[HM] Re: Disk utilties for X

[Alex]

On Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004, at 22:52 Canada/Eastern, Jane Sprando wrote:

> Speaking of Disk Warrior, other than Tech Tool Pro, I have not bought
> another disk utility for OS x. I can upgrade Norton Utilities or buy 
> Disk
> warrior.

On Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, at 06:15 Canada/Eastern, James Norman wrote:

> [...] you can either leave it to the Unix underlying OS X to do most 
> of the repairs needed if you leave your computer running 24/7. To 
> achieve the same thing and be able to initiate the daily, weekly and 
> monthly routines I use Macaroni (www.atomicbird.com).

That is a misunderstanding. OS X doesn't do any "repairs" by itself, 
even "if you leave your computer running 24/7". It does certain 
maintenance jobs (e.g., rotating logs), but those can't be qualified as 
"repair", and they are not performed when the computer is asleep. It 
does run fsck -- but only at startup time and only if the volume's 
dirty bit is set. As to Macaroni, it does automatically repair 
permissions, but that task is not done by the OS by itself; otherwise, 
Macaroni chiefly allows to run maintenance scripts at the user's 
discretion. (See <http://www.atomicbird.com/faq.html#whatjobs>.)

On Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004, at 22:52 Canada/Eastern, Jane Sprando wrote:

> So ..... which utilities are the most valuable: TechTool Pro, Norton
> utilities, or Disk warrior?

DiskWarrior is probably the most popular; Norton Utils is probably the 
most despised. There are also other utilities (e.g., DiskGuardian); 
which is best for you probably depends on what you wish to accomplish.

> Virus protection: Symantec NAV, Mcafee, or Virex?????

(Keyboard problem? Stuck <?> key?)

Since the grand total of Mac OS X viruses, worms, and trojan horses so 
far is 0 (zero), there can hardly be an empirical assessment of which 
one does a better job. Again, choosing between Norton Antivirus, Virex 
(which is owned by McAfee), or VirusBarrier depends on what you want to 
accomplish. Personally, I couldn't recommend any of these apps on the 
basis of which one is the most "valuable".

f