Disk utility for Mac? Other utilities?

[jyl]

Mac gurus - is there a need for a disk utility other than the built in Disk Utility that comes with Sierra?

More generally, what are your must-have utilities for Mac?

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by jyl

More generally, what are your must-have utilities for Mac?

A good sewer connection is becoming increasingly important. I used to be an Apple fanboy, but boy are they slipping in Cupertino.

[stomachmonkey]

Disk utility is fine for drive tasks.

Not much else you need to do as the OS handle fragmentation for you.

For command line stuff I prefer iTerm over the stock terminal

Grab a couple of compression apps to deal with stuff like rar files. 7zx, keka, unrarx,

Clamavx is handy but recently went from open source to paid.

Spamsieve for Bayesian mail filtering, paid app but worth every penny.

[id10t]

X server (for X11, so I can ssh to my Linux boxes and start a real desktop environment)

[RKDinOKC]

I use Drive Genius. Have had drives crater in the past. This monitors drives in the background and lets you know when they need attention before it gets too late. It also lets me know when they can be optimized defragging them. Which has only been needed on a backup drive that gets a lot of large mail stores. And yes despite the OS, the others still get fragmented but not enough to worry about. Using Drive Genius more of a preventative thing though and never actually needed it for the last 4 years. Just have it for peice of mind because it is much easier to fix things before they actually break.

Used to use other stuff but just haven't needed it.

Run my own Kerio mail server and use hosted Canit for anti-virus/anti-spam for the server accounts and have been amazed. Maybe one or two spams a month, and same for false positives. No need for anything else on email clients. Host email and web sites at ZipBang.Com - Email Hosting Service.

Best thing to do is keep backups! Best backup is use two external drives one for time machine and the other for bootable backups using something like Carbon Copy Cloner. Apple's time machine wireless routers while convenient for wireless backup of laptops seem to die after a year or so, Very inconvenient. Replace my Mac Mini servers every few years and use an old one to run Server and set it up with an external drive for a network Time Machine server. Do the same thing with another mac mini and have an external drive for bootable backup of each machine on my network so if something goes horribly wrong can just plug in the corresponding external drive and go.

[winders]

Originally Posted by RKDinOKC

Best thing to do is keep backups! Best backup is use two external drives one for time machine and the other for bootable backups using something like Carbon Copy Cloner.

^ This!

I have done this for years and years and it has saved my bacon a few times. No need for any type of RAID setup when doing this.

[jyl]

I forgot to mention that I've switched every mac in the house to ssd. No hard drives in them. I do still have usb hard drives for backup (backup is time machine to one USB drive + weekly clone to another + BackBlaze to cloud).

Does that change the disk utility recommendation?

[winders]

I do a daily clone using CCC along with Time Machine.

You don't need any third-party disk utilities.

[Jesset100]

Onyx all in one maintenance utility

[winders]

Originally Posted by Jesset100

Onyx all in one maintenance utility

Not needed and I have heard reports of it causing problems.

[Charles Freeborn]

I used Disk Warrior for years. It rescued me from many a disaster by rebuilding the directories. If your MAC doesn't have a DVD drive you'll have to figure out a boot device.

[jyl]

I have a boot USB stick with Yosemite. Need to update that to Sierra.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by jyl

I have a boot USB stick with Yosemite. Need to update that to Sierra.

Keep it, make a new one.

Never know when you may need an old install.

Like when Adobe pushes an update that's incompatible with the OSX update that came out 2 days before which means your only option to get crap working again is to roll back the OS which you can only do by wiping the boot drive or by buying a new HD to install the older OS on so you can keep all your other stuff till Adobe fixes what they broke.

Not that I would have any experience with that?

[RKDinOKC]

Just remember the first 3 of the 10 Comandments of computers.

1. Computers are fun.
2. Easy is hard. If something is easy to do someone worked hard to make it that way.
3. 1, 2, 3 many Backups!

Haven't needed or used Disk Warrior in a long time. What I typically have problems with any more is drive hardware failure. Hence the backups.