Drive Genius 5.0.2
Lucho Bizier
I used COMMAND-I to change the file permission to READ AND WRITE and then used the VI editor in Terminal to "comment out" every line of the file by adding a "#" at the start of each line. Then I wrote out the file.
-can-i-deinstall-drive-genius
Also, again for whatever it's worth, I use an app called Tinker Tool System. It can be found here. It does what I need it to do, for about 15% of the price of Drive Genius:
In circumstances where a file name is lost, the data is still there, but not accessible, Rebuild may be able to list lost file names to the file data again. (Notice to macOS 10.13+ Users: The Repair feature is not supported on APFS)
The Malware Scan searches through files and downloads for known malware. The malware database is updated multiple times a day. In addition to running scans manually, DrivePulse will automatically scan downloaded files. Automatic download scans are only performed for certain well-known locations. Downloads saved outside of these locations will not be scanned automatically.
BootWell creates a special secondary startup drive that can be used to maintain your startup drive. A BootWell Drive is required to use the following tools on your startup drive: Defragment, Repair, Rebuild, Advanced Physical Check, and Whole-Drive Secure Erase. The first initial boot into a BootWell created on macOS 10.11+ may take up to 30 minutes.
Add, delete, hide, expand or shrink OS X partitions so you can organize your Mac hard drive more efficiently. Repartition enables you to manage (shrink, expand, shift, delete, hide, reveal or customize) partitions (volumes) on your hard drives. Unlike traditional methods of backing up, erasing and repartitioning the drive, Drive Genius allows you to expand or shrink partitions without erasing them. (Notice to macOS 10.13+ Users: The Repartition feature is not supported on APFS)
Malware Scan
The Malware Scan searches through files and downloads for known malware. The malware database is updated multiple times a day. In addition to running scans manually, DrivePulse will automatically scan downloaded files. Automatic download scans are only performed for certain well-known locations. Downloads saved outside of these locations will not be scanned automatically.
Repartition*
Add, delete, hide, expand or shrink OS X partitions so you can organize your Mac hard drive more efficiently. Repartition enables you to manage (shrink, expand, shift, delete, hide, reveal or customize) partitions (volumes) on your hard drives. Unlike traditional methods of backing up, erasing and repartitioning the drive, Drive Genius allows you to expand or shrink partitions without erasing them.
Secure Erase
Overwrites all data using one of five secure patterns designed to make data recovery near impossible, it then creates a newly formatted drive or deletes files and folders.
Initialize
The Initialize utility prepares new drives, or erases old drives, for use with macOS. Drives can optionally be initialized for use with Windows / Camera cards or for use with legacy PowerPC Macs.
*Following features are not available to macOS 10.13+ users: The Defragment, Repartition, and Rebuild utilities are not supported on APFS and a Separate Boot Drive is needed to perform Physical Check and Speed Test.
Drive Genius features a comprehensive Malware Scan. Automate your malware protection. Protect your investment from any threat. The Malware Scan is part of the automated DrivePulse utility. DrivePulse monitors your computer from the background for potential hard drive errors, failures, and now viruses. Drive Genius 5 automates the monitoring for you and gives you total control over your hard drive. There are 18 powerful features including Find Duplicates, Repartition, Clone, Secure Erase, Defragment, and more.
There are a variety of safeguards against hardware failures and filesystem corruption, including S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics and filesystem journaling, but even with these options it is still advisable to have a robust drive utility handy to ensure the storage system for your computer is healthy. Apple includes Disk Utility, which is a good start and will help people in most cases, but there are also a variety of third-party options. These include task-specific utilities like S.M.A.R.T. reporters that cover more S.M.A.R.T. features than Apple's Disk Utility (see this recent Mac OSX Hints article for proof of concept) as well as defragmentation tools. There are complete drive management utilities like TechTool Pro, Disk Tools Pro, and Drive Genius, which are all credible and recommended options.
Drive Genius 3 is the latest of the utility suites from Prosoft Engineering, and is considered one of the best drive utilities for the Mac. A single license for personal use costs $99, with a professional license allowing for use on customer- and company-owned drives costing $249. A demo version is available for download for those who wish to try the software out.
What it will do
Drive Genius is an all-in-one utility for diagnosing and fixing errors with your hard drive or other storage media. It will fix corrupt filesystem structure (the HFS+ database files used for tracking data on the drive), scan the media for bad blocks, perform testing, and perform benchmarking on the drive. In addition, it will help you optimize your drive by defragmenting it, removing duplicate and unused files, and continually monitoring the media for any issues that may crop up in the future.
Beyond tasks that will directly diagnose or solve problems, Drive Genius has options to help you manage your drives by repartitioning, volume cloning, and options for initializing and shredding files so you can be sure no data is recoverable when erasing your drive.
What it won't do
While Drive Genius can help fix a variety of problems, there are some tasks it will not do. It will not fix hardware errors. If your drive is failing its S.M.A.R.T. reporting, or is making odd sounds and is not responding (usually coupled with system hangs and crashes), then using a software-based utility will not help. For Drive Genius to perform its tasks, the drive's hardware needs to be running properly.
Drive Genius will also not recover any lost or inadvertently deleted files. There are numerous recovery utilities for this, including Prosoft's Data Rescue utility, which will scan media for evidence of missing files and present you with options to recover them But Drive Genius will not do this.
Drive Genius will not double the speed of your system. If an error is causing your system to lag, then fixing that error may return your speed to normal; however, beyond some small temporary benefits from tasks such as defragmentation, you will not notice any appreciable speed increase by having Drive Genius installed. The only real speed benefit is that running the program regularly will mean you can maintain the current speed of your system by tackling errors sooner rather than later.
As with most drive utility software programs, Drive Genius has a simple interface that is essentially a menu of the available tools. The tools are presented in a semicircular arrangement, with the most common or useful ones presented first, and the rest available if you click the "next" arrow. The interface is animated, so when you mouse-over the tools, they will zoom toward you. This is purely for aesthetic reasons and I found it makes the program a bit harder to use, so I turned it off in the program's preferences.
Beyond the tool layout, the program's window is resizable to a point, though, it does maintain a set aspect ratio so you cannot stretch it along the bottom of your screen or otherwise fit it into odd places. Granted this is trivial, but it seems odd that this restriction is imposed.
Each tool in Drive Genius has its own options, which you set up before clicking the "Start" button, but there are a couple of global settings that are convenient. Along with the option for turning off the animated interface is an e-mail notification setting, which can be exceptionally useful. Some of the tasks in Drive Genius can take a long time to complete and it is recommended you do not use your system during many of them for best results. Therefore, having a notification system can be exceptionally useful. This is a global option and is either on or off, so you cannot apply it selectively to only the routines that tend to take the longest; however, you can easily switch it on at any time in the preferences, even when a routine is running.
A hidden option in Drive Genius 3 are the "Expert Preferences," which can be turned on by holding the Option and Control keys when choosing the program's preferences. These options enable the program to access system files in some of its tools, and allow for orphaned file search when running the "Drive Slim" utility. No major new features are enabled by turning on the expert preferences.
Tools
The tools included in Drive Genius are mostly all you will need to address problems on your drive. The only difference between this and other programs like TechTool Pro and Disk Tools Pro is in the programming, and whether the tool can overcome specific corruption issues. They all perform very similar tasks, though some software packages may have more emphasis on some routines than others. For instance, DiskWarrior is best for directory rebuilding, but not for endurance-testing the drive or benchmarking its performance.
When a tool is selected in Drive Genius, you will see the available drives and filesystem appear on the left-hand side of the window, with indicators as to whether the task can be run on them. If a red stop sign with an exclamation point is presented, then the selected task cannot be run on that filesystem.
7fc3f7cf58