#techtool pro

Last week I started a series on the incredible TechTool Pro 7, which retails for $99 and can be purchased from Micromat Inc. This week I'll begin talking about the tools.

Now, the most important tool is TechTool Protections, and you need to turn that baby on. Why? It's better to catch a problem ahead of time than to take the risk of losing something during data recovery. There are several components to TechTool Protection: Volume Usage lets you know when one of your drives has less than 15% of free space. This is a handy feature because many computer problems are simply the result of nearly full hard drives. The protection feature also makes regular directory backups. This is another great feature because if your directory is damaged during a catastrophic drive failure you have a better chance of recovery.

Trash History gives you a "second chance" if you've emptied the trash and decided that was a bad idea. You can still retrieve the file, provided that something else didn't write over it. SMART Check keeps a regular eye on your drive's SMART registry to ensure that things aren't going amok. If signs of trouble develop, you'll get an alert. You can configure the system to send you an email if any of the aforementioned tools discover trouble. So, while you're vacationing in Cancun, you can get an email saying that your hard drive at home is frying.

The next tool I shall discuss is eDrive, which allows you to create an emergency startup partition containing TechTool Pro on one of your hard drives. The system creates a new partition WITHOUT reformatting the complete drive. Now, I'm not so sure I need eDrive since I make two clone backups each week using SuperDuper. But what the heck -- it would be just one more safety feature, so I am going to try it. Should my normal startup volume ever become corrupted, I know that eDrive will boot me up, and then get me to TechTool so that I can start doing diagnostics and repairs.

Next, let's talk about the Volume Rebuild tool. Volume structures are like big trees and sometimes the branches get lopsided, causing overly complicated data structures and reduced performance. You can increase efficiency by running Volume Rebuild, which creates new structures from scratch. And, of course, if your volume structures are corrupted, this tool can save the day.

Alright, I've rambled enough for this week but there are more tools ahead. I will end my column by stressing the importance of backups. Before you start going crazy with TechTool make sure you've made two clone backups of your hard drive, using either SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, or Carbonite. With any of these tests it's always possible for things to go horribly wrong, and when they do you must be prepared.