All Macs are bundled with essential utilities to perform basic & advanced operations. For Instance, Utilities>>Application folder holds bunch of sophisticated apps to run smoother tasks on OS X.
- Disk Utility: - Report & Maintain disk drive integrity.
- Activity Monitor: -Get to know CPU & RAM consumption on OS X
- Boot Camp: - No emulator required running Windows on Mac.
- Keychain Access: - Password management utility for OS X.
- Terminal: - Execution of high end tasks through low line languages
- Migration Assistance: Transfer of data between Mac-Mac & Mac-PC
Likewise, Mac possesses other useful apps that make it a self-dependent Operating System.
However, adding exceptions or considering some specific environment, user may move towards a non-Apple utility to get the job done. Let us list some of those apps that come into the line of accomplishing tasks better (or may be some time better) than OS X built-in utilities.
Parallels for Mac: OK so you can run Windows through Boot Camp assistance, then why need Parallels for Mac? While the Boot Camp is free bundled with OS X, parallel on other side costs around $80. Reason is simple, you don’t need to partition your drive so to run Windows. Like, myself who have 4-5 partitions of a single drive on OS X would have to merge all into 1 so as to create boot camp partition. While Parallels is an virtualization software which runs on the current partition i.e. (OS X in background). Data between OS X and Windows could be easily shared using drag & drop. You can run PC games, MSOffice and all great windows apps using Parallel for desktop. Also, the headache for appropriate drivers needed to install Windows is much comfortably resolved in Parallels.
Clone Software: Much before Time Machine came into existence, users were depended on clone & imaging software to take timely backups. Though TM reduced the burden of backup to a greater extent, still clone software hasn’t lost their relevancy. Cloning Mac hard drive is still one of the most recommended activities to safe your data from a sudden hard drive crash or failure. To backup a troubled hard drive it is the cloning & imaging that will work out and not Time Machine. No matter how good & essential Time Machine is, still it can’t create bootable backups for OS X Mac. As a Mac user, I would recommend both to clone OS X drive & to take Time Machine backups. Some of the best clone utility for OS X are:
However, adding exceptions or considering some specific environment, user may move towards a non-Apple utility to get the job done. Let us list some of those apps that come into the line of accomplishing tasks better (or may be some time better) than OS X built-in utilities.
Parallels for Mac: OK so you can run Windows through Boot Camp assistance, then why need Parallels for Mac? While the Boot Camp is free bundled with OS X, parallel on other side costs around $80. Reason is simple, you don’t need to partition your drive so to run Windows. Like, myself who have 4-5 partitions of a single drive on OS X would have to merge all into 1 so as to create boot camp partition. While Parallels is an virtualization software which runs on the current partition i.e. (OS X in background). Data between OS X and Windows could be easily shared using drag & drop. You can run PC games, MSOffice and all great windows apps using Parallel for desktop. Also, the headache for appropriate drivers needed to install Windows is much comfortably resolved in Parallels.
Clone Software: Much before Time Machine came into existence, users were depended on clone & imaging software to take timely backups. Though TM reduced the burden of backup to a greater extent, still clone software hasn’t lost their relevancy. Cloning Mac hard drive is still one of the most recommended activities to safe your data from a sudden hard drive crash or failure. To backup a troubled hard drive it is the cloning & imaging that will work out and not Time Machine. No matter how good & essential Time Machine is, still it can’t create bootable backups for OS X Mac. As a Mac user, I would recommend both to clone OS X drive & to take Time Machine backups. Some of the best clone utility for OS X are:
- Carbon Copy Cloner
- SuperDuper
- Stellar Drive Clone (go for family license)
Data Savage tools: Like others, OS X is vulnerable to data loss through file deletion, formatting and loss of data through corruption. Any time a file is deleted from trash or formatted, it will be beyond the reach of the user. Adding more worse to the situation, a user might not have Time Machine backup or clone backup of the file, forcing user to hunt for data savaging software. Since, OS X doesn’t incorporate any data recovery tool, web is the best place to look out for trusted Mac data recovery software. Among the genuine software for Macs, fall in:-
Most of the data recovery software including the above ones will work in a similar fashion. They let you select the drive, scan the drive, preview the lost, formatted files and lastly to recover those files. There are few software that are available for free, most of them requires around $100 registration to get back files.
Drive Recovery: Alongside data loss & recovery, drive repair is another most important thing to be jotted down by the user. A hard drive (old or new) can quickly become a victim of logical corruption. Such drives are to be repaired with the help of disk utility immediately. Though, disk utility sometimes will fail due to occurrence of directory structure corruption. At this moment, user having the backup of the troubled drive will be at ease to those who hadn’t backed up the data on the drive. One can always make use of Mac disk repair software to scan & repair drive from logical corruption. You may opt below utilities:-
Drive Recovery: Alongside data loss & recovery, drive repair is another most important thing to be jotted down by the user. A hard drive (old or new) can quickly become a victim of logical corruption. Such drives are to be repaired with the help of disk utility immediately. Though, disk utility sometimes will fail due to occurrence of directory structure corruption. At this moment, user having the backup of the troubled drive will be at ease to those who hadn’t backed up the data on the drive. One can always make use of Mac disk repair software to scan & repair drive from logical corruption. You may opt below utilities:-
The above-mentioned tools possess algorithms to analyze a bad directory structure and replace it with new one, thus removing those cryptic errors.