GORDON BELL  Hi There,

Hopefully folks can understand that bandwidth does cost money. We pay akami quite a bit each month and when we used to give the boot DVD downloads away for free, we saw tens of thousands of downloads from IP addresses where we simply do not see many sales (eastern Europe and China).

It's important to note that application updates are indeed free- We never charge for an application update ( 2.1 to 2.2 or something)--

This most recent update is indeed a boot technology update (only needed if you have one of the brand-new machines which require that booting technology). Yes, we also fix bugs with each subsequent release, but hopefully users think that bug fixes and performance improvements are a good thing -

If you want to avoid the $5 download charge, we strongly recommend that you use a secondary bootable drive and run the Drive Genius 2 application from it (to work on your boot drive)-- If you need any help or instruction on how to get that up and running please do give our support team a call, we'd love to hear from you-

Gordon from Prosoft  
(Version 2.1.1)

CHRISWAN  You don't have to update everytime they release an update, the old version still work well, go buy the upgrade after 3-4 revisions

I hope people will understand with the explanation above, that this need to be done to reduce abuse from non paying 'customers' and to cover a small percentage of the bandwidth cost (A few hundreds MB might not much, but multiply it with hundreds or ten thounsands, one will ended with significant cost (especially if most of them are freeloaders))

And it's not like you guys pay the full price... Most of you complainers got the software from recent MUPromo bundle right? What's with this sense of entitlement?  
(Version 2.1.1)

CASTLE  Seconded. A complete joke to charge $5 just to get a download to a minor update. I'll never be buying from these guys again, and thoroughly recommend you reconsider any purchase from them.  
(Version 2.1.1)

CHRISWAN  just convert the old dvd image with new app version, using the instruction provided by other user in the comment section below  
(Version 2.1.1)

PROSOFT SUPPORT  Thanks for your feedback about Drive Genius.  We appreciate hearing from our customers about their experiences, the good as well as the bad, and we appreciate you taking the time out to share your experience.

We also want to present an update to where Drive Genius is at now, as we constantly strive to improve Drive Genius.

Drive Genius 2 is indeed compatible with Bootcamp, as there are a number of features that can be used:  Repair (Verify, Repair, Rebuild, Repair Permissions and Verify Preferences), Defragment, Duplicate, Scan, DriveSlimŪ, Benchtest, Integrity Check, Initialize and Sector Edit.

The one feature that is not "compatible" with Bootcamp is Repartition. This feature is a little different because it goes deeper into the drive's partition table, and is not intended to work with MSDOS/Windows partition formats.  So, if you have a BootCamp partition, Drive Genius 2 will actually inform you that the BootCamp partition cannot be repartitioned and will not allow you to proceed any further (this safeguard was put in place back in Drive Genius 2.0.3, which was released on June 3rd, 2008 and it has continued with each release since).

All other Drive Genius 2 features  will detect and skip over the Bootcamp partition while still working on the Mac-formated portions of your drive(s).

Again we appreciate your feedback, and if you have any further questions we welcome you to contact our Technical Support staff at 925-426-6306 or via email--We'd love to hear from you and hope that you give Drive Genius 2 another try.

Prosoft Support  
(Version 2.1.1)

PROSOFT SUPPORT  Hi there,

Let me take some time to address your concerns.

Defragmentation is a subjective matter. Some customers mention they do not see a performance difference, others will swear by it. It is really a matter of disk usage and the data the they are accessing. A common user who browses the internet, listens to mp3s, and works on word documents may not notice a the results of a defragmentation. A power user who deals with large video files and moving large amounts of data on their drive that is reaching near capacity may see some quicker access to their files.

Fragmentation occurs when files are written onto the hard drive with limited contiguous space to accommodate an entire file. This fragmentation causes the hard drive to slow down its access time since the hard drive head has to seek to the various locations of the files.

The Mac OS automatically defrags files that are under 20MB, which is great for a majority of files. But larger files can become fragmented as they are writing to a hard drive that is reaching near its capacity.

The Apple store uses Drive Genius at the Genius Bars as part of their maintenance with the Pro Care Package. The Genius Bars do use the Defrag feature to help optimize machines. Would the Genius Bars use Drive Genius 2's Defragmentation feature if wasn't a helpful utility?

As part of any disk maintenance process, wether using Drive Genius or Disk Utility, it is always recommended to have a recent backup of your system in the case of unexpected occurrences. If a power failure occurs during an extensive process such as Defrag, it may lead to an unstable situation that will require you to restore your backup or reinstall your operating system. Before using the Defrag utility, Drive Genius 2 warns the user to have a backup of your system beginning the process.

David

Prosoft Customer Support  
(Version 2.1.1)

PROSOFT SUPPORT  I'm sorry to hear of the difficulties you have experienced. We would like to gather more information regarding what you have experienced and ensure this is not occurring on the latest update we have provided. Please contact our Technical Support Department at 925-426-6306 and we will be glad to help you.

David

Prosoft Customer Support  
(Version 2.1.1)

SJHA  I'd be grateful if you could describe in a bit more detail how to convert the .dmg to a read/write one. I couldn't see how to do this using Disk Utility.  
(Version 2.1.1)

POLKADOT  In reply to SJHA:

There's a menu command in Disk Uitility (under "Images") and a default toolbar icon as well by which you can select a .dmg to convert. Make sure to select "read/write" as the format for the converted image in the save dialog that pops up and do not encript the converted image. When the conversion is completed you can select the converted .dmg in the sidebar of Disk Utilily and hit the "burn" command, via the Images menu or by the toolbar button.

Be aware that the converted .dmg is much bigger than the original one (about 1.5 GB), but there's no problem to burn a DVD from it. BTW, I did all this running 10.5.6 and I'm not sure if it's working with Tiger too.  
(Version 2.1.1)

POLKADOT  Forgot to mention it in my last post: of course you should replace the old Drive Genius application with the 2.1.1 update prior to burning the DVD. To do so you have to mount the converted dmg. Unmount it after replacing the app and burn the unmounted .dmg, not the mounted virtual drive.  
(Version 2.1.1)