The new Scan Files for Bad Sectors mode included in 2.8.1 is FANTASTIC!!!! I have successfully recovered data from two failed hard drives in the past two days. Copying large amounts of data from a failing hard drive can be tedious, time-consuming and fraught with danger without the correct tools, because copying the data invariably tries to also copy the CORRUPT files along with the good, resulting in a hard drive crash and basically having to manually spend hours weeding out the bad files from the good. However, SpeedTools v2.8.1 is the first Mac OS X software I'm aware of that reports which files are sitting on bad blocks so I can ignore and copy everything EXCEPT them. Since OS X has been severly lacking in decent hard disk utilities I previously had to resort to using OS 9 for small (<120GB) hard disks and Windows for large drives (>120GB).

MediaScanner's Auto Reassign function also successfully restored three previously unusable hard disks to full working order. One drive had four bad blocks, another had one and another had two bad blocks. The drives were impossible to use without a bad block remapping tool due to the way hard drives remap blocks. Before I had to resort to using Windows or OS 9 to remap bad blocks, but MediaScanner as of version 2.8.1 now seems to finally be the hard disk tool I've been searching for. I wish this tool was available years ago when I worked at AppleCentre, it would have saved us from having to have a Windows computer in the office and probably would have saved literally hours upon hours each week, because removing a hard disk from an iBook just so you could scan it on a Windows computer meant spending about 30 minutes dismantling the entire computer then 30 minutes reassembling it again, one hour of completely wasted time.

I believe this is a more worthwhile tool than DiskWarrior, as most hard disk corruption is caused by bad blocks, which DiskWarrior DOES NOT FIX. Some people swear by DiskWarrior and tell me it's saved their data on many occasions - but if your hard disk is corrupting itself and regularly needs to be repaired by DiskWarrior, you should be asking yourself, WHY is it corrupted? If the corruption wasn't caused by bad memory/power failure/accidental unplugging of a USB drive/system crash then it's highly likely you have a bad block sitting somewhere on your hard drive. Disk Utility, and DiskWarrior will NOT pick this up, and TechToolPro only does a read-only scan which will not reassign bad blocks so it is completely useless. However MediaScanner seems to work just as well as OS 9 Norton Utilities or Windows Disk Scan at mapping out bad blocks.

Now that this tool is available for OS X, the possibility of a Windows free office is getting closer each day. If Apple would just fix Spotlight and bring back the old Find File from OS 10.3.9, I would be able to literally throw the PC out the window and have a Mac ONLY household as was possible five years ago.