APPLICABILITY  I've had mixed experiences with Drive Genius. A while ago I got it as part of a MacUpdate promo and had a disastrous experience trying to use the "DriveSlim" option--and that with only the last three options checked (no checks for large/duplicate files, just unused optimizations, non-Intel binaries, and cache/temp files). It basically froze/became unresponsive (although the purty *cough gimmicky* animations kept on going), while driving CPU usage through the roof. I had used a similar tool, Xslimmer, to remove PPC binaries/localizations in the past, and the interface was much more user-friendly, responsive, and a whole lot faster. To this day I will never again trust Drive Genius to accomplish this task, update or no. The DriveSlim function may well be fixed by now, but I will never find out.

In fact, I was just about ready to never touch Drive Genius 2 again, when yesterday I decided it was time for a defrag. The first time around I tried TechTool Pro 5, only to discover that, when it comes to defrag (what it calls "Volume Optimization"), it might as well be called "Torture Tool" for what it does to the system. 5 hours in, the CPUs and consequently the system fans were screaming, and it seemed to have barely made any progress. After researching online I discovered that multiple-day defrag sessions with this thing are common--what a joke. So I looked for an alternative. iDefrag seemed like the most-recommended way to go, but I didn't want to pony up more cash if I could just use a tool I already owned. Although I was aware of the defrag issues users had had with Drive Genius 2, they had supposedly been fixed with version 2.1.1, and as I was using version 2.2.1 (on my Snow Leopard machine) I decided to give it a shot. What a difference in comparison to TechTool Pro! The thing was done in 3 hours, with absolutely no fan noise. It freed up around 2.5 GB. Not bad.

In conclusion, Drive Genius 2 is definitely a mixed bag, if for no other reason than that its reputation has already been ruined, between the DriveSlimmer issue I experienced and the defrag, partition, and repair problems I have read about on the web. On top of that, they charged users for an upgrade that for the first time fixed the horrendous problems that should never have made it in in the first place--not exactly what one would call a show of good will from the developers.

I will say, however, that version 2.2.1 was able to defrag my Snow Leopard machine no problemo. So props for that. If they keep making solid releases maybe they can slowly--very slowly--win back some reputation. But it will be a long and painful journey after the dogfood they served us in the   
(Version 2.2.1)

ICONZ113  Drive genius is a good application. I have purchased both drive genius and diskwarrior, in my opinion the 2 best. I only wanted to have one of them installed. After getting familiar with them I've decided to install drive genius and not diskwarrior. I did this because Drive genius can perform other tasks that are useful such as cloning drives, defraging, drive slimming, repartitioning, zero out data, perform verification tests, formatting, cloning, and a few other things. I felt I was better off having this installed over diskwarrior which only performs one function basically. However If my drive ever crapped out, I'm reaching for my disk warrior DVD first. So if you ask me which product is better at recovering your harddisk in a jam, my answer is diskwarrior. If you ask me which of the 2 Id rather have installed Im gonna say drive genius for the other things it can do. But when shiz hits the fan, Diskwarrior all the way. I like having the tool set drive genius offers available to me, if my boot drive crapped out having disk warrior installed wouldn't help me anyway, but when theres an emergency I'm reaching for the disk warrior. so if your looking for something that will bring your HD back get diskwarrior but if your interested in the large toolset drive genius offers then get DG.  
(Version 2.2.1)

DANIEL LEDERGERBER  I have been using Drive Genius for a while, but i don't use most of the functions. I just tried to repartition a rather big drive... I recommend not to use it - and, instead, to repartition drives the old way if possible. DG's function is somehow scary and takes as long as backing up and recopying the data.  
(Version 2.2.1)

STAINER  Without RAID-support Drive Genius is not particularly useful. The fact that not even DriveSlim™ works with a RAID is just plain weird.  
(Version 2.2.1)

JAN13  NO (!) partitioning PLEASE !!!old way is The Way !!!

I have lost a 100 Gb of data using partitioning future of this other vise very good software. This partitioning option is simply nightmare ...  
(Version 2.2)

CHRISWILLARD  Recenty the Prosoft technical support folks went beyond expectations in helping solve a problem with a drive partition that refused to be defragmented. After the simple things failed to solve the problem they offered to examine the entire disk image of the drive in search of a suspected corrupt file that was causing the error.

They were able to find the file and provide instructions for deleting and re-constituting a non-corrupt version. Kudos for going the extra mile. Both the drive and I am now happy campers.  
(Version 2.2)

GORDON BELL  Hi all,

We did see some Defrag issues that would affect less than 1% of customers in past versions. Although that's a small percentage, considering the sales of Drive Genius, that was affecting a group of customers and we had strived to improve on that.. Even with a warning message to recommend a backup before running Defrag (or any major disk utility type of feature) we still saw many that didn't backup and if they were one of the very few that had an issue, it was indeed pretty upsetting (Understandably). Of course, when that happened, and there was no backup in place, it was frustrating and those customers would post their experiences (which is what MU is for..)-- Unfortunately most of the 99% that didn't have a problem usually wouldn't post and therefore doing a search would typically only show the posts of those that came into problems.

Defrag was greatly improved with 2.1.1 and therefore we're not seeing that at all now. However, with any disk utility software it's always recommended to have a backup before you work on your drive (we include the Clone feature which provides you with the fastest most thorough type of backup with a quick click).

We're very excited about these latest versions of Drive Genius as they represent improvements in all features, especially the popular features like Defrag and Repartition and DriveSlim.

Even with the improvements and continued performance boosts, we still always recommend a backup before using any disk utility. Any company that tells you to use their disk utility product and not worry about backing up first is indeed leading you down the wrong path, so we'll never really change that recommendation. Some people will take that recommendation and think, "Oh, wow, they want me to backup, their product must not be very stable." but that's just the case with this type of software. Even apple warns customers to backup before doing major changes or upgrades to your system---

We do appreciate all the feedback and I truly welcome those comments as they help us strive to improve our product.

Cheers,

Gordon from Prosoft-  
(Version 2.2)

OSXI  I had heard some amazing things about Drive Genius, but hearing about a $5 charge to download an update is troubling. In professional music software there is copy protected software that requires registration for it to work, and to get updates. There must be many ways that the developer could "verify" that the people downloading are registered customers. Also, to here about people loosing their whole drive while defragging is not very encouraging. I hope these issues get fixed and policies changed, because I've heard other good things about this product.   
(Version 2.2)

ALEXANDRE ACKERMANS  Ditto for corrupted disk after optimizing with drive genius on macbook Pro os x 10 5 6

I used it succesfully twice in the past, but after such a bad experience, I am extremely wary to try it again. Unfortunately the lost time+work on that problem will never be made up by any speed gains due to a succesful optimization.

To optimize, the most efficient and free techinque seems to boot from an external CD, create a disk image copy to an external drive, reformat and recover the disk image. This will copy all files as a contiguous, defragged block. No hassle no backup on the fly defrag seems too risky to try.  
(Version 2.2)

MACLOVER1.1  Also lost a disk to optimisation with this.. interface looks swell but who cares... I've wanted to "hate" TechTool Pro for years.. but TTP has never failed me.  
(Version 2.2)