DiskTools Pro 3.8.3

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Gentlefolk ....

I bought my MacBook in July, 2007, and two weeks ago the third HDD died; i.e., it's now running on its fourth HDD in about 5.5 years. I'm a little antsy!

Today I received an offer (from MacUpdate) to buy the normally 80$ DiskTools Pro 3.8.3 application for 20$,

Is it worth having this program in my toolkit? That is, is it worth being able to do defragmentation, scan and repair bad sectors, create bootable backups, and such?
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By the way, below the message entry-box I'm now typing in, I'm requested to "Send Trackbacks to" ... pray tell: what are "Trackbacks"? And what is the "Random Question" for?
 
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Hello ros5e,

I wouldn't spend any more money, instead try and take some more care with your machine.
All the tools to maintain your Mac are on the machine and we can help you with advice in that respect if you want it :)

How are you using it ? Do you transport the thing regularly whilst the machine is still turned on by any chance, do you power down regularly without using 'Shut Down' ?
 
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Hello ros5e,

I wouldn't spend any more money, instead try and take some more care with your machine.
All the tools to maintain your Mac are on the machine and we can help you with advice in that respect if you want it :)

How are you using it ? Do you transport the thing regularly whilst the machine is still turned on by any chance, do you power down regularly without using 'Shut Down' ?
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Hi, Pendlewitch! Thanks ... I'll save my 20$.

I use my MacBook as a desktop computer driving a large, external monitor. I move it twice a year when I make the Colorado/Germany 6-month emigration.

I cut two wine-bottle corks in half to make four cylindrical spacers, each 1" high. The MacBook sits on them so I have a 1" ventilation space under it at all times. Measuring temperatures with iStat Pro dashboard app, right now it's reading HDD: 34ºC, CPU: 62ºC, Heatsinks A & B: 58ºC each.

At night, I do not shut the machine down; I put it to sleep so all my interrupted work will still be on the screen when I wake the MacBook up in the morning.

I reboot it about once a week, and I do that with a restart; I do not power it down. I turn the computer off with Shut Down... before I have to move it. The ONLY time I'll power the computer down using the On/Off button is when the system totally locks up.

For what it's worth, my background is Electrical Engineering, and I've developed a healthy respect for hardware so I don't knowingly mistreat my MacBook.

Processsor: 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
New HDD: 500 GB Seagate
 
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No probs ros5e all seems in order apart from I like to power down everything completely and disconnect everything once in a while.

When you say things are locking up, I take it that this is the spinning pinwheel you are experiencing.

Here are a few things that you could do to start if you haven't already..

Run 'Repair Disk Permissions' on your HDD in Applications>Disk Utility when it's over shutdown and reboot or restart.

Whilst in Disk Utility check how much available free space there is on your HDD. I work on a minimum of 20% headroom but some work on 15%. If your HDD is getting full then it's gonna slow things up no question so you need to be thinking about an archiving strategy.

Go to Finder>Desktop and on the menu bar click File>Get Info...if you have shedloads of Mb's on your desktop it's going to slow things up so move them off...all mine reside in my 'Home' folder as an example. A clean desktop is the best one.

Download a free app called Onyx Download OnyX for Mac - Maintenance and optimization tool. MacUpdate.com Run the app, let it do the SMART verification first and run the prescribed fixes as listed in the 'Automation' tab.

Let's see if that helps any and report back if you can.

The serious issues for you would be making a back up and a bootable back up. I would recommend two external HDD's, one for a Time Machine backup Mac Basics: Time Machine and one for a bootable backup using a proprietary software such as Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner (I think Super Duper might have a free one)
 
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I *do* get the spinning pinwheel sometimes ... mostly when Safari is loading a new tab. Once or twice, I got the pinwheel when the system locked up — but not always! As I recall, there was no pinwheel when the HD went belly-up two weeks ago. The screen went black, and the piggy just started clicking.

Using Disk Utility:
Repaired Disk Permissions: made ~ 100 repairs.
Verified Disk: Macintosh HD appeared to be Ok.
HD: Capacity: 499.76 GB → 75.4% unused
Available: 376.89 GB
Used: 122.86
Files: 1,116,000
Folders: 169,810

OnyX: Downloaded/installed ver. 2.4.0 since I'm using OS X 10.6.8
SMART check showed everything Ok.
Verified the HD: Macintosh HD appeared to be Ok.

My Desktop: Had 18 items on it weighing a total of 2 MB.
Cleaned house. Now have 4 items worth 98 KB

Backups: I have a Platinum 500 GB external HD that's always connected to the MacBook, and Time Machine does a backup every hour ... unless I override, and do a Back Up Now. When my HD went south two weeks ago, I'd done the last backup at 22:30 the night before. I didn't lose a single file!

I've never made a bootable backup. What would be the benefit of doing this when I have my Snow Leopard ver. 10.6.0 DVD that I use when building a new internal HD? I'm ignorant about bootable backups. If there *is* a benefit beyond what I'm doing now, I'll go off and get the software you recommended. How often do *you* make a bootable backup?

I've just now finished the tasks you recommended, and will let you know if I notice an improvement in performance after I've had time to work with the machine.

You're being really helpful, Pendlewitch, I'm learning a lot, and appreciate all the help you're giving!
 
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Ok that's good information. Bear in mind that this is a new HDD so you're not likely to see any benefit except initially.

Good to see you are using TM and bootable backups are not to everybody's preference it's just you mentioned them in your OP.

My question would be, were you doing any of this over the last 5.5 years because your machine needs regular maintenance (though not to the point of OCD)?

A new HDD every 14 months is mind boggling however so I think that there is something else going on here.

How do you use your machine and have you got a high res on that large external monitor? How hot is your GPU getting and why did you feel the need to stand the Mac on corks initially?
 

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