TechTool Protogo

Name: TechTool Protogo
Price: 129.99 $
Rating: 3.375 (6 reviews)

4.0.5

24 November 2014

Turn your USB or Firewire device into a bootable diagnostic toolkit.

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Overview

Note: TechTool Protogo is no longer a standalone product, but has been included in TechTool Pro.

TechTool Protogo easily lets you turn your USB or Firewire device into a bootable, diagnostics toolkit for Mac.

You can take it with you. Using Protogo, you can easily turn a USB or FireWire device, such as an iPod, flash drive, compact hard drive, or SD Card, into a powerful toolkit to troubleshoot all of the Macs in your life. Now you can boot, run diagnostics and perform drive repair on multiple Macs, both Intel and PPC, from a single, portable device as small as a flash drive. Just drop it into your pocket, take it anywhere. How convenient.
Plug and play redefined. Plug in a flash drive or retired iPod to help maintain or repair your Mac. With Protogo and just a few clicks, you can configure a bootable device to maintain and monitor your Macs for impending problems. You can create your own custom profiles too, and your device will run software faster than from a DVD. Once you see how well that works, you'll protect all your Macs with Protogo. It's that easy.
Powered by TechTool Pro. Your Protogo profiles include TechTool Pro to diagnose hardware issues, repair drives, fix disk permissions, clone volumes, backup your Recovery HD to another device, and a lot more. Plus you can add other utilities, like anti-virus, to complement your profiles and help you prevent costly repairs in the future. What's more, you can reconfigure your device profiles anytime you need. That's versatility.

What's new in TechTool Protogo

Version 4.0.5:

Now includes TechTool Pro 7.0.6.
Other enhancements and fixes.

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9 TechTool Protogo Reviews

Why would anyone pay $135 for this? I purchased a $25 micro USB hard drive and installed Leopard onto it with all my utilities. New Mac? No problem, just update to the latest OS. Micromat is nuts.

Like (7)

Version 2.0.1

Ward

16 March 2015

TechTool Protogo is no longer a separate product – it's been folded into TechTool Pro 8.

Version 4.0.5

I am constantly amazed by the trivial complaints on Macupdate. It's hard not to say something because believe in the companies that I purchase from. Interestingly, it seems that the more "techy" the product is, the more trivial the complaints get. Are you nerds familiar with the free trial concept? Would you buy a new car because it's on sale without test driving it? And then tell other car shoppers that it doesn't have the features you want and you wish you never bought it? Doesn't that seem kind of odd? Credit to @seedy for at least saying that it's not MM's fault. Now @bobbistyle here thinks TTP deserves a negative review because he thinks it's too expensive. I'm sorry bobbi, it must be hard to be taken advantage of like that. I guess TTP is a bad product because I wish it was cheaper, but I bought it anyway and I'm mad because I want a feature that it doesn't have. Well, I did come here to download the latest version of TTP so I'll be on my way. I've never had a problem with TTP. It's a great product and does some incredible data crunching for the price I paid. But I did actually get the free trial before I decided to buy it.

Like (1)

Version 4.0.5

Seedy

26 July 2014

Since it's on sale for the same as TTP, for 25 bucks, I decided to try it. Observations before even using it: -Won't install on a partition so I can use the rest of a USB stick for something else. Have a 32GB one here, made a 10GB partition for it, but it won't see partitions, only devices, so I'm letting it chew up all 32GB to test it. This is one sign that it might not be meant for techs, who might want another bootable partition with a different OS and set of tools on the same drive. -If I try to add Disk Warrior to the app list, it crashes. :^) -The web page is pretty sparse on factual info, so it might be helpful to know that, once installed, TTP app is in its own folder separately for use, not only as part of Protogo. IOW, you get TTP 7 and the extra money (normally) for PTG is for the convenience of making a diagnostic disk.

Like (1)

Version 4.0.3

4 answer(s)

Seedy

26 July 2014

I should add that obviously one can make a dmg of whatever PTG comes up with, rewipe the USB stick and put the PTG stuff on a partition manually, have yet to see if that will work.

Like (1)

Christianp

11 August 2014

Thanks for your comments. While Protogo currently uses an entire disk, you can always add an additional partition using Disk Utility after it has completed building the device. As for Disk Warrior, we've found that it needs the Finder to operate properly with a Protogo device, so we'd recommend the Basic Profile in that case. Feel free to contact our support team at micromat.com/support for assistance.

Like (1)

Seedy

11 August 2014

Thanks to MM for writing back. I know very few people read the documentation, but I'm one of those outlying weirdos.

An additional consideration for anyone doing this is to make a new unaltered admin account and make the USB stick from that. My first attempt was a Basic Profile while logged into my main account, and all the startup items, etc came over, some not working because the app referred to did not get copied in the process, so lots of error messages on startup.

Not blaming MM. Next time I try it I'm going to do it from a guest account that I make Admin just while I do this, so the USB disk is really Basic.

Like (2)

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

24 November 2014

@ Seedy; I do Mac tech support but have no need for the Protogo. I have external hard drives partitioned with various versions of OS X and use the regular TechTool Pro on each of them - along with DiskWarrior, iDefrag and a variety of other utilities. I have recently moved most of my partitions to USB 3 drives, which work well on new Macs where there is no FireWire port. I still have one FireWire drive to use with older Macs.

I have two Western Digital My Passport for Mac USB 3 drives that are small enough to drop in a shirt pocket. While they are larger than a thumb drive they have far more storage capacity as well; you can partition them however you want and install whatever you want with no serious space limitations.

When the Protogo was first developed external hard drives were larger and less portable than they are today. And, given the price of flash memory, they are still far less expensive per gigabyte of storage than a thumb drive. Though you can get these small external drives with an SSD - if you can afford it. If find USB 3 with an HDD to be fast enough in most cases.

One other advantage of an external hard drive - you are far less likely to walk away and forget them than you are with a thumb drive plugged into the back of a computer.

Like (1)

Nothinggoes

28 May 2014

No download links work, just takes you in a big circle. Even the developers page has a "Downloads" but nothing to download. Very stupid indeed.

Like (1)

Version 4.0.3

1 answer(s)

Christianp

28 May 2014

Sorry for any confusion. A link can be obtained by logging in to your account at micromat.com. A download link will be available under Available Downloads if you purchased or registered your serial number with us.

Like (2)

TOOO much money! Google OS X USB drive and follow some tips on how to revue your drives FREE! U cannot defray them but at least you can rescue them! This should be included FREE for us TechTool owners! No wonder people pirate stuff! Cheaper price = sales Bundled with main product = LOYAL happy clients! There are lots of other products out doing the same for way less, time to change or make a dinner reservation with the Dodo...

Like (2)

Version 4.0.2

3 answer(s)

Christianp

28 April 2014

Sorry for any confusion, but as it turns out, Protogo does include TechTool Pro, so while it's not free, it is quite economical when you consider that TechTool Pro 7 ($99.99) is included in the Protogo 4 price ($129.99). Hopefully this helps.

Christianp

28 April 2014

Forgot to mention, if you have a previous version of TechTool Pro or Protogo, upgrade pricing is available. You may contact sales @ micromat.com if you have questions about pricing.

Xenophile

27 June 2014

Just install OS X on a USB drive, then install TechTool Pro on the volume, along with whatever other recovery utilities you have. Protogo is a strange product. An extra $30 for something that can be done with the standard TechTool Pro? The standard TechTool Pro should come with instructions on how to make your own recovery drive. Micromat are abusing their loyal customers.

Like (2)

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

02 January 2014

Be aware that this version of TechTool Protogo does not include the latest TechTool Pro, wish is version 7.0.2 - a substantial upgrade to TechTool Pro 6.x. So you'll probably have to pay for an upgrade again when Protogo gets version 7.x.

Version 3.0.4

2 answer(s)

-M-S-

03 January 2014

Version 4 (the very latest) does include TechTool Pro 7.

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

03 January 2014

The version listed when I made my post was not version 4. It has since been updated.

The Software is great for the price I paid, some 39 Dollars. I have had the chance to use the software from work and took the opportunity to purchase it, as it's a great little addition to the First Aid kit, one of those software pieces, you know your going to need, not every day, but when you, need it, it's always useful. I think the ease of use is also worth the money, it's stable, and so far has never let me down, I also built, my own Crash USB Kit, with other pieces of software I might need, very handy. if you have a version of TechTools, the upgrade path for this software is also very good

Like (2)

Version 3.0

seacliff

09 September 2011

Everything posted here is old and a disservice to readers. MacUpdate should post the new version information for Protogo 3.0, which includes TechTool Pro 6 ($99.99), thats why Protogo pricing is higher. Protogo upgrades are as low as $39.99.

Like (3)

Version 3.0

Why would anyone pay $135 for this? I purchased a $25 micro USB hard drive and installed Leopard onto it with all my utilities. New Mac? No problem, just update to the latest OS. Micromat is nuts.

Like (7)

Version 2.0.1

TechTool Protogo

Overview

What's new in TechTool Protogo

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9 TechTool Protogo Reviews

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