Drive Genius 2: An Indispensable All-in-One Toolbox

a review by Tom Piper

Confused about which utility would work best to optimize the performance of your hard drive, as well as manage its contents AND maintain its integrity? Want something that even Apple uses at their Genius Bar (part of the ProCare program offered by Apple)? Could you use a whole box of tools for under $100? Drive Genius could well be just the software utility pack for you . . . and version 2 has just been released.

Three years ago I wrote a review on the first version of Drive Genius and concluded with the statement: “This really is a terrific and effective product.” This latest version easily exceeds these qualities, and sets new standards of performance and dependability with a variety of new features.

As their website says . . . Drive Genius has established itself as THE industry standard disk utility for the Mac platform. The new Drive Genius 2 is built upon the same award-winning foundation of the original Drive Genius. Improvements have been made to speed and overall performance in the new version. One of the most noticeable and eye catching changes is the all-new user interface. Drive Genius 2 makes hard maintenance tasks painless, fast and easy.

The icons above represent a new way of selecting the specific tool you need with a range (left to right) including Disk Information, Defrag, Benchtest, Repair, Integrity Check, and Scan . . . click on the green arrow to produce the array below which includes Initialize, Repartition, Duplicate, Shred and Sector Edit . . . the orange counter-clockwise arrow take you back to the top list.

A simple click the Information icon produces an immediate comprehensive report about my main boot drive that is both easy to read as well as detailed in its scope . . . obviously its very full, which makes it even more important to it be maintained in good working order. To answer questions or get assistance about any of the features, a 100-page User Guide is just a click away.

Here is a quick list of just a few of things Drive Genius 2 can do:

Powerful Management Tool

Partition – Add, delete, hide, expand or shrink OS X partitions so you can organize your drive more efficiently.

Shred – Stop prying eyes with DoD compliant (5220.22 - m) secure erase. Removes all traces of data from free space and deleted data on any drive or OS X volume.

Details – 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 computer.

Essential Maintenance Tools

Duplicate – Fast and easy volume or entire drive cloning.

Integrity Check – Find problems before they find you with these comprehensive hardware verification tests.

Repair – Quickly fix corruption and errors to get your damaged drive up and running fast.

Rebuild – Rebuild and replace OS X volume structures to regain access to files that have become lost or hidden.

Verify – Check OS X volume structures for possible corruption.

Fix Permissions – Corrects OS X boot volume permissions to improve application performance and compatibility.

S.M.A.R.T Status – Read and display S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic codes from your hard drive to avoid dangerous hardware failures.

Effective Optimization Tools

Defragment – Get the most speed and efficiency possible by optimizing your hard drive(s).

Benchtest – Make sure your hard drive performance is what it should be with comprehensive speed tests and graphical comparisons to other common configurations.

Surface Scan – Verify your hard drive's reliability with a complete suite of non-destructive read verification tests for any drive or OS X volume.

Sector Editor – Fine tune all aspects of your system with direct, advanced byte viewing and editing of all data on your drives, volumes and files (for expert users only).

System requirements include a DVD drive, Mac OS 10.4.9 or newer, user interface animations require Quartz Extreme support (G4 or newer), minimum 256mb RAM, and at least a 1.0GHz processor. You can even get a free test drive version of Drive Genius 2. A feature-by-feature comparison between Drive Genius, Micromat Techtool 4 and Alsoft Disk Warrior.

This is a highly-recommended collection of hard disk tools that retails for $99.00. Visit the Prosoft Engineering, Inc. website at http://prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius_features.php to learn more, or to purchase this software online. This software is an important component in a whole family of award-winning utilities including Data Rescue II, Data Backup 3, NetWare Client and numerous others. If you want a package that will be helpful, rewarding and satisfying, I believe this is the utility for you.