If you have an Intel Mac, want to optimize your hard drive (or something else), don’t reach for one of those CDs in your “utility belt.” Instead, make yourself a Mac OS X bootable USB Flash drive with your favorite utilities loaded on it!

Booting off an OS X CD isn’t fun. You have to remember to push the “C” key down upon startup of your Mac, then wait what seems forever. What if you could skip those troubles on your new Intel Macbook? You can, of course, if you use Subrosasoft’s Das Boot. It allows you to…

…take any third party boot CD (such as those shipped by SubRosaSoft.com Inc, Prosoft Engineering Inc, Alsoft Inc, or Micromat Inc) and quickly create a bootable diagnostic device that contains any of your own utilities you may wish to install. You can use your device to boot and repair Mac OS X computers* as needed without erasing it and taking away your ability to use it for other purposes such as playing music, or watching videos. With the help of DasBoot™ you get to carry all the tools you’ll need with you. But unlike expensive third party alternatives, you’ll have plenty of space left over in case you need to recover data.
Source: Das Boot Download page

Using Alsoft’s DiskWarrior as a starting point, I was able to make a bootable OS X USB Flash drive with DiskWarrior, as well as a few other utilities. But the best part about it was that the process to create a bootable USB Flash drive didn’t take that long…and booting up from the USB Flash drive was MUCH faster than off one of those CDs.

I’m sure that some folks may already knew about this, but this is a major time-saver for anyone with an Intel Mac(book) and buying a 1 gig USB flash drive just for this purpose is worth it.

As to what utilities to put on your Mac, there are a few you should look at. The disk optimization ones aren’t free, but worth the investment. Again, the neat thing is being able to put more than one utility on a Flash Drive, giving you more functionality than if you just had a bootable CD from one vendor. Here are a few…what would you add?

DISK DEFRAGMENTING/OPTIMIZATION
As a veteran computer user, I grew up using Norton’s Disk Utilities on my computers throughout the years. Although operating systems have gotten to be a lot tougher–especially GNU/Linux for which there is no need to run hard drive optimizing tools–both Mac and Windows require a bit of help. To that end, one of the first things I do when investing in Mac and Windows computers is to purchase a hard drive optimization tool.

When our collection of Macbooks arrived at work, I immediately ordered DiskWarrior as a general purpose tool. I had experience with DiskWarrior. However, one of our resident Mac gurus (ex-Systems Engineer for Apple) Larry Stegall pointed out a new tool, Drive Genius. Another tool is Micromat’s TechTools Pro.

These tools help clean up the bloat, fix file permissions, fix corruption on OS X volume structures, improve application performance and verify system integrity (whatever that means). In short, they fix problems when they are small rather than overwhelming you when they get bigger and meaner. If I had to point to any one software tool as a must-have, buy it now from this article, I would have to point you to one of the three options below. Yes, it is that critical you have one of these, especially if you are deploying lots of Macs or just have one at home or work.

Another program you might want to throw on your bootable USB Flash drive is TechTool Deluxe. I have it because I purchased the Apple Care Protection Plan. It’s described in this way:

TechTool Deluxe is part of the AppleCare Protection Plan for Macintosh computers. It is based on Micromat’s powerful TechTool Pro diagnostic and repair utility. TechTool Deluxe checks the major computer components covered under the AppleCare Protection Plan. It is available only by purchasing an AppleCare Protection Plan for a Macintosh…TechTool Deluxe can also repair many of the problems it finds.

Of course, on reading the web site, it appears I didn’t get the best of the two TechTools available (Deluxe and Pro). The TechTools Pro version apparently can do more than the Deluxe version (sheesh!). Oh well. If I need that functionality, I may have to spring for Drive Genius which seems to beat out DiskWarrior and TechTools Pro. Anyone use Drive Genius in more than the trial/evaluation mode?

Option 1: Drive Genius – http://tinyurl.com/7m7bn ; Cost: $99.00
Option 2: Disk Warrior – http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/ ; Cost: $99.95
Option 3: TechTools Pro – http://tinyurl.com/psqzc ; Cost: $98.00

MISCELLANEOUS UTILITIES (No-Cost)
Now that you have one of the big ones out of the way, you might want to consider one or all of these utilities for inclusion on your bootable USB Flash Drive.

muCommander
If you want file management a la Xtree Gold (if you know what this is, then you’re an old time DOS user!), in addition to FTP capability, then you must take a look at the muCommander. MuCommander is available for Macintosh, Windows and Linux and gives you control over moving, copying files around on your computer or via file transfer to a remote server or computer. You never know, you may need to back data off. Download muCommander at http://www.mucommander.com/

Carbon Copy Cloner
Although I haven’t used Carbon Copy Cloner, I know others have. It describes itself in this way,

Have you ever wanted a simple, complete, bootable backup of your hard drive? Have you ever wanted to upgrade to a larger hard drive with minimal hassle and without reinstalling your OS and all of your applications? Have you ever wanted to move your entire Mac OS X installation to a new computer? Then CCC is the tool for you!

Download Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich Software (free) at http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

What else would you add?

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