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MacFixIt Extras

Troubleshooting TechTool Pro 2 March 30, 1998

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Here are the details of reported problems with TechTool Pro 2. Bear in mind that not all of these problems have been definitely confirmed. Some may yet turn out to be false alarms. Corruption of drives after running TechTool Pro 2; HDT-formatted drives seem especially vulnerable; HFS Standard causes more problems than HFS Plus?; MicroMat releases TechTool Pro 2.0.2 to fix HDT problem John Paul writes that his initial experience with TechTool Pro 2 was good. In particular, the Finder Info test detected and repaired problems overlooked by both Disk First Aid and Norton Disk Doctor. "However, 6 of the 13 drives examined caused TechTool to report an error in the File Structures test. Unfortunately, I let TechTool repair the first drive that exhibited this problem. Booted from the CD-ROM, TechTool froze in the middle of a critical file rebuild that irreparably corrupted the drive." A low-level format was required to resurrect the drive. The drive had been formatted with Hard Disk ToolKit 2.5. When he reformatted the drive with Drive Setup, the problem completely vanished. Also, when TechTool was used in Expert mode, the File Structures problem was not reported, even on an HDT formatted drive. Another reader reports a similar HDT-related problem: TechTool Pro 2.0 incorrectly diagnosed HDT 2.5 formatted drives as having errors, especially on partitioned drives. In particular, "TechTool Pro's Volumes Structures test was run in verify-only mode. It found an error in one of the partitions (invalid header block) and then it unmounted it. When I tried to remount it, the drive was corrupted. Norton was able to fix it." The error reoccurred even after reformatting the drive. However, if he reformatted the drive with Drive Setup 1.4, everything worked fine. [Note: I do not know if these problems still occur with the new HDT 2.5.2.] However, David Slattery writes of a similar problem that extends beyond HDT: "Using TechTool Pro 2's Volume Structure test (in Standard or Expert mode) on an HFS Standard drive, I consistently get a message that the drive has an "Invalid Leaf Node," a problem not detected by Norton Utilities or Disk First Aid. Any attempt to have TechTool repair this problem resulted in a unusable drive. The only way I could recover is to reinitialize the drive." The problem reoccurred whether he used Hard Disk Toolkit or Drive Setup to reformat the drive. Bob Armstrong reports that TechTool Pro corrupted an HFS Standard formatted drive when it tried to repair the drive for a "bad header files" problem. He reformatted the drive (still as HFS Standard) using Drive Setup 1.4. When he retested the drive with TechTool Pro, the problem remained. However, after reformatting the drive again as HFS Plus, TechTool Pro reported no problems. This fits with David Slattery's report above: the problems he reported happened with HFS Standard, but not HFS Plus, formatted drives. Patrick Ruhsert reported similar problems. Jeff Baudin, of MicroMat, replies: "An incompatibility between TechTool Pro 2.0.1 and FWB HDT disk drivers has been discovered. This could render some FWB formatted volumes unusable. Problem Description It appears that in certain partition schemes, the FWB formatter used allocation sizes for which TechTool Pro 2.0.1 was not calculating correctly . This would result in the creation of an invalid master directory block. This problem only occurred when the user utilized the Volume Structure test and repair portion of the program. None of the other TechTool Pro tests are affected by this problem. Problem Conditions There were three conditions necessary to reproduce this problem: * Drive must be formatted with FWB driver. * Drive must be over one gig. * Drive must have 1 or more small partitions. Problem Resolution We first became aware of this problem on Thursday morning, March 26th. At that point we stopped shipping and production to verify the problem. By Friday afternoon, we corrected the routine that caused the problem. Furthermore, we created a reverse-calculation routine that would correct a volume affected by this problem. This was extensively tested over the weekend and the GM of 2.0.2 was created Sunday night. On Monday, March 30th we will begin shipping (via overnight delivery) new CDs with v2.0.2 to users who were previously shipped version 2.0.1. As most of our orders were shipped via surface delivery, some users may be surprised to receive a replacement disk before the actual package arrives." Hard Drive Mechanism test of a RAM Disk causes crash Greg Earle reports that if you run TechTool Pro 2.0.1's Drive "Hard Drive Mechanism" test in Standard mode, you will get a Type 12 crash if and when it tests a RAM disk. "The work-around, of course, is simply to un-check the 'Hard Drive Mechanism" test or use Expert mode." Greg otherwise described TechTool Pro 2 as "an amazing program." Jeff Baudin, of MicroMat, confirms that this is a likely bug and they are working on a fix (as part of a more general maintenance update). It should be out soon. He adds: "There is an alternate fix. Instead of disabling that test, you can select which volumes are to be tested under the Drive Select... menu. Simply unchecking that 'drive' on this window would allow one to run that test on all other drives without attempting the test on the RAM disk." FPU test glitch? Another reader complimented TechTool Pro 2.0's "spiffy" interface, but was "surprised to see that my Performa 476 passed the FPU test, when in point of fact it hasn't got an FPU." MicroMat replies: "That panel has always been like that. We explain in the manual that if the machine does not have a separate FPU, those tests will be executed by the CPU. I should get something on screen though to make that more clear, since I've heard this from many people and it's obviously confusing. On the next interface revamp, we'll probably just call that panel "Math Tests." TechTool Pro 2 misses "volume bitmap" errors Frans van der Geest reports that Disk First Aid and Norton Disk Doctor both reported "volume bitmap" problems on two drives. Tech Tool Pro reported "no errors" for either drive. Minor glitch with Virex Reader Luke writes: "When Virex 5.8 and TechTool Pro 2.0.1 are both installed, running TTP will throw up a Virex dialog box asking you to 'Pick a file, folder, or volume to scan.' If you cancel the dialog, TTP runs and seems to behave normally. Good news On the other side of the fence, I have gotten several glowing reports for TechTool Pro 2. For example, Ketan Michael Vakil writes: "TechTool Pro 2.0 is well worth the price. I absent-mindedly forgot I had an HFS+ drive, and ran Norton on it!! The drive fell apart, it wouldn't even mount. Norton tech support tried to fix it w/ their method, and it did not work. They said the files were gone, no way to recover them, and to reformat the drive. That's when I bought TTP 2.0, and it fixed the drive in a couple quick easy minutes! Great software!"

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