Micromat TechTool Pro - 4 User Manual

Page 1 of 7 © One Stop Digital (OSD) Ltd 2005

TechTool Pro 4

Basic Guide

Introduction

This guide covers some of the basic operations of Micromat’s TechTool Pro v4. TechTool Pro
4 is similar to Norton Utilities in its features. However Symantec have discontinued support of
Norton Utilities for Mac OS X and TechTool Pro takes it place well. We would recommend all
Mac OS X users should have TechTool Pro running on their machines and to remove Norton
Utilities as it can do more damage than good.

TechTool Pro has a range of features to keep you Mac running sweetly. It can check all the
hardware as well as your drives and the files on them.

TechTool Pro has a main window
with a common Toolbar across the
top which is divided into 5
groupings and a lower section which
varies according to which section
you are in.:-

Suites - Preset combinations of tests of hardware, drives and files.

Tests - Here you can choose to do individual tests and choose which drives to test as well.

Performance - This section helps you defragment & optimise the drive (volume) directories

and files.

Tools - A selection of tools for the advanced user. Do not go in here unless you really know
what you are doing.

Safety - Where you can set up protection & Diagnostics checks. This should
not be instead of backups but as well as!

In this guide we are going to concentrate on 3 areas of TechTool Pro

Prevention & Diagnostics setup (like Norton Filesaver)
Testing Drives (like Norton Disk Doctor)
Optimising drives (like Norton Speed Disk)

Page 2 of 7 © One Stop Digital (OSD) Ltd 2005

Protection & Diagnostics setup...

For TechTool to work well and in the future to be able to recover Files
and Drives it is very important to set up the Protection and Diagnostics
sections correctly.

To do this go into the Safety section by clicking on the ‘Safety’ button
in the Toolbar across the top of the main TechTool window.

Select Protection Setup and click
on the arrow button. The
Protection works by saving copies
of each drives Directory files in
TechTool’s own format so that the
Recover Tool (in the Tools section)
stands a much greater chance of
recovering lost files or even the
entire drive. From here you can
setup which drives will be protected
as well as which drives you save
these backup directory files to and
it is well worth saving them to
several other drives on your
system to increase your Recovery
chances.

We recommend you don’t have it
update the Protection Files at any
other time other than Login. If
you tend to leave your machine
running 24/7 then select an
update time when the system isn’t
doing anything else say like 3 am.

Select which volume you want to
protect and a secondary window will
open. Choose which drives to save
your Protection Files on to and
click OK to return you to the main
window.

When you have completed the settings then click
on the Execute Now button to update the Protection
Files straight away.

Page 3 of 7 © One Stop Digital (OSD) Ltd 2005

As with Prevention choose Diagnostics
Setup from the Safety Window.

The Diagnostics will run a quick check
on the selected drives and warn you if
there problems before they get so
serious it becomes impossible to fix.

Select which drives will be tested and
set it so it only runs at Login or when
the system is not active, if you leave
your system on 24/7.

Click on the Execute Now button to
run the Diagnostics tests straight
away to check there aren’t any
problems already.

With Prevention and Diagnostics set
up to routinely check the drives on
your system TechTool Pro will help
you keep your system in good
working order.

Diagnostics setup...

If the Diagnostics warn you of a problem or you suspect there are problems with a drive
then you need to be able to test and repair it.

Tips. Make sure all other applications and documents are
closed as TechTool needs to be able to unmount drives
to fully test them.

Check the ‘Repair On’ option in the Finder Info of the
Files Test section otherwise you will need to rerun the
tests with it on to fix them.

In TechTool Pro you can run a set of automated tests using the Suites option
which will run a predetermined set of tests on your hardware and all your drives.

Alternatively you can manually run specific tests using the Tests Option which
allows you to test for problems on an individual drive.