell Devries

I used the new Drive Genius 3 to defrag my main Mac HD. Had a problem and their support people had it fixed with in hour. I have had Drive Genius for years and this new upgrade is very good and their support is excellent.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars five star products backed up with five star service November 12, 2010

By Mary Hull Webster

I recently bought ProSoft's Data Backup and Drive Genius for the Mac.

I have been unhappy with Apple's Time Machine, since I could not find a way to use it to back up my external hard drive system. Data Backup is very easy and safe to use, as it makes quite clear which source drive is being backed up to which destination drive.

Drive Genius alerted me right away that the hard drive on my Mac Book Pro was so damaged that it should be repaired right away.

I leaned on Jeremy at the ProSoft support desk to email me the steps necessary to create a bootable clone of my broken HD on an external hard drive, erase the MacBook's confused HD completely, load a fresh copy of the OS and effortlessly transfer the cloned copy of all of my files, preferences, applications, libraries, etc. to the new clean drive. When I ran Drive Genius on the repaired drive, I saw that the reintroduced files still held 13% fragmentation, so I defragged the HD by booting up on the software disk. In the end I have a much faster and smooth-running machine with no fragmentation at all, no trips to an Apple Store or loss of my computer for repair--and no fee. Data Backup 3 By Prosoft Engineering]]Drive Genius 3. This took hours of time for all the copying and saves, but I am proud to have been able to fix my own computer!...thanks to the free phone/email support of Jeremy.Drive Genius 3Drive Genius 3

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Defrag can cause problems November 2, 2010

By Randolph Kinney

Amazon Verified Purchase

The reason for purchase of Drive Genius 3 was for the defrag capability and other utilities. I have an iMac with the Intel icore 5, 4 CPUs. Can't boot to the DG3 disk because of a known problem where Apple has not released to developers the code for the core 5 & 7 CPUs for writing a boot sector (according to the tech support at Prosoft). I booted to an external drive to run defrag for my boot drive. During the process of defrag, the internal drive became corrupt with no possible recovery other than a repartition, format of the drive. I run Superduper, a utility that backs up my internal boot drive to my external drive and also makes it bootable. It is a good thing that I had all the internal boot drive's content backed up on the external drive. I used Superduper to restore the internal boot drive. I discovered that this also defrags because the files are written sequentially. I tried to restore from Time Machine by calling Apple for help during my problem. It turns out that using the install DVD with OS X Snow Leopard boots but the Time Machine retore operation stops part way through the restore after rebooting to the internal boot drive. I suspect the reason is because there is no operating system on the internal hard drive during the restore process.

Bottom line, I feel the best way to defrag safely is to have a program like Superduper where erasing and reformat of the internal boot drive from the external back up drive and then a restore. That produces zero percent fragmentation.