Disk Drill Pro On Sale

Hey Nick... I believe the power cycle count is a bit deceiving. It looks like it counts the sleep - wake cycle of the hard drive as a power cycle. This machine was purchased around Thanksgiving last November and it shows 1122 power cycle counts. No way I turned it off and on that many times! As a matter of fact now that I think about it, that's way too many sleep - wake cycles also. I wonder what it's really counting?

chscag said:

Hey Nick... I believe the power cycle count is a bit deceiving. It looks like it counts the sleep - wake cycle of the hard drive as a power cycle. This machine was purchased around Thanksgiving last November and it shows 1122 power cycle counts.

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Are you talking about your iMac? I always wondered about this number too.

I'm on an iMac now as well…and my uptime hours are 19557…and Power Cycle Count of 5631. If I do the math with my numbers (19557/5631)…I get 3.47 hours/cycle count.

So my theory is:

- the power cycle count is like a battery cycle on a laptop. But…3.47 hours/cycle count would seem sort of short for a full battery cycle. Plus…I'm on an iMac…so a battery cycle count would make any sense on a desktop computer.

- Or…maybe it means (on my iMac)…the computer was used 3.47 hours (on average) before it was put to sleep or shutdown.

But like you said (theory #2)…I have a 2009 iMac (approx. 5 full years of use)…which equals 1825 days.

- So 19557 uptime hours divided by 1825 days = 10.72 hours of uptime/day.
- And…5631 Power cycle count divided by 1825 days = 3.09 sleep/shutdowns per day.

I think that my iMac was a store demo computer…that's why the numbers are so high.

- Store was owner #1 (demo)
- previous owner was owner #2
- I'm owner #3

But like you said…a little confusing.

I guess we could "read the manual" (Disk Drill)…and maybe it explains things.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Sorry John. I didn't know when you would be able to reply…and wanted David to get his answer as soon as possible.

Since you have an SSD…you were probably a better person to answer the question.

Since I don't have an SSD…what does Disk Drill say for "SSD wear level" (how does it indicate wear…hours, percent, etc.)?

Thanks,

- Nick

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No worries, you have always been faster than me on here! LOL

It shows it in a percentage. I have a PM830 in my Mac Mini and it shows 94% after 5621 hours and 80 power cycles.

chscag said:

It looks like it counts the sleep - wake cycle of the hard drive as a power cycle. This machine was purchased around Thanksgiving last November and it shows 1122 power cycle counts.

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If I do the math on your numbers….your computer has approx. 4 full months of ownership (give or take). So roughly 120 days of use (30 x 4). 1122 power cycle counts divided by 120 = 9.35 sleep/shutdown cycles per day.

Is this possible?? If you are at your computer most of the day (everyday)…does it usually go to sleep quickly if you walk away from it? I'm just thinking out loud to see if we can explain these numbers.

But again…maybe we should read the manual.

- Nick

p.s. Hey just had an idea. Disk Drill is a storage device monitoring program. Counting power cycles does make sense (especially on a spinning HD)…since the more "cold starts" an HD has…the more wear & tear on it. And the more wear & tear an HD has…the sooner it is theoretically to fail (thus good to have file recovery software installed). Or so Disk Drill and others would want us to do.

1122 power cycle counts divided by 120 = 9.35 sleep/shutdown cycles per day.

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Yeah, now that I think about it, 9 or 10 sleep - wake cycles a day is reasonable. I keep the iMac on all day and reboot maybe once a week. However, I walk away or do something else and the machine goes to sleep by itself. But you're right, we probably should RTM.

chscag said:

But you're right, we probably should RTM.

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Ha ha. But then that would take all the fun/mystery out of guessing!

- Nick

Thanks guys, got it now - SMART monitoring was unticked ...

Yes, the wear level is a very nice, if somewhat worrying, addition to already useful bunch of data: at first glance, I saw: SSD wear level - 98% and panicked momentarily until I looked at the second SSD, which read 100% lol

BTW, DiskDrill complained about MacFUSE being an old version, but upon checking it appears the project has been canned ...

You can also find your disk attributes without having Disk Drill run resident (which I am not doing) by opening it up, click on the Extras button next to the drive/partition- select Get Info - in the new window select 'Check all Smart Attributes'.

$9.94 AUD Thanks Nick. Like others I have + Data Rescue 3 and now ill give this a whirl . . .
Nice pick up. 1940hrs AWST

bobtomay said:

You can also find your disk attributes without having Disk Drill run resident (which I am not doing) by opening it up, click on the Extras button - select Get Info - in the new window select 'Check all Smart Attributes'.

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Yes, I too do not need constant SMART monitoring, nor do I like to see colour icons in the menu bar for longer than necessary so I click 'Temporarily stop SMART monitoring' before quitting DiskDrill and all is fine.

Still getting the popup about outdated MacFUSE though?

The deal is still on as of 11 a.m. EST Saturday. Thanks for the heads up on this.

Nine bucks??? NICE! The deal is still on if you use the discount code mentioned earlier. I did a brief test of this software some time back when comparing to MacKeeper (see this post) and though I didn't go so far as to actually recover anything due to the payment requirement, Disk Drill did demonstrate satisfactorily that it CAN do so. This is an amazing deal and it'd be pretty much crazy to not jump on this.

This is an amazing deal and it'd be pretty much crazy to not jump on this.

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Yep. I now have two powerful tools in my recovery arsenal: Data Rescue 3 which I purchased on sale as part of bundle and now Disk Drill Pro. Hoping of course that I never have to use either one.... ;D

lifeisabeach said:

Nine bucks??? NICE!

This is an amazing deal and it'd be pretty much crazy to not jump on this.

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Great to hear in your investigations...that you didn't find any serious issues with Disk Drill! I would hate to have mentioned this deal...and the app turned out to be junk!

Glad to hear it gets the lifeisabeach "Stamp of Approval"!!!

- Nick

p.s. Congrats to everyone else who got in on the great deal so far!

Discount code still working as of 21.00 UK time.

Many thanks for the heads up ...

Cheers

Hugh

I learned that this deal yesterday from this thread. By the time I got there, they said that the deal expired. I gave up. Thanks to reading this thread again this morning I discovered this morning that the code still works. I managed to get in on the deal as well. Thanks guys.

Hey Nick...I'll bet CleverFiles will freak out when they see the "after hours" sales of their app. If it is not up to snuff now, once they see they response of the alpha Mac guys they will make sure it delivers. Thanks again.

Dogbreath said:

Hey Nick...I'll bet CleverFiles will freak out when they see the "after hours" sales of their app. If it is not up to snuff now, once they see they response of the alpha Mac guys they will make sure it delivers. Thanks again.

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I was sort of thinking the same thing. Maybe more Mac-Forums members took advantage of the deal than mentioned in this thread...so CleverFiles certainly may have have a busier than normal weekend. Of course at $9.00 a pop!

But who knows...if folks like the app...CleverFiles may win out in the end when folks upgrade to the next version (they just "hooked us" in at $9.00 this time)!

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

I
But who knows...if folks like the app...CleverFiles may win out in the end when folks upgrade to the next version (they just "hooked us" in at $9.00 this time)!

- Nick

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They have surely hooked me in now.

I just scanned the Original 750GB HDD I have in my MBP, (SSD in Optical Drive is my Boot Drive) and got unbelievable results. I ended up wiping the 750GB and use it solely as my Data Drive with all Apps on the SSD.

Did a scan, and it came back with 1.57TB worth of Data, Movies, TV Shows, Music, and so on. I originally had my iTunes Library on here, before getting the iMac, but I did a test and recovered a 7.3GB file while I watched it in the Preview window. Now thats impressive, and as I said, has won me over big time.
As to Data Rescue 3, the same scan, took 4x as long, and didn't bring up the same files.

If I do have 1 gripe, and that's that DDP doesn't give you the name of the file that it has found, and when you have 4K+ of images in 1 scan, you would really, really, really, really want to get it back to want to go through all those files to get back 'that' image lol

I will do over the coming week, a comprehensive look into both scans and see what one has over the other, and do a write up on them.

TattooedMac said:

If I do have 1 gripe, and that's that DDP doesn't give you the name of the file that it has found, and when you have 4K+ of images in 1 scan, you would really, really, really, really want to get it back to want to go through all those files to get back 'that' image lol

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Yeah, but that's to be expected. It's only in cases of very recent deletions where the name is recoverable and even then, I'm rather surprised it is recoverable. Pretend you have a library of books, and you've removed the dust covers and stripped any reference to their title. To find that book, you have a card catalogue sorted by name, and that card tells you where on the shelf that book is. Now... throw away the card. The book is still on the shelf, but "nameless" and hard to find. That's what happens when you delete a file. You "throw away the card" when you delete a file, but the file technically exists until the space it occupies is overwritten. At least. that's my understanding on a very simplistic level.