Checkmate

A $30 disk utility with very little real utility. Checkmate brings to bear exactly zero tools to fix any and all problems it might discover. Since several freeware and cheap shareware apps offer system monitoring (and more), and it’s available as an additional but secondary feature in the more comprehensive disk utilities, in my opinion Checkmate is overpriced by a factor of 3. In fact, I’d probably balk even at a $10 price point. This is such featureless and incapable software that even its developer is at a loss for words to articulate its virtues. His smarmy product description (above) goes on for 4 paragraphs without saying much about what Checkmate actually does and even less about how it does it. It’s just a bunch of marketing drivel, though I suppose he couldn’t have said much more about such meritless junk. So, if you can afford only one disk utility, my recommendation is to go with TechTool Pro (but NOT its diminutive sibling ProToGo). For many years, I’ve been a true believer in DiskWarrior’s supremacy over TechTool Pro at rebuilding a corrupt or unbalanced directory, which is by far the most common cause of non-hardware problems in OS X. Since I bought licenses for both apps over ten years, DW has repeatedly and handily corrected many problems that TTP couldn’t fix or missed altogether — a shame because with such a halfassed main feature, TTP’s wealth of other capabilities are insufficient to justify its $100 price. But the good news — especially for the developer — is that Micromat’s flagship product, TechTool Pro, has improved markedly with the introduction of version 7.x and subsequent updates. Its directory rebuilding is still a bit inferior to DiskWarrior’s, but at its current pace of development it may be on par or superior to DW by the beginning of 2015. If you’d like a more thorough comparison of TTP and the other leading contender, DiskWarrior, I’ve done some informal but fairly rigorous research and presented my findings on MacUpdate’s TTP and DW pages: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/4307/techtool-pro (1 comment) http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11707/DiskWarrior (multiple comments, some may be on subsequent pages) Hopefully I’ve made my opinion clear that this app is ulcerous, fetid rubbish.

I don't at all understand all the ire directed at Checkmate, and not to start a debate, but what Checkmate does is very, very obvious. It checks out things like volume structures, Memory, looks for I/O errors, SMART status and the partition map in an effort to detect minor problems before they become major ones.

Nor do I see why that's particularly difficult to understand, and as to other applications with similar functionality, I know Drive Genius 4 has a similar function (but am unsure if it works in the same fashion) though I am unaware of any freeware or shareware apps with such a comprehensive feature set.

You set Checkmate up, and it scans your computer at certain times, informing you what it has discovered. Personally I prefer to know about problems before they escalate, because often in those early stages I find can make all the difference.

How it does what it does? I know there's a daemon working in the background, but as for the particulars, I have no idea.

Then again, I also don't know the purpose of half the electronics in a modern car, yet that lack of knowledge won't stop me from driving If I need to do so.

It works just fine for me, now if Micromat will only update the UI, which is unnecessarily huge and in need of a refreshening.

A $30 disk utility with very little real utility. Checkmate brings to bear exactly zero tools to fix any and all problems it might discover. Since several freeware and cheap shareware apps offer system monitoring (and more), and it’s available as an additional but secondary feature in the more comprehensive disk utilities, in my opinion Checkmate is overpriced by a factor of 3. In fact, I’d probably balk even at a $10 price point. This is such featureless and incapable software that even its developer is at a loss for words to articulate its virtues. His smarmy product description (above) goes on for 4 paragraphs without saying much about what Checkmate actually does and even less about how it does it. It’s just a bunch of marketing drivel, though I suppose he couldn’t have said much more about such meritless junk. So, if you can afford only one disk utility, my recommendation is to go with TechTool Pro (but NOT its diminutive sibling ProToGo). For many years, I’ve been a true believer in DiskWarrior’s supremacy over TechTool Pro at rebuilding a corrupt or unbalanced directory, which is by far the most common cause of non-hardware problems in OS X. Since I bought licenses for both apps over ten years, DW has repeatedly and handily corrected many problems that TTP couldn’t fix or missed altogether — a shame because with such a halfassed main feature, TTP’s wealth of other capabilities are insufficient to justify its $100 price. But the good news — especially for the developer — is that Micromat’s flagship product, TechTool Pro, has improved markedly with the introduction of version 7.x and subsequent updates. Its directory rebuilding is still a bit inferior to DiskWarrior’s, but at its current pace of development it may be on par or superior to DW by the beginning of 2015. If you’d like a more thorough comparison of TTP and the other leading contender, DiskWarrior, I’ve done some informal but fairly rigorous research and presented my findings on MacUpdate’s TTP and DW pages: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/4307/techtool-pro (1 comment) http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11707/DiskWarrior (multiple comments, some may be on subsequent pages) Hopefully I’ve made my opinion clear that this app is ulcerous, fetid rubbish.

The in-app update doesn't work. The first time I tried I got the spinning beach ball of death - the app froze up. A day later I tried a second time and got a server unavailable message. With no other easy (that is, user friendly) way to update I tend to agree with the negative reviews of this app. The only really useful feature is the surface scans it does of my hard drives, which run in the background, that take too long to do with TechTool Pro to be practical. The I/O scans may also be of some benefit. As for SMART tests, they tend to be unreliable. I too have had a drive fail that was passing SMART tests regularly. There are, in fact, different kinds of SMART tests, some more thorough than others. But they all depend on a drive's ability to diagnose its own problems. The only reliable way to ensure against drive failure is with regular backups. In principal this utility is an adjunct to TechTool Pro and provides a form of system monitoring that most of us would not do manually with TTP. I do use TTP from time to time to perform other tasks, like file and drive defragmentation. While there are other apps that can do this work, TTP has always been the Swiss Army Knife of troubleshooting tools. But it seems to be taking Micromat an unseemly long time to get Checkmate up to par.

Thinking about buying this doctor for my mac's however why is it better than TechToolPro 7 ? Or is it just another computer vitamin pill we all think will cure us ? Honestly, I don't understand why i should buy this in addition to owning TTPro7, DiskWarrior, Apple's DiskUtility, and CleanMyMac.

I bought Checkmate some time ago for my iMac with OS 10.68. Recently I had trouble with many programs freezing and very slow response. My iMac was determined to have a failing hard drive. Its replacement cured all the problems. During this time Checkmate continuously checked the drive and found nothing wrong. What is Checkmate supposed to detect?

I've been a Micromat user for a very long time. So I jumped at the chance to buy their new Checkmate product at a discount. Sadly, this app is not useful for me, mainly because of how irritating it is. I have two 2TB external hard drives and Checkmate CONSTANTLY performs surface scans and other tests even while I'm using the computer, which is something Micromat advertises Checkmate will not do. Normally my workstation is fairly quite. But the constant ratcheting sound of the hard drives was too much to bear. I also wonder what the vastly increased drive access will do to the mechanical longevity of the hard drives, not to mention my internal SSD. With all that in mind, I just uninstalled Checkmate. I may try it again when they release 2.0, but at this point, it was a waste of my $29.95.