Forget the boot disc mate - just boot from an external drive containing DG, then you can do everything you want.... including still use email/web while long tasks are running.... I have boot discs for v2 and 3, never used one ever...

Hi Decay29 -

As bluehour73 stated, you can boot from a different startup-disk or make one if you don't have one.
Here is a link on how to do it for free using our Data Backup3 :
http://www.prosofteng.com/support/drivegenius3-bootable-clone.php

Bundled deals like MU's don't always include the exact offering in a retail packaging.
In addition you are getting applications that cost much more than retail pricing.
Vendors like our selves our selling our products at a greatly reduce price.
Our application may be only costing you $15.00 or less. Overall and even after purchasing our boot DVD for $7.50
your still only paying 22.50 roughly for an app that normally sells for $99.00.

Also, MU provides a demo / bundle download for your to try and view all the applications before you purchase them.

I made it even simpler. I used Carbon Copy Cloner. A couple of hours later, I had a clone of my boot drive. Done and done. It would be nice if there was some notice that the bundle version is not the "full retail" version. That is misleading at best.

Re: Prosoft - That's why it's called a "DEAL". The way I see it you are hoping we will try it and presumably like it and then give you nice reviews. Essentially promoting the product.
Misleading is a pretty polite way of putting it. Frankly, I'm glad I did not buy the bundle because your app is the only one I wanted to try. So it would have been a rip-off if I had made that mistake. From the consumer's point of view these bundles have a lot of fluff that we'll probably never use. Frankly I bought Techtool at full price used it a couple of times then forgot about it. When I actually needed it, I needed a full version upgrade and told them to FO. After reading a ton of reviews, this is not uncommon.
So when you say we are getting a deal, I find that pretty subjective because I won't pay $100 for any software that does not generate income for me. I would not have raised the issue but you did state that is was a "DEAL". So when the bundle is Advertised the "VALUE" is based on the FULL price; it is therefore deceptive not to sell the FULL version in the bundle.
Or you could say this is a partial version and list what functions you are NOT including. What else is not included?

Once again, the sad tale of someone without at least one backup. Even if you never attempt anything as risky as a defray, you should always have a backup strategy.

Who said I didn't have a back up? Thankfully I use TimeMachine to a secondary external drive... but that took over 3 hours in itself to recover. What is sad is that a software company cannot respond to a support thread with solid answers, rather blame it's users for the problems.

Who said I'm a software company? Wish I were. Or are you referring to something you left out in your post?
If you had an external drive (and I'm not blaming you, just trying to encourage people to have a backup plan of which Time Machine is only one part) cloned with CCC or Super Duper, you could have erased the boot drive and cloned the backup back to it. FWIW, using SuperDuper to clone, then clone back again defrags the boot drive.
I do feel your pain. I once had to pay >$500 in 1990 money to have a drive sent in for recovery.

Dtruett1 - I didn't mean it to sound as if I was referring to you as the software company. It was said as a general statement at MacUpdate, which does not provide full disclosure on some of a number of it's featured software packages and for certain doesn't seem to care at all at responding to customer service requests.

By the way - thanks for the tip about SuperDuper. :O)

Hi Randy -

This is the first time I have responded to this thread and Prosoft is not blaming any user for using Drive Genius 3. If someone is not making a backup right before you defrag you are not using Drive Genius 3 the way it is intended. Any developer would be foolish to advertise a hard drive utility that never fails under any circumstance and at the same time we can't account for the health and maintenance of every users drive at the time of use with Drive Genius 3.

A simple safeguard and a best practices approach is to do a TM or clone backup.

Let me reiterate, when you are using any hard drive utility and this includes:
disk utility, Drive Genius 3 and our competitors or even upgrading your operating system, please make a clone back up. Drive Genius 3 warns you before you defrag your drive about data-loss. The reason why we display this message is because there can be underlying issues with a volume that are unforeseen, pre-existing , etc. The manual clearly states to make sure you have a recent back before using Drive Genius 3.

I can't stress enough to Mac Update members to do your backups before making any significant file system change , operating system upgrades, or software updates.

There is no hard drive utility that exists today including Apple's " disk utility " that doesn't encounter an error or fail during operation at one point. This is why even disk utility always asks you to confirm before making changes.

It is rare for Drive Genius 3 to fail on a defrag, but it make more sense to do a backup just incase you need to restore.

Randy-

I forgot to mention Prosoft has how-to guides on how to make a bootable clone:

In the future and if your interested and for any other user, use this how to guide to download a demo version of Data backup 3 and create a bootable clone.

When your bootable clone is created, you will want to verify your back boots your Mac afterwards.

http://www.prosofteng.com/support/drivegenius3-bootable-clone.php

I would make a bootable clone for the following scenarios:

Using any hard drive utility: Disk Utility, Drive Genius 3 , Tech Tool Pro , Disk Warrior , idefrag.
Upgrading to another Operating system
Installing boot camp
Installing VMware
Installing Parallels
Installing Mac OSX software and updates
Migrating to a new Mac

Hope this helps,

Hi Pobannon-

We actually did respond to you, 24 hours later after your initial inquiry and twice in the same day when it was brought to our attention a month later. The first email referenced a link with a special build that we wanted you to try using MobileMe as the download delivery method. Please check your spam filters.

There was no reply from that email, did you receive it ?

I would like to take this offline and have you contact me directly by calling or emailing support and ask for Mike. support@prosofteng.com or 925-426-6306

I am the Technical Support manager , as you can see we try to follow up and assist everyone who needs support.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,

Mike Fiato

Prosoft Engineering
Technical Support Manger

There were no lost emails. I replied to every one of your emails, and then didn't get a reply to my question.
The only solid advice was trying the different build. Which did not make any difference.
No one has provided any advice addressing the problem directly. Just generic cut and paste suggestions.

Pobannon you seem to be trolling. You first said they didn't reply to any of your emails but then you say that you replied to everyone they sent. Then you finally come clean and admit they did follow up with you, even though it seems it wasn't up to your "standards." By your own admission, it sounds like they tried to help you, but through your own ignorance (or whatever reason), you chose not to let them do that. People like yourself, that fail to follow instructions, are why tech support is such a living nightmare...

Mike Fiato Prosoft Engineering Technical Support Manger went out of his way to straighten out the situation. Very simply the answer to my question was that the "critical error" warning given for the Tiger Drive could be ignored.

Mike wondered as I did why the question was not answered directly with my first email.

It got complicated and in my frustration I was probably not clear enough with what I posted here.