Clean up your Mac with DriveSlim

Spring cleaning with Drive Genius 3 is a great way to get your Mac running smoothly and prevent further drive issues from becoming a bigger problem.  DriveSlim™ is a great tool to help recover drive space by deleting or archiving large, duplicate, or unused files. Through DriveSlim’s various slimming plans, Drive Genius 3 will detect and recommend files that can be deleted from your system to help free space on your hard drive. DriveSlim™ can help you determine what files can be deleted when your hard drive gets near its full capacity. DriveSlim™ works only on user files.
These are the types of files that DriveSlim will focus on and find.:
Large Files: Finds files that are greater than a set minimum size and have not been accessed in a period of time you specify. The detected minimum size can be from 5MB to 100MB. The period of time can be 0 to 365 days.

Duplicate Files: Finds any files that are greater than a set minimum size that have duplicates. The detected minimum size can be 0MB to 100MB. You have an option to replace any duplicates with an alias pointing to the original file.

Unused Localizations: Finds all localized resources for any applications and allows you to specify what languages you want to keep. This will help delete any unnecessary language files from your applications. You can select any other languages to be kept by marking the selected language.

Universal Binaries: A Universal Binary is a container for multiple application binaries, each optimized for a specific CPU. For any given application, there are up to 4 possible binaries in one file (Intel, Intel 64-bit, Power PC, PowerPC 64-bit), which your machine uses to run the application. Intel-based Macs do not need PowerPC binaries, and vice versa. DriveSlim detects and deletes any unnecessary binaries that your computer hardware cannot run. If you are using a 32-bit system, you can choose to keep 64-bit binaries by enabling “Keep 64-bit variants” in the Slim Options. If you are using a 64-bit system on Mac OS X 10.6 or greater, you can choose to keep 32-bit binaries by enabling “Keep 32-bit variants”. At least one option must be enabled (64-bit or 32-bit).

Cache/Temporary Items: Finds all cached and temporary files that have not been accessed in a period of time you specify. The period of time can be set from 1 to 31 days.

Drive Genius 3's Defrag Feature

Should you defrag your Mac ? I speak to many Mac users that often ask, “Do I really need to defrag my hard drive on my Mac” and I always tell them “absolutely”. The benefits include faster seek times to access files, quicker boot times and over time it reduces wear on the drive because the read/write heads do not need to travel as much across the media when searching for a file.

Now, to address Apple’s view and look at this debate objectively I did a little searching on their support site and found that they have archived this support article in 2010. If you read down through the main bullet points of this document you quickly realize that it refers to Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3 Panther. One could assume that referencing file fragmentation and those older operating systems
Apple cant be addressing todays modern Intel based Macs and hard drives. The article continues and touches on “Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering”. However this primarily helps with slow growing files, which back then were much smaller in size as well as the capacities of the drives. Apple also mentions read-ahead and write-behind caching would reduce the perceived system performance and again this is during that time era when files were simply not the sizes of what most users and professionals deal with today.

In other web searches I found Wikipedia mentioning HFS Plus was introduced in 1998 to accommodate larger drive size drives among other aging features that HFS did not support. A number of optimizations were needed to the allocation algorithms to attempt to defrag files while they are being accessed without a separate defragmenter tool.
These optimizations helped and decreased fragmentation of smaller files overall from previous file system versions but ultimately never eliminated the potential of fragmentation altogether. If your volume becomes fragmented, the only way to truly defragment your drive is to use a 3rd party utility such as Drive Genius 3 or or to wipe the hard drive completely and install the system from scratch. Backing up a complete drive and then formatting it and restoring files is simply not a convenient way to do this on a regular basis.

The Defrag feature in Drive Genius 3 reorganizes the fragmented pieces of all files and compacts their content into one contiguous block for faster access times. Reorganizing the files into one continuous block improves access time for the file to be opened. Compacting the files allows new files to be written onto the hard drive without data fragmentation.
As you can see the screen shot below of Drive Genius 3 ‘s defragmentation map viewing the “FIle Fragmentation” of a Mac OS X Lion Mac HD, there are several files that are 25KB, 34KB 24KB, 28KB in size. This would indicate that the HFS plus file system is not defragmenting all smaller files as one would expect and is in direct contrast to the rumors that state otherwise. In the next screen shot the volume is 6% fragmented(0.9% of total space) and does not need to be defragmented, however this Lion installation is only 2 weeks old. If you visualize reasonable file access over time you can easily conclude that file fragmentation occurs frequently and often.
In conclusion, please note that my research is not scientific and I am simply attempting to address that file and volume fragmentation occurs and it is compounded with the larger files and drives we use today on a modern Mac. Apple’s Disk Utility is an excellent operating system utility however, its missing a “defragmentation” tool.

Drive Genius 3 includes the popular defrag tool, used by many IT professionals, videographers , photographers and thousands of happy customers around the world. The degrag tool is one of many features that make Drive Genius 3 a complete hard drive maintenance tool. For more information visit Prosoft’s website http://www.prosofteng.com/ or call our technical support team for details.  (925) 426-6306.

Using Drive Genius 3 to create a dual boot Mac

With Apple on its heels of releasing Mountain Lion this summer I thought I would revisit volume cloning with Drive Genius 3’s “ Duplicate “ feature. This may sound trivial but before you upgrade to Mountain Lion I highly recommend backing up your existing Lion install and preserve it by making a bootable clone of it. During the release of Lion last year, I recall a good number of users purchasing Data Rescue 3 to recover their User folders documents , images , Movies, Mail and Audio after a failed attempt of a Lion upgrade. This can happen and it does, but the difference is when you have a bootable clone of your existing Mac OSX you can easily try another attempt to upgrade rather than have to reload Snow Leopard or Lion. If you find that your main applications or a good percentage of them are not updated but you still want to get on board with Lion or Mountain Lion when its released ,you can use Drive Genius 3 and repartition your drive and add an additional volume to run a “ Dual Boot Mac “.

The benefits of clone backups before upgrading and operating system can be enormous. Having a clone back and possibly running a dual boot Mac with A copy of your previous OSX on it allows you to migrate to the new OSX over time or incrementally. At one point you will find some apps that may not work with the new operating system and either not launch or work properly. This is another example where a dual boot Mac can be highly beneficial until complete support is available with your new OSX and your previous installed software.

You can use Drive Genius 3 ‘s“ Repartition” and “ Duplicate “ tools to create a extra volume on your Mac HD, then clone your existing Mac OSX to the newly added volume. by following theses “How-to guides”.

Resizing your drive / volume and adding an additional partition

Using Duplicate to clone your Drive or Volume: how to guide

Drive Genius 3 has many uses and features to optimize and maintain your digital files. By utilizing the Shred, Scan and Initialize features, you can thoroughly test drives for bad blocks, as well as reformat and shred existing drives with previous data on them.

Zeroing out your drives can be especially important before installing drives into a RAID array where each and every component drive plays a part in the overall performance and reliability of the array.
Determination of a particular drive issue cannot be accomplished without breaking the array down and testing each component separately. And in the event of a performance problem – breaking the array down and testing each individual drive by zeroing it out is probably the best possible stress test before important data is stored on it.

Shredding a volume or drive will permanently remove all data. After the operation, a newly initialized HFS+ partition will appear on the desktop.
When shredding a volume, you may choose to shred the unused space by enabling Free Space Only. This will skip any active files and overwrite the free space of the drive to prevent previous files from being found.
To Shred a Drive or Volume:
Launch Drive Genius 3.
Click on the green arrow.
Click on the Shred icon.
Select the volume or drive you want to shred.
Select the Shred Strength for erasing the volume or drive.
Click on the Start button to proceed.

Checking for bad blocks on a drive before adding them into a RAID array is very important and shouldn’t be overlooked. This test is especially helpful to test the physical performance of the hard drive if you have experienced a slow down in accessing data. If you suspect you have multiple bad blocks that are re-occurring you may want to run a extended scan as a stress-test. If the extended scan can’t complete and resolve all the bad bad blocks you may conclude the drive is unreliable and taken out of the RAID set.
Extended Scan will verify the read and write ability of every sector on the hard drive. Unlike Spare Bad Blocks, which only writes for any found bad blocks, Extended Scan will read from every block and write the data back onto the same block to force the hard drive to reallocate any data from bad blocks. Enabling Extended Scan will greatly increase the time needed to complete the scan.


Drive Genius 3 – Spare Bad Blocks How to guide

Using Drive Genius 3 to pretest drives for RAID setup.

The growing need for data recovery

. Trillions of files go missing every year and most of the victims will search for some way to recover their data. Missing computer data causes emotional trauma, financial disaster and major inconveniences. We offer excellent data recovery software choices on our Prosoft Engineering website, such as Data Rescue 3 for Mac and Data Rescue PC3 for Windows®.

Today I want to clear up some common misconceptions concerning hard drive data recovery and recovery software. Additionally, I want to give you some quick tools to use when choosing a recovery program. Let’s begin with a quick overview of data loss. Files disappear in various ways:

· Accidental deletion is a common way files become lost. Formatting a hard drive or media card causes a mass exodus of data; even so, these files can often be retrieved.
· Logical drive failure is another way that computer files can go missing. This is normally caused by an operating system file corruption issue, or a computer virus or hacker attack.
· When an electrical, electronic or mechanical component of the drive has failed, the data on the drive is not accessible.

The first two cases are often solved by using recovery software. Physical drive failure recoveries are performed by recovery engineers in a professional lab.

Be wary of recovery software that touts itself as free. It’s often a demo version or a limited edition. You may be asked to purchase the full version to actually recover your files. A software company should offer a demo version so you can try before you buy; however, they need to be forthright about it.

Additionally, a bootable disk provides a non-destructive environment for recovery. Our software includes that in the price. However, some companies only offer it as an add-on for an additional fee.

Data Recovery on a Mac without a bootable hard drive

Over the last year, Apple has sped up the time interval between launching new operating systems. We saw Lion launch without a bootable DVD and now this summer Mountain Lion is scheduled to release and it will be a download from the App Store once again. In addition, last year’s Mac minis lost their optical drive and the new MacBook Pros are rumored to shed theirs as well.

With this in mind, we’d like to give some tips on how to perform data recovery on a Mac without already having a bootable hard drive at your disposal.

An efficient way to back your Mac up is to create a bootable clone backup. Clone backups offer a great way to easily restore your system, access files that may been deleted or boot from when a hard drive fails or is in some other way inoperable.

In a perfect world, having a clone backup when disaster strikes is ideal, but what happens when you don’t have a clone backup on a on a new Mac that supports Lion internet recovery ? This is where it gets tricky to a degree and most users don’t realize it until they have to deal with it. If your Mac fails to boot because of operating system errors , file system corruption, or minor mechanical failures you may be in for a eye opening, learning experience. To simplify this process we recommend using our Drive Genius 3 How-to guides to create a clone of your Mac now, before disaster strikes.

Prosoft recommends purchasing Drive Genius 3 and Data Rescue 3 to handle any hard drive maintenance or dataloss situation. Both of these apps can be very instrumental in the time of need and assist you in a pinch. Even if you don’t own either application, check out our How-to guides below and create a bootable clone of your drive. You will need an additional hard drive with adequate space to make a clone of your main boot drive

Drive Genius 3 How-to guides

Creating a bootable clone
Create a Lion Startup Disk

DrivePulse™ - a great feature of Drive Genius 3.

A great Drive Genius 3 feature that just doesn’t get as much credit as it should is DrivePulse. DrivePulse™, a utility to automatically monitor the health of your hard drives and volumes from the comfort of your desktop. DrivePulse™ will check for fragmentation, volume errors, and physical issues on your hard drives. This is a low resource process that will quickly test your hard drives when the computer is idle. When DrivePulse™ is on, the DrivePulse™ icon will appear in the top menu bar to quickly view the status of any connected hard drives or volumes. DrivePulse™ will notify you with a prompt if there are any issues with your hard drives. If you are experiencing S.M.A.R.T. Status problems, large amounts of fragmentation, or issues with your volume catalog, a prompt will inform you to take action on your hard drive. DrivePulse runs two distinct, fast tests once per day, and another test once per week– The daily tests take only 10-20 seconds each and are run only once per day, when the computer is idle. If you return to the computer during a test, it is suspended. You will not see any performance change due to these discreet tests being run. The weekly test follows the same rules, ensuring no system performance changes while running. The weekly test only takes a few seconds as well-

Since this feature was introduced in Drive Genius 3, there have been numerous examples provided by customers

that mention how DrivePulse helped save their data before a failure.
In one case, DrivePulse alerted a customer that their Time Capsule had multiple bad blocks on it and they were able to get a replacement from Apple right before the warranty expired. Drive Genius 3 does not support Time Capsule , however DrivePulse was able to at detect the issue and alert the customer before a failure or dataloss occurred. Drive Genius 3 can be a great way to maintain, optimize and prevent many drive issues before they impact your data.

Permanently erase files with Drive Genius's Shred Feature

A easily overlooked feature of Drive Genius 3 is the Shred feature. Yes, your Mac OSX has a secure erase feature built-in, but when you need to shred a single document or image this is faster and safer. Using the Shred feature you can zero out an entire drive or volume or just individual folders and files. Here is an excellent example how easy it is, a few months back I was updating my Passport information for renewal and had to scan my existing passport and email it out. After the scan was finished, I wanted to make sure to delete the scanned passport photo but I didn’t want to zero out my free space on my drive because of time constraints. Since Drive Genius 3 was installed all I had to do was right click on the image file and select from the menu below and it shredded the one single file only. This is a great way to securely erase files on the fly when the scenario calls for it. Keep in mind that shredded files are not recoverable in almost all cases. Just be careful which files you are shredding beforehand, as there is no going back if you make a mistake.

Drive Genius 3’s Shred function is used for securely erasing the contents of a volume or the whole drive. There are many reasons to perform a shredding operation instead of simply dragging the files into the trash. For example:
To avoid identity theft and protect your credit.
Stop intellectual property theft.
Permanently get rid of your data files so no one can recover them.
Permanently delete any software that you are not going to be using on your new machine since software licenses usually only apply to one computer.
Most Government/large corporations require the drives to be securely erased before disposing or transferring to other users
The only secure way to erase your drive is by overwriting the previous data patterns. Drive Genius 3 has been written to conform to the United States Department of Defense.

Did your PC crash?

It is inevitable that files on a Windows-based PC will be lost occasionally. There are several things that can be done to recover them, from simple actions to more complex solutions. The first thing a user should do – and many fail to perform this simple step – is to check the recycle bin. Many times the file has been accidently deleted and can be found there. Additionally, files may have been accidently moved during a drag and drop scenario. Use the desktop search function to find these files.

Even so, there are times that a file cannot be so easily recovered and file recovery software must be used. Data Rescue PC3 is a powerful solution when hard disk data recovery must be performed. The software will recover hard drive files safely, even if the computer will not boot into the operating system. The software is used as an application when installed on the computer. It will search the drive for the missing data and give the user results that include the probability of success.

If the hard drive will not boot, the installation disk doubles as an emergency boot disk. A special operating system included on the disk will run the computer, bypassing the operating system. This allows the software to scan the drive for the missing files and recover them to a secondary drive, an external drive or other media. By not allowing recovered files to be saved back to the main drive, Data Rescue PC3 ensures that they will not be overwritten.

SD cards can be a cheap and convenient way to backup your Mac. With most current Mac laptops shipping with built-in SD card slots, you can quickly add a storage device that doesn’t take up a lot of space or weight in your laptop bag.

Lots of cool flash drives to choose from

Currently you can buy high capacity SD media for around a $1.00 a GB. Which means for around $65.00 you can have a 64 GB storage device attached to your Mac at all times for backing up important docs and pictures. I wouldn’t say this would be your only backup strategy, but for users who simply do not backup on a regular basis, this is a relatively cheap and easy way to start backing up with minimal investment. You may even have an extra SD card in a desk drawer that could be used. The advantage of an SD card over the USB devices is its simplicity and the fact its tucked away and always attached. If you storage device is not connected to your Mac on a regular basis, chances are your not backing up often or as much as you should.

You can also use these storage devices as a Mac startup disk device using Data Backup 3 or by installing Snow Leopard or Lion directly to them. This is a great way to create a recovery , diagnostics utility in case you have to run repairs on your internal hard drive. Once you load Mac OS X on the SD Card you can install other useful applications like Data Rescue 3 for emergency recovery or Drive Genius 3 to keep your internal drive optimized at all times.

The next time you see a great deal on a 32GB or 64GB SD card, consider buying one for a preventive maintenance project that could save your docs, iPhoto or iTunes content and Apple Mail someday.

Prosoft Engineering Support offers free How-to’s for creating a clone backup and installing Lion onto an external hard drive with step by step instructions.

Data Backup 3 bootable Clone instructions

Creating a Drive Genius 3 Lion Startup Disk