bmug@well.sf.ca.us (BMUG) (07/28/90)
I have touched a shipping copy of Norton Utilities for the Mac at Computerware (MacOrchard) Berkeley. Yesterday. However, Steve Costa, our disk recovery guru, warns that it still can't recover some of his test disks. Therefore, don't expect it to be perfect! Avi Rappoport send mail to nilesinc@well.sf.ca.us about EndNote
wilber@nunki.usc.edu (John Wilber) (07/31/90)
In article <19270@well.sf.ca.us> bmug@well.sf.ca.us (BMUG) writes: >I have touched a shipping copy of Norton Utilities for the Mac at Computerware >(MacOrchard) Berkeley. Yesterday. However, Steve Costa, our disk recovery >guru, warns that it still can't recover some of his test disks. Therefore, >don't expect it to be perfect! Oh come on, no software can fix ALL disk problems (some are hardware related and some are just plain unrecoverable problems). Just because Disk Doctor can't fix every disk in the world doesn't mean it has bugs. The important issue is whether it fixes more disk problems than the alternatives. My experience has been that it does a *much* better job than the competition. By the way, you should check your source to see if Steve was really running the final release of NUM. Steve Costa has complained loudly in the past about problems with BETA versions of NUM. He should know better than the complain about finding problems in beta-ware. If it had no problems, it wouldn't be beta would it?
werner@cs.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig) (07/31/90)
In article <11117@chaph.usc.edu> wilber@nunki.usc.edu (John Wilber) writes: >In article <19270@well.sf.ca.us> bmug@well.sf.ca.us (BMUG) writes: >>I have touched a shipping copy of Norton Utilities for the Mac at Computerware >>(MacOrchard) Berkeley. Yesterday. However, Steve Costa, our disk recovery >>guru, warns that it still can't recover some of his test disks. Therefore, >>don't expect it to be perfect! > >Oh come on, no software can fix ALL disk problems (some are hardware related >and some are just plain unrecoverable problems). Just because Disk Doctor >can't fix every disk in the world doesn't mean it has bugs. The important >issue is whether it fixes more disk problems than the alternatives. My >experience has been that it does a *much* better job than the competition. > >By the way, you should check your source to see if Steve was really running >the final release of NUM. Steve Costa has complained loudly in the past >about problems with BETA versions of NUM. He should know better than the >complain about finding problems in beta-ware. If it had no problems, it >wouldn't be beta would it? not quite. beta is when the author thinks it is bug-free but would like others to verify that before staking his reputation on it by taking money for it (or so the theory goes) The fact that a product goes through a lot of beta-iterations may be an indicator that it's software trying to do something very hard, or that the authors didn't quite know what they were doing. I am a beta-tester of the Norton Utilities and would like to give the authors the benefit of the doubt as it is a long needed piece of software and a very tricky problem to solve ... Cheers, ---Werner ps: all the original article said was: "don't expect it to be perfect", and I can hardly see why anyone would object to that statement. of course, one would like this particular type of software to be perfect (and very much so), but what do you think my guess is why Apple has left their users high and dry by providing so few and incomplete system utilities? if you said something relating to "a bag of worms", you are very close ...
wilber@nunki.usc.edu (John Wilber) (07/31/90)
In article <846@earth.cs.utexas.edu> werner@cs.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig) writes: >ps: all the original article said was: "don't expect it to be perfect", > and I can hardly see why anyone would object to that statement. Maybe I'm just picking nits, but in the Subject line it said "Buggy". Of course no product is "perfect", but claims that NUM is buggy are far from the truth, as I am sure lots of people here can testify to.
bmug@well.sf.ca.us (BMUG) (08/04/90)
OK, I checked with Steve Costa, and this is what he says: Norton does very good data recovery, but he's seen 10 - 15 % problems with disk repair. For example, we were repairing a 160MB hard disk, and superclock beeped. After that, all the folders on the disk appeared, but wouldn't open, and the data was gone. Even Steve couldn't recover it. These problems were reported to Norton before shipping, and tested on the shipping version. Avi Rappoport (send EndNote questions to nilesinc@well.sf.ca.us)
wilber@aludra.usc.edu (John Wilber) (08/04/90)
In article <19372@well.sf.ca.us> bmug@well.sf.ca.us (BMUG) writes: >OK, I checked with Steve Costa, and this is what he says: Norton does very >good data recovery, but he's seen 10 - 15 % problems with disk repair. I wish you would be more specific about what 10-15% means. Is that 10% of the time a disk can't be fully recovered? If that's what you mean, it is definitely NOT a bug. The fact is that the possibility of reconstructing the data on a damaged disk depends on the extent and kind of damage. If you use scissors to cut away a hunk of the disk there is no way to recover that data. It's not a bug, the software just can't recover data that isn't there anymore. >For example, we were repairing a 160MB hard disk, and superclock beeped. >After that, all the folders on the disk appeared, but wouldn't open, and >the data was gone. Even Steve couldn't recover it. There's not much to go on from this description (esp. what impact do you think SuperClock had on this?), but it sounds like disk doctor just couldn't fix the disk because it was too damaged. If it seems that that was not the case, we would like to know so that we can track down the problem. >These problems were reported to Norton before shipping, and tested on the >shipping version. I talked to one of the Mac developers about this and he says it doesn't sound like anything he saw in the beta bug reports. Is there something more we can go on here? Maybe we should take this matter into mail-land and stop bothering the other netters with this. No?