DiskWarrior ™ Alsoft, Inc. PO Box 927 Spring, TX 77383 Sales: 281-353-4090, Fax: 281-353-9868 E-Mail: Sales.Info@Alsoft.com Support: 281-353-1510 E-Mail: Tech.Support@Alsoft.com World Wide Web: www.Alsoft.
Copyright This manual and the software described in it are copyrighted with all rights reserved. Under the copyright laws, this manual or the software may not be copied, in whole or part, without written consent of Alsoft, Inc., except in the normal use of the software or to make a backup copy. The same proprietary and copyright notices must be affixed to any permitted copies as were affixed to the original. This exception does not allow copies to be made for others, whether or not sold to another person.
DiskWarrior Credits DiskWarrior written by Al Dion Rusty Little Steve Clarner Brian Webster Manual written by Al Dion Stephanie Jones Rusty Little Joe Muscara Ron Davis : iii
Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Welcome to DiskWarrior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Alsoft, the Utility Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 What Is DiskWarrior? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 What Is the Directory? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
About DiskWarrior’s Directory Optimization Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Graphing a Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Understanding the Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Using DiskWarrior’s File Checking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Using DiskWarrior’s Hardware Monitoring . . . . .
Chapter 1 Introduction
Welcome to DiskWarrior Alsoft, the Utility Company At Alsoft, we have been writing software for Mac OS computers since 1984. We are a Macintosh only software company whose expertise is in providing powerful, useful and safe utilities that enhance the user experience while maintaining the ease-of-use Macintosh owners have come to expect. Some of these utilities include DiskExpress®, MasterJuggler®, PlusMaker™, and PlusOptimizer™.
This approach has a significant advantage that other utilities overlook. Other products attempt to repair your directory one step at a time, ignoring the big picture of what is truly wrong with your directory and risking file information that could be saved. Too often, they will incorrectly begin to “repair” your directory, then give up when they realize they have modified the directory to an irreparable state.
not updated at all, that directory is considered damaged. This damage is normally limited to only a specific area of the directory. Therefore, it’s quite common for directory damage to remain undetected until long after the damage actually occurred. Also, if any portion of the directory is overwritten by an errant program that inadvertently writes its own data, the directory is damaged.
When Should I Rebuild My Directory with DiskWarrior? Obviously, you should run DiskWarrior when you suspect that there is directory damage on one of your disks. Directory damage can result in the disk not mounting (not appearing on the Desktop when the computer is started), missing files or folders, or crashes when files are used. You will also find DiskWarrior useful when another program reports directory damage. The best use of DiskWarrior is for preventative maintenance of your disks.
Why Alsoft DiskWarrior Is the Only Answer When you use DiskWarrior to rebuild your directory, it focuses on what you care most about on your disk -- your data as it is stored in your files. DiskWarrior rebuilds your directory based upon the data it finds in the original directory. If you have journaling enabled, the journal file may also be used. DiskWarrior then uses this information to build an entirely new replacement directory structure.
inspect in Preview. DiskWarrior’s patented Preview feature lets you examine your disk as it will appear after the directory is rebuilt, but before any directory changes are written to disk. You can use the results of the comparison shown in the DiskWarrior Report to find out which files and folders you should inspect first because they may have been affected by directory damage. This assures you that you will get the expected results before any changes are made permanent.
DiskWarrior can be used to activate internal diagnostics that are built into disk devices to help determine if a drive is in danger of physical malfunction. These tests can be executed manually, or you can choose to have the tests run automatically every day, week or month. DiskWarrior also provides several notification options should the diagnostics report a problem.
Basic Terms You Need To Know This section explains some terms and concepts used throughout this manual. Application An application is a tool your computer uses to manipulate information and perform a useful function for you. Applications include such products as AppleWorks, iTunes, or Mail. Block The physical surface of a disk is comprised of many 512 byte storage areas called physical blocks. The larger the disk, the greater the number of physical blocks on the disk.
Disk A disk is the medium on which information is stored. There are many types of disks including floppy disks, hard disks (like the one that is probably inside your Mac OS computer), and removable disks. A disk must be initialized before it can be used. Document A document is a type of file you create with an application. Documents include the information you enter, modify, view, or save to a disk.
Partition Apple’s Disk Utility application allows you to divide a disk into parts with appear as additional disks called partitions. There is also third party software which allows you to partition a disk. Partition Map The partition map is a section of the disk that contains the information for each partition on the disk. Most Mac OS disks are set up as one partition, but if you set up your disk as multiple partitions, each partition will behave as a separate disk.
Wrapper Volume An HFS Plus volume may be contained within an HFS volume (wrapper volume) in a way that makes the volume look like an HFS volume to systems without HFS Plus support. Embedding an HFS Plus volume within an HFS volume also allows a Mac OS computer to start up from an HFS Plus volume if it has built-in support for HFS but not HFS Plus.
Chapter 2 Using DiskWarrior
Installation of DiskWarrior Requirements DiskWarrior supports any Mac OS Standard (HFS) or Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) disk including RAIDs, journaled disks, case-sensitive disks, FileVaults and iPods. DiskWarrior requires a G3 Mac or better (such as a G4, G5 or Intel Core-Duo) with built-in FireWire and a minimum 256 MB RAM (512 MB recommended) to startup and run from the DiskWarrior disc. To install, your must be started from Mac OS X v. 10.3.9 or later.
Be sure to register your purchase If you received DiskWarrior on a Disc, then you should perform the following steps: 1) Note your DiskWarrior serial number on the Disc label. 2) Completely fill out the product registration card and mail it to Alsoft. Be sure to include the serial number. You can also register your product on the Web at . If you received DiskWarrior electronically, you can register your software on the Web at
installing DiskWarrior. Installing from the DiskWarrior Disc: 1) Insert the DiskWarrior Disc into your Disc drive. 2) Select the DiskWarrior icon found in the Disc window and drag it to your hard disk. Alsoft recommends that DiskWarrior reside in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder. 3) To run DiskWarrior from your hard disk, simply double-click the DiskWarrior icon. In order to run DiskWarrior, your computer must be started from Mac OS X v. 10.3.9 or later.
bypassing the normal Finder Desktop. To open an installed copy of DiskWarrior, double-click the DiskWarrior icon located in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder. Quitting DiskWarrior To quit the DiskWarrior application, choose Quit from the DiskWarrior menu. This closes the DiskWarrior application window, but any automatic DiskWarrior features you have enabled will still take place.
Running DiskWarrior Rebuilding Your HFS and HFS Plus Disks You will find DiskWarrior extremely easy to use. You will start by selecting a disk, clicking Rebuild, and then waiting a few moments for the DiskWarrior Report. Then you will view the Report, making note of the problems that were found and repaired anything that DiskWarrior recommends to you. At this point, you should preview the rebuilt disk, checking if any files or folders you may have lost have been recovered.
Note: To ensure that no files are open on your disk, start up from the DiskWarrior Disc. 3) Double-click the DiskWarrior application This will start DiskWarrior. If the DiskWarrior Disc is your Startup Disk, then the DiskWarrior application will open, bypassing the normal Finder Desktop. If this is the first time you have run DiskWarrior, and you are not running the application from the DiskWarrior Disc, you will be presented with several dialogs. Read each carefully and respond appropriately to each.
4) Select the disk to be rebuilt from the disks pop-up menu If you have problems finding the disk whose directory you want to rebuild, refer to Problem: The disk I want to rebuild does not appear in the Disks Pop-up menu. on page 50, "Chapter 3: Troubleshooting and Error Messages." If any users on a drive use Apple’s FileVault to protect their data, the popup menu of available drives will also contain these FileVaults.
If the DiskWarrior Disc is the startup disk: • Clicking Preview will cause the DiskWarrior Preview Window to open. The left pane of the DiskWarrior Preview Window will show the contents of your disk in its original state, displayed with its original icon. The right pane of the DiskWarrior Preview Window will show the contents of the Preview disk.
9) If the DiskWarrior Disc is not the startup disk, make sure you close all files and folders and quit any applications you have tested in the previous step before proceeding You do not need to stop the Preview before proceeding, but you may if you wish. Note: If the disk you have selected is locked, you will be able to Preview the replacement directory but you will not be able to write the new directory to the disk.
13) If you have started your Mac OS computer from a disk besides your normal startup disk (such as the DiskWarrior Disc), select “Restart” from the Apple menu to resume running from your normal startup disk If the DiskWarrior Disc is the startup disk, quitting the application will cause your computer to restart. What to Look for in the DiskWarrior Report After the rebuild has been completed, DiskWarrior will show you a DiskWarrior Report.
What to Look for During Preview When DiskWarrior presents the Preview disk, you have the opportunity to check and test the disk as it will appear after it is rebuilt. You can see if files and folders that you lost have been recovered. You can also inspect the files and folders listed in the DiskWarrior Report. Previewing When the DiskWarrior Disc Is the Startup Disk If the DiskWarrior Disc is the startup disk, clicking Preview will cause the DiskWarrior Preview to open.
that had an entry in an inaccessible portion of the directory. If any of the files or folders whose enclosing folder could not be found are part of a software package, you may need to create enclosing folders with the correct names and locations after you have rebuilt your disk so that the software that uses these files works correctly, or you may need to reinstall the software package. The files that had an entry in an inaccessible portion of the directory may have been lost or thrown away.
Warning: If you have copied files to a FireWire disk and did not eject the disk after copying files in the DiskWarrior Preview Window, do not unplug the drive until after your machine has finished restarting and you eject the disk in the Finder. When you have finished with the DiskWarrior Preview Window, return to the DiskWarrior Report window and choose either Rebuild or Cancel.
If you are still missing files while the Preview disk is mounted, you can use the Finder’s searching capabilities to search the Preview drive. Remember that you may need to look for items that are “invisible” in the Finder. In the event critical items you wish to recover remain missing during the Preview, it is recommended you do not replace the directory. Since the directory information for the missing items was overwritten or deleted, DiskWarrior could not recover these items.
Advanced Options Some new options have been added to DiskWarrior to help replace the directory of your Disc. If you hold down the Option key, the Rebuild button with change to Rebuild… Clicking this button will bring up a sheet with additional options. Scavenge Directory While rebuilding your directory, DiskWarrior will attempt to determine if it needs to perform a scavenge operation to find missing files.
DiskWarrior Shortcuts - AppleScripting and Drag and Drop Now that you fully understand the steps required to rebuild your disks with DiskWarrior, there are two other methods you can use to rebuild your Discs. However, you should be aware of the following two caveats: 1. Make sure that you have entered in your registration information as described in step 3) Double-click the DiskWarrior application on page 24 in this chapter. 2.
Strategies for Rebuilding with DiskWarrior Caution: If you suspect there is directory damage on your disk, it is recommended that you run DiskWarrior before other disk repair utilities. Other disk repair utilities may render the directory damage irreparable even to DiskWarrior. As you have seen in the previous section, DiskWarrior shows you your rebuilt disk before finalizing the repairs. This allows you to preview what your rebuilt disk will look like before you decide to finalize the rebuild.
Other times you may be unable to startup your computer or login to your User account, but DiskWarrior reports no problems with your directory. This is often caused by corrupt files, and DiskWarrior’s file tools may be able to fix or detect problems. For more information refer to Using DiskWarrior’s File Checking on page 43 in this chapter. Using DiskWarrior to Recover Data from Malfunctioning Disks Occasionally, due to a mechanical malfunction, a disk becomes unusable.
other utility did not write over it. Refer to the Advanced Options on page 33 in this chapter This is the same scavenge procedure DiskWarrior uses to recover your data when it finds directory errors, but it normally skips the scavenge procedure when the directory has no major errors.
Graphing a Disk Directory DiskWarrior allows you to create a graph that indicates the degree the directory is internally fragmented. This graph visually shows you the number of fragments and the distance each fragment is out of place. Rebuilding your directory with DiskWarrior optimizes your directory. Other programs don't provide the true directory optimization provided by DiskWarrior.
1 will now link to node 4 and node 4 will now link to node 2. This causes the nodes to be out of order. The links indicate the order in which the nodes are to be read. Following the links you visit all of the nodes and items in the correct order. However, to follow the links, you will have to jump from node 1 to node 4 then back to node 2 and then to node 3 (Figure 2-5). As more items are added to the directory, this process of splitting is repeated and the nodes are increasingly out of order.
Figure 2-6 Optimizing defragments and removes unnecessary nodes. About DiskWarrior’s Directory Optimization Graph DiskWarrior’s Directory Optimization Graph creates an optimization graph that indicates the degree the directory is internally fragmented. It doesn't just indicate the number of fragments. You can visually determine the number of fragments and the distance each fragment is out of place.
4) Click the Graph button. A progress dialog will appear and, after a brief delay, it will be replaced with a window containing the graph. Note: In order to graph a disk, your display will need to be set to thousands of colors. If it is not, you will be shown a message that will ask if you want DiskWarrior to change this display setting. Then, when you close the graph window, DiskWarrior will return your display setting to its previous setting.
Figure 2-7 Graph of a typical hard disk before optimization. Figure 2-8 Graph of the same disk after optimization, nodes are packed and in order.
Using DiskWarrior’s File Checking Click the Files icon in the DiskWarrior application to run tests on the files of disks and to repair User permissions on your startup drive. From the Files tab you can select a volume from the popup menu and perform either or both of the file checking options Repair Disk Permissions In Mac OS X files must have the correct User permissions in order to run without problems.
box will cause this repair to happen. Repair Disk Permissions can only be performed on a volume that has MacOS X installed on it. Check All Files & Folders Sometimes the internal structure of special files can become corrupt. Under MacOS X, preference files, a well as many other data files, share a special format. If this format becomes corrupt other parts of the OS will be unable to read these files or will read incorrect data, causing bad system behavior.
Using DiskWarrior’s Hardware Monitoring Click the hardware icon in the DiskWarrior application to manually activate DiskWarrior’s hardware monitoring, to set the frequency of the testing, and to set how DiskWarrior notifies you if it detects a problem. Note: DiskWarrior’s hardware monitoring will only work on internal ATA drives with builtin S.M.A.R.T. capabilities. Select either the manual or automatic diagnostics tab. Check this box to have DiskWarrior automatically test your drives for malfunction.
About DiskWarrior’s Hardware Monitoring DiskWarrior’s hardware monitoring capability uses internal diagnostic routines built into hard drive devices by their manufacturers to detect and track how often a drive exceeds its operating tolerances. The more frequently the drive exceeds these tolerances, the more likely the drive is to experience hardware malfunction, and the more at risk any data on that drive becomes.
Automatic Diagnostics You can also configure DiskWarrior to run the hardware monitoring automatically. If you choose to have DiskWarrior automatically check your drives, DiskWarrior will install a small program in your Login Items. The program checks periodically to see if it should activate. The program requires very little system resources and virtually no CPU time. It neither reads nor modifies any data from any disk.
Figure 2-10 The E-mail Configuration Window You may have e-mail sent via either SMTP or sendmail. If you choose sendmail, you will need only to specify the recipients and the subject of the e-mail notification. If you wish to enter two or more e-mail addresses, separate each address with a comma. Note: In order to specify sendmail as your e-mail delivery method, you will need to configure your system to use sendmail. It is not configured by default.
Chapter 3 Troubleshooting and Error Messages
Troubleshooting Note: Be sure to read the document “DiskWarrior Read Me”. Last minute changes to the documentation are detailed there. ❏ Problem: The disk I want to rebuild does not appear in the Disks Pop-up menu. DiskWarrior cannot rebuild a disk that is not HFS or HFS Plus (Mac OS Standard or Mac OS Extended). The disk to be rebuilt must be locally connected, must not be write protected, and must have a valid partition map. ❏ Problem: DiskWarrior tells me that the disk to be rebuilt is locked.
❏ Problem: My Mac OS computer “hangs” during the rebuild (pointer moves when the mouse is moved, but there is no reaction when I click anywhere on the screen). If your Macintosh hangs during the operation of DiskWarrior, this could be caused by hardware or software problems with a hard disk or a problem with the SCSI, USB, or FireWire chain. Make sure the disk drivers are the current versions for the operating system running on your computer.
Disk Status Messages These messages appear in the main window and describe the status of the selected disk. ❏ Directory is ready to be rebuilt. Click Rebuild to rebuild the selected disk. ❏ Directory cannot be rebuilt because this is the startup disk. Your startup disk is the disk containing the current System folder. The selected disk is the startup disk. To rebuild this disk, refer to Rebuilding Your HFS and HFS Plus Disks on page 23, "Chapter 2: Using DiskWarrior.
❏ Rebuilding was canceled. ❏ Rebuilding was stopped because of an error (error number). ❏ Directory cannot be rebuilt because of a problem communicating with this disk (error number, error number). This status message indicates that DiskWarrior was unable to access this disk. This could be evidence of a bad block on the disk, a hardware defect, or problems with termination or cabling. ❏ Directory is ready to be previewed. This disk is locked. The directory cannot be replaced, but the disk can be previewed.