DiskWarrior 5.3
Alsoft has released DiskWarrior 5.3, extending support from macOS 10.8 Mountain Lion through macOS 13 Ventura when rebuilding Mac OS Extended volumes (in other words, it still doesn’t support APFS volumes). The venerable data repair and recovery tool also now runs on Macs with M1 and M2 processors, no longer requires a kernel extension to operate in macOS 12 Big Sur and later, runs within the Recovery environment on Intel-based Macs in Big Sur and later, supports Dark Mode in macOS 10.15 Catalina and later, and makes numerous updates to keep pace with security and other changes in the latest versions of macOS. ($119.95 new, free update, release notes, macOS 10.8+)
According to the developers of Disk Warrior and others, the reason, that to the best of my knowledge, that no one supports APFS repair is that Apple refuses to provide information to developers that would allow them to provide APFS repair.
I owned and relied on Disk Warrior for MANY years up until it could not work with APSF drives. It was what I considered the “gold standard” for fixing Directory issues. I waited and waited and finally gave up. I have moved on and no longer even think about Disk Warrior. And I have to say I have not encountered a single issue with MacOS in years that cannot be resolved using other tools (Disk Utility, OnyX, CleanMyMac, reinstall, etc.).
I don’t really see the point anymore.
There are still those not on APFS, along with external drives/devices not APFS. Still, one can boot to FSCK, or use DiskUtility to repair container/volumes.
I still keep it on my external MultiOS boot drive, and sometimes repair some externals I have to work with.
Disk Utility seems to do a great job theses days regardless of the format.
I updated to 5.3, but MacUpdater now reports that there is an even newer version 5.3.1, although I can find no evidence of it. A request for info to Alsoft late Friday has not yet been answered.
When I launched 5.3 it informed me that v5.3.1 was available for download, so I clicked the link, submitted the filled out form and the updater downloaded automatically. I successfully updated both the app and my USB drive. I had not been able to update the USB with the previous 5.3 updater.
I can’t say for certain, but it may have been the same form that was used for the 5.3 updater: DiskWarrior 5 Update — ALSOFT.
This will be useful for the many HFS+ volumes that I still have that can now be checked by DW while running Ventura on my M1 MacBook Pro. I also use Techtool Pro and CleanMyMacX as part of the armoury but macOS is now in charge of maintaining APFS volumes and I have had no cause to need any repair so far. Hopefully, those days are gone.
The Mac still needs far too much tending & maintenance for my liking whereas my M1 iPad Pro needs essentially none and is doing more and more of what previously had to be done on the Mac. Hopefully Apple will continue to bring the experience of iPadOS to the Mac in this regard.
Update 2023-02-22: I downloaded the updater to my existing v5 copy of DW and it brought both the app in the Applications folder and the folder on the DW thumb drive to version 5.3.1 in the same operation. You will need to have your license code handy when requesting the updater.
I have run DW over a couple of HFS+ drives connected to the M1 MacBook Pro and all the functions I tried worked nominally including directory optimisation and file tests. Looks good.
Yeah, you were right, it may not say 5.3.1, but it is. Can’t wait for v6; DW has saved my bacon numerous times, especially when that Norton thingy ate disks that were generally considered unrecoverable. DW to the rescue!
Well, I did not bring DiskWarrior over to my computer when I bought my iMac a couple of years ago. Now I have to find where I put the thumb drive in order to reinstall it - but I’m not sure how to reinstall it once I find the thumb drive. Can anyone remember if the thumb drive contained its own system? If it does I wonder if it will boot on the 2019 iMac. I’m putting out an all points bulletin to locate that thumb drive lol.
So glad to have my favorite utility up and running again (soon I hope) but most of my drives are now APFS which I really hate because Disk Utility keeps declaring those drives dead after they’ve been used for a few weeks to months.
So I’m off on a search. . . .
The thumb drive consists of two volumes. The “DiskWarrior Recovery” volume does have it’s own system, but that’s what you use when your internal drive is corrupt and can’t be booted. The “DW” volume contains the DiskWarrior 5 Installer and doesn’t need to be booted.
Good luck with the search.
I’m glad to see Disk Warrior rise from the dead, even if it doesn’t work on AFS-formatted disks. I have updated to the current release.
However, some folks speak of Disk Warrior as an all-encompassing Swiss Army Knife for fixing disk issues. Perhaps, I’m puncturing a strawman here, but Disk Warrior, in fact, does one job very well–it rebuilds the catalog of a disk from scratch by looking at the disk’s contents. Doing that solves many issues related to errors, but not all of them.
Plus, in my opinion, it’s always safest to reformat and restore from a backup than it is to rebuild a catalog from scratch. DiskWarrior was great in the old days for letting you get access to a drive that wasn’t well backed up. But once I’d gotten things working and made a new backup, I’d always reformat and restore.
Sorry so late. Been busy time.
Thanks Al. I found the drive, did the copy of the original to my hard drive and then updated both the computer system file and the thumb drive. Worked perfectly! Thanks for your guidance. I have a ton of drives that will be grateful lol.