TechTool Pro is a powerful utility for testing, repair and maintenance of your Mac.
This even extends to disk defragmentation (something usually associated with Windows) and data recovery. TechTool Pro certainly comes with a good pedigree - TechTool Deluxe which is the most complete version of TechTool available, is part of AppleCare's Protection Plan. So if Apple trust it, it must be quite good.
To perform simple Diagnostics and Repair just use the Check Computer feature to perform a complete test. This includes a SMART test of the computer's built-in hard drive to check for impending drive failure, a RAM test and a check of the disk directories. Volume Rebuild is similar to the Permissions Repair found in OS X Disk Doctor and basically optimizes critical data structures and will repair any problems.
TechTool Pro performs also optimizes via file optimization and volume optimization consolidates the free space on a hard drive. Meanwhile Data Recovery offers several methods of data recovery from corrupted drives while a feature called Trash History can track the location of deleted files.
One of the more unique features of TechTool Pro is eDrive which is a bootable Mac OS X partition which contains TechTool Pro and a small copy of your OS that you can use when performing emergency recoveries.
There's no need to reformat your hard drive during this process and eDrive provides an extra secure layer of protection should the worst happen. Use this in addition with TechTool Protection system preference which allows you to schedule checks and even e-mail alerts, and TechTool Pro is a very powerful package.
Its not the simplest solution out there but its certainly one of the more powerful. TechTool Pro will appeal to power users more than anyone but there's something for everyone in it.
