Norton Disk Doctor. Any alternatives?

I was a long time user of Norton Utilities... until 2002 when due to triple formats involving NAV, I gave up on the whole Norton scene (poor AV, FORCED bundling of NIS/NSW).

But now, I have seen TI report a couple of "unreadable sectors"... chkdsk (for NTFS under DOS) said at boot time that ONE file was corrupted. And now I miss the Doctor.

NDD was just plain MAGIC for floppies.. I swear... it recovered at least 70% floppies out of nearly 600 crapped up disks I sent through it in four years of Norton usage.

Can anyone tell me...

Code:

> Is it worth it to find a rebated Norton System Works CD (where NDD will
   work on NTFS, some versions it doesn't :O) ?? MRP for NSW 2006 Premier
   is USD 99.9 ... max you'd want to pay for ONE utility would be $15 (seeing
   how the rest of it is just bloat)

> Is there any alternative software available? (It's been so long since those
   days, I can't even remember the keywords for the google searches I used
   in those days when I first junked Norton Utils)

 

Its well known that Norton Disk Doctor in NT is basically a wrapper for chkdsk and does'nt offer any bettter feature, its not worth paying a penny for Norton for this feature alone !

As far as replacing the WHOLE functionality of System Works, theres plenty out there that can replace each feature and I hazzard a guess to say that you could do everything for free atleast as good.

 

I used once Norton Disk Defragmenter, it took a very long time, much longer than MS Disk Defragmenter.
After Norton's defragmentation, I rebooted my computer and started Norton Disk Defragmenter again.
I thought the software would say "Your harddrive doesn't need defragmentation.", but NO it started the defragmentation all over again.

 

That's news to me atleast!

Naw... just NDD replacement is what I need.

>>> Plus you didn't give me any names fella !!!

MS Defrag is a lighter than light version of Diskeeper methinks. Tried Diskeeper lite (www.diskeeper.com) yet? If memory serves me right, it's a freeware version without scheduling (I think I'll d/l that now! Windows Scheduler will do for me!)

 

I used Diskeeper Lite in the past, pretty good, but I can't use Diskeeper anymore, because I'm planning to protect my computer with ShadowUser in the near future. ShadowUser and Diskeeper don't go together.

 

Hmm. interesting. Can't you use MANUAL scans?
I mean, no scheduled scans so that they don't pop up during a Frozen session? (Dk lite doesn't have a scheduler, but I assume that you have a scheduling option ready )
Or else try PerfectDisk. It's as good as DK v9 I think, but DK10 is out and it's BLAZINGLY fast, or so I'm led to believe. Plus having NTFS drives means less 'fragging' (don't tell me everyone plays UT here and to 'frag' is to...)
And I still don't have any suggestions here... anyone? NDD? Alternates

 

I assume that ShadowUser accepts defragmention on demand (manual), why not ?.
Keep in mind that I don't use ShadowUser YET, but that's my final goal and I ditched Diskeeper for that reason.
Defragmenters aren't my priority #1, Windows Defragmenter is good enough for me and doesn't act silly like Norton Defragmenter.
I have to learn winXPproSP2, partitioning, image backup and ShadowUser. No time for defragmenters.

 

Correct! Why use Disk Doctor at all? Just go to My Computer - Local Disk (right click - properties) - Tools - Error Checking - click Check Now - Check Disk Options. I check both options - start - then it'll ask to start on next startup - OK or yes - reboot. Ta Daah!

 

I don't have any experience with NDD. Here are some freewares, but I don't know, if they are good or bad. I do my own evaluations.
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/collection/0,collid,1295,00.asp

 

you know what? It seems highly unlikely that the code in CHKDSK and NDD is the same, especially since even back in 2002, it used to fix floppies (FAT 32) and bad HDD sectores (on a seagate drive that failed later) VERY well... and chkdsk failed always.
But with Norton, you never know ... *sigh*... look what they did to NAV

 

I'm afraid those are meningless to me, Erik.
Though i'll pick up PC Inspector later. Undeleting and all. Sounds interesting.

 

Quite expensive this ones :
http://www.oo-software.com/en/index.html
http://www.ontrack.co.uk/

 

NDD is exactly as I & nickr stated. No more no less.

 

Got any more reading material on that? please?

Oh come now... I'm talking HDD maintenance, and you're serving up file recovery
and yes, they are shockingly expensive.

Take this example
http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/ooclevercache/
USD 29.95
NDD did that by default I believe. *sigh* I guess there IS no alternative?

Zapjb...
any freeware skins for chkdsk ? I like GUIs. If I'm too disturbed, I might make a character mode wrapper (in Turbo C++ of course) for myself.

 

Here's a good bunch of freeware hard drive utilities..
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwdisktools.html

For "fixing" bad floppies, here's a couple..
http://www.tucows.com/preview/347622
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/Flobo-Floppy-Bad-Sector-Repair.shtml

I like HD Tune for hard drive checking. It won't do repairs, but the thing is that when you start getting file system corruption it's going to be very difficult to fix it completely. If that starts happening, it's a good idea to try to figure out what the problem is, why it happened, and at least format, if not replace the harddrive. If you have a harddrive that's dropping sectors, the chances are it will continue to do so.. so you're much better off just replacing the drive. I also like HDD Health for real-time monitoring of hard drives, it will alert you when they're about to die by reporting the drive's internal diagnostic info (although HDD Health will also report positive gains, so don't panic on every alert.. just keep an eye on the overview screen).

Fix-It Utilities will do everything you want in one package, but it's not free. Unfortunately I don't think there's a download, you just have to get it at a store that sells software, like OfficeDepot. It's not a very good looking program, but it is actually very nice.

Floppies are pretty much the same, although those utils can at least allow you to get your data off of them. You might search for "bad sector repair" on some of the main software sites like softpedia.com, tucows.com, download.com, and majorgeeks.com (on Major Geeks you might just go through all of their Drive Utilities).

 

Here's another I almost forgot about. It just wraps the Windows built-in tools into one UI. Kinda neat, and free. Take a look at the developer's site as well, he makes several other utilities along the same lines.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Lexun_DrvCareXP_d2715.html

 

Too bad you didn't save your old Norton disks because most of the programs like NDD can be run right off the cd, no need to install. I still have a copy of NSW 2003 and I can run NDD, NWD, WipeInfo etc. right off the cd.

 

Go to the HDD mfr website and download the utility to test the fitness of your HDD. If bad, then replace the HDD. I've seen HDD on sale for $50 or less.