Highmac,
I have been successfully running Norton since MacOS 7.1. Yes, various manifestations of Norton can eat your hard disk (version 3.0 was particularly notorious). Early versions of any Norton are suspect - always wait until the early adopters have fried their hard drives and Norton gets updated a few times before you use the final updated version of that particular Norton series. Later versions in a Norton series tend to be pretty solid.
Please note that it is much more important to have a good data backup strategy than it is to have a good disk utility strategy.
That said, a good disk utility strategy might go something like this:
(1) Backup first. Really.
(2) Run Disk Warrior prior to any other disk utilities. Then run other disk utilities to your heart's content - TechTool Pro is good.
(3) Run Norton 6.03 (
Norton 6.03 Update available here) on your machine, if you like.
And you should be fine.
Season the above with rebuilding your desktop, zapping the PRAM, discarding certain preferences that tend to get corrupted, and running an antiviral routine and you should be even finer.
I just do the above every month or so when the new anti-viral definitions come out. Keeps the machines ship shape and Bristol fashion.
Oh - don't forget to back-up. ;-)
Epaminondas
