Disk Warrior

[Johanbgoot]

Good morning,

Yesterday I was reminded to run Disk Warrior.  I have 3.0 as I am using 10.3.9. I ran Onyx (automation) first, so permissions were repaired, the scripts were run and the drive was completely optomized. DW loaded properly, and the graph showed 8% of files out of order, so I decided to rebuild as it usually does not take more than about 45 minutes.  It ran smoothly til it reached step 5 (collecting directory data) and then it appeared to stall, after an hour my son came and asked to use the computer so I cancelled DW.  This morning I loaded DW and again it appeared to stall at step 5.  As I had some shopping to do I let it run, well 3 hours later I returned to find that it was almost finished step 9 (checking files). DW finished and I rebuilt the directory and all seems well.  I am curious as to why it would take so long this time, would it be because my son has recently upgraded iTunes and Quicktime?
Any comments would help my curiosity, as in all the years (9) I have run DW it has never done this before.

Johan

[FLASH1296]

Disk Warrior 4.0 is MUCH improved.

Why you are running an old operating system with an old utility is not something that I will waste keystrokes on.

You NEVER interrupt a process like directory repair or optimization.

You are lucky that you were capable of repair following that; and that is why it took so long - you SEVERELY corrupted (damaged) the disk directory.

[krissel]

Not everyone has the latest and greatest and should not be criticized for that.

Why the initial scan was taking so long is hard to say. It could have something to do with the recent upgrades but most likely other issues as noted in the quotes below. If your drive is very large it takes longer of course.

Here are some quotes from Alsoft's site:

QUOTE

There are several issues that factor into the amount of time needed to run DiskWarrior.

If the disk has overlapped files, bad blocks, or the machine has low RAM, the time required to rebuild the directory could be longer than normal.

The size of the directory, the number files on the disk, the amount of memory in the computer, and the speed of the hard disk also effect the time frame for rebuilding the directory.

QUOTE

As long as the mouse cursor still moves during step 5, then the computer did not hang or freeze. DiskWarrior is still working on reading the directory of the disk.

Such slowdowns are usually the result of having bad blocks on the media. DiskWarrior is having trouble reading data from the locations on disk where the directory structures are stored.

You will also notice that an error count is kept at the end of the message. This feedback allows you to see that DiskWarrior is still working on reading data from the drive.

NOTE: This count does not increase at a regualr interval as disk errors are not distributed evenly across a drive.

Please let DiskWarrior run for as long as it takes. This can take quite a few hours but should eventually complete. On rare occasions, it might even be necessary to run this for a day or two.

Since the "speed reduced by disk malfunction" message indicates hardware-related issues, you will need to backup your files from the DiskWarrior Preview window (accessed from the DiskWarrior Report window) to another hard drive. Once you have a backup of your files, you will need to install a new hard drive to replace the damaged hard drive.

[Johanbgoot]

To Krissel,

Thanks for the information it was most helpful, as was the personal message I received from another member.

To Flash1296,

Your reply was neither helpful nor warranted, Step 5 in DW 3.0 has a cancel button, so I could not do any damage.  You need to re-read my post and work on your forum etiquette, you were rude.

[beacher]

'Nuff said, and NO "yelling"!

[Xairbusdriver]

As I understand it, DW has built-in safe guards against corruption in its repair activities. I've heard that it first creates a duplicate of whatever it wants to move/repair before making the actual repairs. That is probably why it can take longer than expected on a rather full drive and why it can have a "Cancel" button available. Obviously, one would not want to "Force Quit" any utility that might be writing to disk if a provided "Cancel" button works.