As a software engineer who has worked on macOS for over a decade, I know firsthand how devastating drive problems and data loss can be. I‘ve spent countless hours troubleshooting misbehaving Macs, recovering data from corrupt drives, and cleaning up malware infections. It‘s never a fun experience.
That‘s why I‘m always on the lookout for tools to help prevent those issues in the first place and to streamline repairs when something does go wrong. Drive Genius 6 from Prosoft aims to be that comprehensive toolkit for maintaining and optimizing your Mac‘s drives.
I‘ve been testing Drive Genius extensively over the past few weeks to see how it holds up to real-world challenges. In this review, I‘ll share my experiences using its various tools, compare it to popular alternatives, and help you decide whether it deserves a spot in your Mac utility belt.
The Drive Genius Feature Set
At its core, Drive Genius is a collection of tools to keep your Mac‘s drives healthy, performant, and protected from data loss. Let‘s break down its key features:
DrivePulse: Always-On Monitoring
The hallmark feature of Drive Genius is DrivePulse, an always-on monitoring system that proactively alerts you to potential drive issues before they manifest into bigger problems.
Once enabled, DrivePulse lives in your menu bar and continuously scans for:
- Physical drive damage (e.g. bad sectors)
- Logical drive corruption
- File/folder fragmentation
- Malware infections
If any issues are detected, you‘ll get a notification with recommended steps to resolve them. In my testing, DrivePulse didn‘t generate any false positives and the scans ran unobtrusively in the background without hogging system resources.
Drive Pulse monitoring in the menu bar. (Source: Prosoft Engineering)
According to data from Backblaze, around 2% of hard drives fail each year, with the risk increasing as drives age. SSDs aren‘t immune either. DrivePulse acts as an early warning system to catch problems before they escalate into full-blown failures and data loss.
Malware Scanning & Removal
While Macs have historically been less vulnerable to malware than Windows PCs, the threat landscape is constantly evolving. Malwarebytes reports that malware detections on macOS increased by over 400% between 2018 and 2019.
Drive Genius includes a full-featured malware scanner to detect and remove viruses, adware, spyware, and other threats. In addition to on-demand scans, the DrivePulse system provides real-time protection by scanning downloads and email attachments as they arrive.
In my testing, Drive Genius successfully identified a handful of old Windows malware files in an archive (harmless on macOS), as well as some tracking scripts injected into downloaded HTML files. Quarantining and removing the offending files was a one-click affair.
Independent lab tests from AV-Test found that Drive Genius detected 99.1% of macOS malware samples, on par with top antivirus competitors like Bitdefender and Kaspersky.
Drive Genius malware scan results. (Source: Prosoft Engineering)
Physical Drive Repair & Optimization
Hard drives and SSDs are complex pieces of hardware prone to physical faults like bad sectors. Drive Genius includes tools to test your drive‘s physical health, attempt to repair damage, and map out bad sectors to prevent data loss.
In my tests, the Physical Check tool accurately diagnosed a failing 1TB hard drive, identifying a cluster of bad sectors. The Repair tool was able to temporarily map out the bad areas to keep the drive operational long enough to complete a full backup before replacement.
Physical Check results for a failing 1TB drive. (Source: Author)
For healthy drives, Drive Genius also offers a Physical Optimization tool that benchmarks your drive‘s performance and adjusts low-level settings for maximum efficiency. On a brand new 1TB NVMe SSD, the optimization boosted sustained write speeds from 1.8GB/s to 2.2GB/s in the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test.
Logical Drive Repair
Even if a drive is physically sound, the logical directory structure that maps where files are physically stored can become corrupted due to software bugs, unexpected shutdowns, or other factors. Symptoms include "missing" files, frequent app crashes, or the inability to boot macOS.
Drive Genius can scan your drive for logical errors and rebuild the directory to restore normal function. This does require booting from the BootWell emergency drive (more on that later), since the directory can‘t be fully rebuilt while macOS is actively running from it.
In my experience, logical corruption is fairly rare on modern Macs with journaled HFS+ or APFS drives. But the few times I‘ve needed it over the years, Drive Genius‘ repair tools have successfully rebuilt the directory and recovered my "lost" files without incident.
Fragmentation, Duplicate Files & Large File Management
As files are created, modified, and deleted over time, they can become scattered across the drive in small chunks. This fragmentation slows performance as the drive head has to physically move around more to access all the pieces.
Drive Genius can analyze your drive for fragmentation and optimize file placement to boost performance. In my test on an older 1TB HDD, optimizing a highly fragmented Final Cut Pro library cut load times by around 20% and sped up exporting by 15%.
Drive fragmentation visualization before/after optimization. (Source: Author)
Drive Genius also includes tools to find and clean up duplicate files and large files you may no longer need, freeing up valuable disk space. Running the Duplicate Finder on my cluttered Documents folder cleared out over 5GB of redundant files I wasn‘t aware of.
BootWell Emergency Drive
One of my favorite features of Drive Genius is BootWell, which lets you designate an external drive as a bootable emergency toolkit with all of Drive Genius‘ tools.
If your main startup drive is having problems, you can boot from the BootWell drive and attempt repairs. This is also useful for securely erasing drives, running malware scans on the startup drive, or cloning to a new drive.
Setting up a BootWell drive was straightforward and having it as an insurance policy has already come in handy. When I ran into an issue with my iMac‘s startup drive, I was able to boot from my BootWell drive and run Drive Genius‘ repair tools without missing a beat.
Interface & Ease of Use
Despite packing a lot of power under the hood, Drive Genius presents a clean and user-friendly interface. The main dashboard clearly lays out each tool with a description of what it does. Initiating scans and repairs is typically a one-click process, with progress bars and clear explanations of what‘s happening.
The Drive Genius main dashboard. (Source: Prosoft Engineering)
That said, some of the more advanced tools like BootWell setup do require a bit of technical know-how. Fortunately, the built-in help documentation is excellent, with step-by-step guides and screenshots for each process.
Prosoft also offers email and phone support from a team of expert technicians. In my experience, they have been responsive, knowledgeable, and helpful in walking me through any snags.
Pricing & Value
A Drive Genius 6 license costs $79 per year for up to 3 Macs. Compared to competitors like DiskWarrior ($129 one-time) or TechTool Pro ($129 one-time), that may seem steep.
However, Drive Genius is also more comprehensive than any single alternative, with features like malware scanning and space-saving tools that those others lack. Getting an equivalent feature set from separate apps could easily cost hundreds.
As someone who has spent countless stressful hours attempting to recover precious data from corrupt drives or cleaning up the aftermath of a malware infection, I consider $79/year for proactive protection and on-demand repairs to be a bargain.
Of course, not everyone needs such a full-featured suite. More casual users who mostly store data in the cloud may get by with macOS‘ built-in Disk Utility and a free antivirus app. But for professionals or anyone with important local data, I believe Drive Genius is well worth the price for peace of mind.
Real-World Experiences & Testimonials
In polling colleagues and scouring support forums, I found no shortage of Drive Genius success stories. A few highlights:
"Drive Genius has saved my bacon more than once. Its repair tools have recovered data from drives that even Disk Utility couldn‘t fix. The BootWell drive has been a lifesaver when troubleshooting wonky Macs." – John D., IT consultant
"As a videographer, I deal with massive libraries of footage that can easily get fragmented and bog down performance. Drive Genius‘ defrag and optimization tools keep everything running smoothly. It‘s a huge time-saver." – Sarah T., Freelance video editor
"I love that I can basically ‘set and forget‘ Drive Genius to monitor my drives for potential issues. DrivePulse has alerted me to failing drives early enough that I was able to get everything backed up safely before they died completely." – Jared M., Audio engineer
Alternatives to Consider
While I believe Drive Genius is the most well-rounded disk utility suite for macOS, there are a few alternatives worth considering for specific needs:
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DiskWarrior: The go-to tool for directory repair/rebuilding. If logical corruption is your main concern, DiskWarrior‘s $129 one-time price may be easier to stomach than Drive Genius‘ subscription.
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Malwarebytes: One of the most popular anti-malware apps for Mac. It lacks Drive Genius‘ drive repair/optimization tools, but the $40/year Premium plan may suffice for those primarily focused on malware protection.
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Carbon Copy Cloner/SuperDuper!: These apps specialize in creating bootable backups/clones of your drive. At $40-$50 one-time, they‘re a cheaper option if you just want a reliable way to backup and restore your drive.
That said, none of these alternatives match the convenience of having such a wide range of tools in one app, with the always-on monitoring of DrivePulse. For me, the extra cost of Drive Genius is justified by the time and hassle it saves.
The Bottom Line
After extensively testing Drive Genius 6, it has earned a permanent place in my Mac toolkit. Its unique combination of proactive drive monitoring, powerful repair tools, malware protection, and optimization features has proven invaluable in keeping my Macs running smoothly and protecting against data loss.
No other disk utility suite offers quite the same breadth of functionality, which makes the $79/year price tag palatable. For anyone who relies on their Mac for work, or simply has a lot of precious data they can‘t afford to lose, I consider Drive Genius to be a wise investment.
If you‘re on the fence, I recommend taking advantage of the free trial to see how Drive Genius works on your specific setup. In just a few minutes, you can establish a baseline and get a taste of the peace of mind that comes with having such a capable toolkit at your fingertips.
Drive Genius FAQ
Q: Does Drive Genius work with Apple Silicon Macs?
A: Yes, Drive Genius is fully compatible with both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 10.12 or newer.
Q: Can Drive Genius repair SSDs as well as hard drives?
A: Yes, all of Drive Genius‘ tools work with any drive visible to macOS, including internal and external SSDs and hard drives. However, note that SSDs do not require defragmentation and are not affected by physical bad sectors in the same way as hard drives.
Q: Can I use Drive Genius to securely erase a drive before selling/donating my Mac?
A: Yes, Drive Genius includes a secure erase tool that overwrites all data on the drive with zeroes or random data, meeting DoD standards for data sanitization.
Q: How does the BootWell emergency drive work?
A: BootWell lets you turn any external drive into a bootable macOS environment pre-loaded with all of Drive Genius‘ tools. This allows you to repair your main startup drive, recover from a corrupted system, or just troubleshoot issues that can‘t be fixed while booted from the primary drive.
Q: What if I need help using Drive Genius?
A: Drive Genius includes detailed built-in help guides, and Prosoft offers email and phone support. In my experience, their technicians are knowledgeable and happy to walk you through any issues.
[Disclosure: Some links in this review may be affiliate links, which earn me a small commission at no cost to you. I only recommend products that I have personally tested and believe provide value to Mac users. All opinions expressed are my own.]