Existing users, 
Drive Genius
Storage management: maintain, manage, optimize.
Version: 2.2.1
Reluctantly recommending the product; unequivocally condemning its tech support
Feedback Type: Commentary
Contributed by: PiotrGM Saturday, July 12 2008 @ 11:42 AM PDT
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: 1-6 months
Recommend Product: YES
Drive Genius (I give it three stars) is much, much less useful and elegant that the exemplary DiskWarrior, and yet it is better than the much clumsier TechTool Pro. However, unlike some other commentators on this forum, I have had abysmal experience with ProSoft's technical support (I give it one star). My previous description of that experience was removed (this had never happened to me before), so I warn every one: ProSoft has really long hands. However, I must admit my experience was so bad I did not mince words in that comment. I still cannot come to terms with the - presumably accidental (let's give them the benefit of the doubt) - complete lack of professionalism on part of the ProSoft's representative, who did not seem to understand the simplest sentences written in English (I am not a native speaker, however I hold a Ph.D. in literature from one of the better Canadian universities, and have been computing in North America for twenty years). One advice: when you deal with their tech support, make sure you do it as infrequently as possible - and use very short, simple and intelligible sentences. Perhaps mine were too long.
Comments
Reluctantly recommending the product; unequivocally condemning its tech support - afterhours
I have had a few interactions with their tech support as well. And I did NOT have your experience. They were polite and intelligent. They were not able to help me, unfortunately, but I am researching how to recover data from a partially-scratched optical disc, so it's not like I was asking about their comfort zone of hard drive media.When I've had to recover data from a hard drive, or make a hard drive accessible again, this tool has been a very useful part of my arsenal. Along with the other applications they sell and the worthy directory repair tool DW, these are the first tools I reach for.
I feel for the folks who think 'I'll never have a hard drive crash or lose data' and go about life not making backups. With Time Machine, Retrospect, BRU, SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, Syncronize Pro, Toast, Disk Utility and the many other options out there for making various backups, it's not like we don't have the ability. But everyone of us is human enough to mess up, and on those occasions, I've found both the products and the tech support from this company useful. Then again, I'm patient about data recovery. If it takes a day or two to get an answer that means something, or it takes a followup call or email, I'm ok with that. It's not like I don't get swamped with work at times, too.
Wednesday, September 24 2008 @ 09:18 AM PDT
Post removal - Prosoft
Hi PiotrGM,Gordon from Prosoft here....
I believe your last post was probably removed by VT admins because as you said, you didn't "mince words". Putting up a bad review or a "Hey, these guys need to do a better job of xyz" type of comment is definitely encouraged and supported, but perhaps your post was over the line for VT.
We would still like to give you the support that you're looking for and I'm inviting you to contact us back. I'm hoping you'll give us another shot as your experience is really not par for the course... I'd love to have another tech get in touch with you if you'd like, just say the word..
Gordon from Prosoft
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Thursday, July 17 2008 @ 09:58 AM PDT