Alsoft recommends that you regularly make a complete backup of your disks. This will allow you to restore your data regardless of any problem that might arise, including those that DiskWarrior cannot repair such as damaged partition maps, corrupted disk drivers, or mechanical disk malfunctions.
Rebuilding (Repairing) Your Startup Disk
Your startup disk is the disk containing the current System Folder. Since the startup disk cannot be removed from the desktop, you cannot rebuild the startup disk directory. To rebuild the startup disk you need to start up from another disk. If you do not have another hard disk with a System Folder, you can startup from your Mac OS system CD. To rebuild Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) disks, the Mac OS system CD must be Mac OS 8.1 or higher.
Installation
If you purchased DiskWarrior over the Internet, it is recommended that you put the folder containing the DiskWarrior application on a floppy disk since it is required that DiskWarrior reside on another disk when rebuilding your startup disk (see the manual for details on rebuilding your startup disk). Also, record the serial number you received in the e-mail that confirmed your purchase of DiskWarrior. You will need this serial number the first time you run DiskWarrior.
Start Up Without Extensions
Before rebuilding a disk, start up your computer with all extensions disabled or start up from a Mac OS System Software CD. This significantly reduces the potential for unforeseen incompatibilities.
Compatibility
SCSI Disks
DiskWarrior IS completely compatible with the SCSI hard disks used in some computer models.
IDE Disks
DiskWarrior IS completely compatible with the IDE hard disks used in some computer models.
USB Disks
DiskWarrior IS completely compatible with the USB disks used with some computer models.
Disk Arrays and RAID Hardware/Software
DiskWarrior IS completely compatible with disk arrays and RAID hardware and software.
AppleScript
DiskWarrior implements a Rebuild event for controlling DiskWarrior with an AppleScript. This means that simply sending a Rebuild event to DiskWarrior is all that is required to rebuild one or more disks. Use something similar to the following example to script a Rebuild event.
tell application "DiskWarrior™"
activate
rebuild diskID replacing yes scavenging normal
end tell
The "replacing" parameter dictates whether you want to be asked before the directory is replaced with the rebuild directory. The scavenging parameter dictates whether the need to scavenge for directory data should be determined by DiskWarrior or whether you always want scavenging. Check the DiskWarrior page on the Alsoft web site (http://www.alsoft.com/DWinfo.html) for example AppleScripts.