Scannerz for Mac

User Reviews

• Very good product

  Williams-210April 19, 2015

  Pros

  I think the best feature of this product is its ability to start and stop tests and resume them. If you have big disks like me this is a god send.

  Cons

  Not the best looking, but it's ok

  Summary

  After having a serious hard drive crash, I got this to do periodic tests on both my internal drive and my external backup drive. Our company hires an Apple certified consultant to do some of the admin on Xserve's we have in house, and he recommended it to me. I figured if it was good enough for him it's good enough for me. One of the things that stands out to me is the ability to start and stop tests on big drives. The company that makes this product barely mentions that feature but if you want to evaluate terabytes of data, that's really a very big deal. I think this is the only product on the market with that capability. I run Scannerz on both my internal and external drives. The internal drive is a 256GB SSD and it can get it's test done in a few minutes. The critical drive, which is the backup drive is a 2TB USB drive and using other tools it would take hours on end to scan it. With this, I can run tests over lunch, come back, stop them, and resume them the next day. After having a bad drive lose tons of data on me, I now do this once a month. The product comes with some other stuff but I haven't even really used some of that yet. The application is a test tool and it's not great looking, but it's a tool, not a work of art. All I care about is that it gets its job done, and it seems to be quite good at that.

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• Offset my last review since I can't delete it.

  derekbergeyJanuary 12, 2015

  Pros

  Does what it says, and has amazing customer service. Read what it is and what it does before you buy it. Projecting images of what you want it to do that it does not do doesn't help.

  Cons

  Does not ding or make me feel like I'm a highly educated human being.

  Summary

  I haven't figured out how to take down my last review as both cnet and macupdate are apparently making it as difficult as possible. In the meantime, I'm leaving this to offset the last. I haven't completely fallen in love with this software suite, but it's wrong of me to instantly write it off. Give is a try as by all accounts, it works well enough and does what's advertised. The problem with online reviews is sometimes there are those who are ill informed with stupid shaped feet that can leave bad reviews on good shoes just because the dumb don't know how to tie the laces. In this case, try the shoes on before you listen to me and my dumb shaped feet.

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• Very good product for testing drives, cables, etc

  BuzzB55November 27, 2014

  Pros

  This is probably the best drive scanning tool on the market. I was FINALLY able to isolate a problem that had been bugging me for months and this tool figured it out.

  Cons

  None really. I guess the user interface could look better but I don't expect a diagnostic tool to look like a Mona Lisa.

  Summary

  I was having problems with an external drive. I would plug it into the USB port and it would seem to work find. But often when I'd boot up Disk Utility would report that the drive needed to be repaired. I had to do this, often several times a week. I thought it was an OS bug and was about ready to give up. I tried out Scannerz because an independent Apple Support Tech recommended it. I did surface scans on the drive and Scannerz found nothing. I contacted the tech support team and they told me to try interface tests. During prolonged interface tests, the data would become corrupt. I contacted the Scannerz support team again and they asked me if the USB powered drive had an auxiliary power adapter. I said yes and tried it with that. The problems went away and I haven't had a problem since. Thank you SCSC - this was a frustrating problem and Scannerz helped figure it out. For those interested, apparently if a USB powered drive, which was how I was using my drive, sucks enough power out of the system, the interface card in the USB box can get down to a stage where it can corrupt the data being transferred. This is what Scannerz interface test was picking up. When I used the regular AC adapter for the USB drive, it didn't overload the system and the problem ended. This is the only tool I know that can do these types of tests. It does a lot more too. I'm very impressed.

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• This is a very good product for the money.

  F_PietersNovember 25, 2014

  Pros

  The scanning ability of Scannerz is well above that of other products. I took a drive I discarded because none of the other tools I was using could scan it, but Scannerz could. It indicated severe damage in the boot sections of the drive. All the other tools I used just sat there and hiccuped when I tested this drive with them. Scannerz made it clear how bad the drive really was. I also like all the other auxiliary tools, especially Performance Probe. It shows application memory use in a pie chart similar to the old Activity Monitor did which makes it easy to tell how much memory an application is using. I used Phoenix to create an emergency boot volume and do a basic clone and it did a good job. Don't confuse Phoenix with CCC, because it's primary job is to help recover data from a drive or SSD with bad blocks, not do customized cloning. I used FSE to find out that Icon Services agent was causing the system to eat up a lot of disk space. I'm impressed!

  Cons

  They need to keep their manuals up to date and not put important information about stuff like App Nap problems in their release notes. The App Nap problem is well known and if someone isn't aware of it, they will, like one of the other reviewers discovered the hard way, mistake it for a product problem.

  Summary

  I liked this product a lot. The only shortcomings that I see are that you absolutely must read the release notes because the information in them is not trivial. The product is unique, and I consider this a very, very good buy for the money.

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• Good product with excellent tech support

  TomB2010November 14, 2014

  Pros

  I got this because I was having really strange problems with my system. Scannerz was the only tool I could find that actually was able to let me know the cable in my MacBook Pro was faulty. I had questions and the people answered them fairly quickly.

  Cons

  The tool FSE which is included in the package is a little difficult to understand.

  Summary

  I was having some erratic problems with delays. I recently upgraded to Yosemite and thought maybe that was it, but some of the problems were surfacing in Mavericks too. Some guys suggested this tool, so I got it. It picked up irregularities during scans and the diagnostics tests told me it was probably the cable. I wasn't sure what to make of it so I contacted the company. I was pleasantly surprised to find they were willing to carry on a dialog and help me. The drive wasn't bad, it was the SATA cable. This is the only product I know of capable of this. Support was excellent. I also like Phoenix and Performance Probe, which come with the package. FSE seems a little strange, but I'm not really used to it yet.

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• Waste of money and time

  derekbergeyNovember 13, 2014

  Pros

  It found 22 irregularities, it took 12 or so hours and still counting to do so.

  Cons

  Everything. I wanted it to be something new and I wanted to help a young company. If you own diskwarrior or carbon copy cloner stick with them. I was hoping this would be similar to Tech Tool, disk warrior something. Instead, it's a 24+ hour scanner that ask you to sit tight and not use your computer. It's a cloner that also takes 24 hours and isn't selective about what can be backed up. All of it. Or nothing. So, stick with Carbon Copy Cloner.

  Summary

  I bought a package suite in the hopes that I could support the little guy, I could find a gem or a product and that this program would do something that both disk warrior and disk utility fail to do. So far, it does do something that both of them fail to do and that is run for a consequitve 12 hours without finishing. It is mind boggling how long this program takes and that is ask you to not run anything else while it's working. Why on earth would you create a scanning program that will lock me out of my computer for anywhere from 12 to 48 hours so that it can scan? The other suite of products has also been pointless. Phoenix might or might not be destroying my hard drive as it creates a back up, something that Carbon Copy Cloner does better and I should have stuck with them. FSE is a graph. It's activity monitor but as a pie chart. So, hold onto your socks for that one. And I'm sure there is something else that is equally forgettable. All in all, this is a waste of money and if possible, I'll delete it if they would just give me half my money back.<br /><br /><span class='notifyMsg'> Updated </span>on Jan 10, 2015<p/>This is Derek Bergey. Have contacted the company they've helped me with the software. While it may not be perfect it's much better than described. I'm currently working to have my review taken down. So, try the program, hopefully you'll love it. Derek<br /><br /><span class='notifyMsg'> Updated </span>on Jan 10, 2015<p/>I haven't figured out how to take down my last review as both cnet and macupdate are apparently making it as difficult as possible. In the meantime, I'm leaving this to offset the last. I haven't completely fallen in love with this software suite, but it's wrong of me to instantly write it off. Give is a try as by all accounts, it works well enough and does what's advertised. The problem with online reviews is sometimes there are those who are ill informed with stupid shaped feet that can leave bad reviews on good shoes just because the dumb don't know how to tie the laces. In this case, try the shoes on before you listen to me and my dumb shaped feet.

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• Excellent testing tool, and easy to use.

  MikeH-65May 19, 2014

  Pros

  I found that this product did a much better job testing and finding problems with my hard drive than another product I own that cost twice as much does. It can identify other problems like bad cables as well I found this product easy to use. The manual has step by step instructions. Comes with other products that I haven't really become familiar with yet.

  Cons

  Could look better.

  Summary

  Maybe it's because I got a newer version of this software than that other guy did, but I thought it was easy to use. The manual has step by step instructions to tell you how to use it. I got this because I had a problem with an external drive on Mavericks. There are so many reports about external drive problems with Mavericks that I wasn't sure if the drive was bad, the OS was bad, or the drivers that came with the drive were bad. To make matters worse, I used another product that cost 2X as much as Scannerz on it and all it would do was hiccup by going into a reset loop without telling me anything. On the other product, I'd start a scan, it would get about 3 minutes into it, lock up temporarily, reset itself, and then repeat this loop without telling me anything. After I got Scannerz, it started its test and about the same place where the other was resetting it started picking up what it calls irregularities followed by errors. The drive wasn't just bad, it was really bad. Scannerz scanned the entire drive successfully and identified a ton of problems. I put it into diagnostics mode and it confirmed the bad state of the drive. Scannerz does a better job testing drives than the other product that cost 2 times more. I definitely recommend this product.

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• Very Advanced Product .... but not for the squeamish

  Doxy55June 15, 2012

  Pros

  Better results than anything else on the market.

  Cons

  This company seems to specialize in very technical products intended for very technical users. This product is not for the squeamish. Limited to detection only.

  Summary

  If you're impressed with shiny objects, this product isn't for you. If you want to double click on an icon and have a product that comes up, does a little song and dance routine, and then promptly misses half the problems on your system or bedazzles you by putting a GUI wrapper around a system call, then this product isn't for you either. This is a basic application that outdoes anything else on the market at what it does - detection of problems on hard drives. The interface is utilitarian. I would guess they used "diskutil" as a model or made it look sort of like diskutil for compatibility. It's simple enough to use for basic scanning, but when you start getting into the manual's troubleshooting sections, especially using cursory mode, I think it will be over the heads of most people except engineers and technicians. I'd be willing to bet most people don't even know what a 512 byte sector is!! They should make two manuals: A basic users manual, which anyone could use, and an advanced users manual. I bought the commecial version with FSE-Lite. I'll likely get the full version of FSE. Since this review isn't about FSE-Lite or FSE I won't go over them, but I'd recommend going to their web site and looking them up. FSE is **definitely** not for casual users, and their web page says so. From the quality point, it picks up things others miss. This really is hardware oriented testing, but you can't be a dingbat when using it. It says terminate all other programs during a scan and it means it. It also operates at admin level and requires a password. If every user on the planet was like me, I'd give this product 5 stars. Everyone isn't like me though, and I suspect the average user would give it 3 stars since the software is so utilitarian in appearance. I'll compromise and give it 4 stars.

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• Much better in depth scanning than other tools

  RKOrionJune 14, 2012

  Pros

  This product has much better hard drive scanning than any of the other common tools available. It was able to find problems on my drive that two other products completely missed.

  Cons

  This is really pure hard drive scanning and testing only. No other tools, but then again it costs 1/3 what some of the others do too. The manual is huge and I think it will be a little too technical for a lot of people. In some places the manual sounds like it's written for engineers and technicians, not the average user.

  Summary

  I was having performance problems which I thought were related to spotlight indexing. I got this company's other product called "Spot-O-Meter" right here off of CNET. I then went ahead and got SpotOff to start and stop spotlight indexing. Both those products worked well but it became clear after a while that my spinning beach balls when loading some apps were not due to spotlight interference. The write up for Scannerz on this company's site sounded like the problems I was having, but our tech had tested this system using 2 other diagnostic tools, both well known and expensive. Both said there was nothing wrong with the system. I went ahead and bought Scannerz anyway and ran it myself because I was sick of this problem. During the first initial scan, Scannerz started indicating irregularities with my hard drive. I showed these to our tech and he replaced the drive. Now it works great. Scannerz picked up problems that the other two tools missed completely. Scannerz is really hard drive scanning only. It doesn't do other stuff like indexing correction or defragging, but it does a better job of scanning than anything else, AFAIK.

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