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It took me longer than I care to admit to realize I had forgotten to include the forward slash before Volumes. It's important that to enter that command exactly: add a space or lose a slash and DiskWarrior won't launch. You must boot into the Recovery partition (you hold down the R key), launch the Terminal (from the Utilities menu), and enter a command into the prompt (/Volumes/DW/go). Since Apple released its Recovery partition (with OS X 10.7), the process has become more complicated. (You can also create your own using a 2GB flash drive.) If your system is running OS 10.6 or earlier (preinstalled on Macs prior to 2011), you can boot directly off the drive by holding down the Option key. Now that Apple has largely jettisoned disk drives, Alsoft ships the utility on a flash drive. If a disk is mechanically failing, DiskWarrior lets you repair your Mac's directory and back up its data before you replace the drive. Repairing a directory can make files and partitions reappear, improve performance, and even recoup disk space.

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(Opens in a new window) Read Our CleverFiles Disk Drill Pro (for Mac) Review Given that a directory contains millions of data points, the process is simpler in theory than practice. Unlike other utilities that attempt to repair problems in the existing directory, DiskWarrior creates a new directory.

DiskWarrior rebuilds that file system using existing data.

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Defective RAM, power glitches, and poorly-written software can throw that table of contents into disorder.ДЄs a senior Alsoft technician explained it, Apple's file system (HFS+) is a complicated animal. DiskWarrior is designed to scan, maintain, and repair the directory, which you can think of as a table of contents. In the current version, the method has changed, but not the aim. Reviewing a previous version of the utility, we described DiskWarrior as almost singularly focused on rebuilding damaged directories. Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions.В ( Read our editorial mission (Opens in a new window) & see how we test everything we review (Opens in a new window).) While Prosoft Data Rescue 4 ($99.00 at Prosoft) (Opens in a new window) can scan disks to recover lost or deleted files, DiskWarrior is unrivaled in its ability to repair and rebuild the Mac directory. That includes utilities from Apple, whose Disk Utility may be suitable for basic maintenance and partition, but remains ill-prepared to repair badly damaged directories that result in kernel panics and boot failures. While Alsoft has updated the utility and adopted flash storage over the past 18 years, DiskWarrior continues to perform maintenance and recovery tasks that no other utility can do. I've been using the $119 DiskWarrior to perform routine maintenance and to resurrect defunct Macs since it shipped on a CD. In fact, Alsoft DiskWarrior is one of the best utilities you can buy for your Mac. Today, the utility is no less useful for a swivel-neck iMac or a MacBook with a solid-state drive (SSD). In fact, that isn't entirely true: Apple once bundled the third-party utility with AppleCare.

The OS X Recovery partition complicates booting into the utility.ДЄlsoft DiskWarrior is the data recovery software that Apple forgot to include.