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Drive Genius Changelog

What's new in Drive Genius 6.2.3

Nov 30, 2022
  • Support macOS Ventura (BootWell with Cryptexes; update Drive Pulse and Activation UI).
  • Allow APFS Clone / Create BootWell to a drive smaller than source drive physical size.
  • Fix Free / Used Space monitoring for APFS Volumes and Volume Groups on macOS Monterey.
  • Support Protective MBR with GPT entries in Windows format (Master Boot Record parser).
  • Improve macOS Monterey support (update build SDK, internal and third-party libraries).
  • Update malware scan engine to version 0.105.1.
  • Fix crash on Extended Partition Offset overflow in Master Boot Record parser.

New in Drive Genius 6.2.2 (Nov 16, 2021)

  • Full APFS Clone (support bootable signed sealed volumes / volume groups with snapshots).
  • BootWell options "Open Clone Tool" / "Download and Install macOS" (create bootable drive on M1).
  • Allow running Drive Pulse tasks when Time Machine daemon is loaded (avoid constant task rescheduling).
  • Prevent "is an app downloaded from the Internet" popups for installed Drive Genius / Drive Pulse executables.
  • Update malware scan engine to version 0.104.0.
  • Fix crash in embedded webview when browsing webpages with audio/video notifications.
  • Consistency Check: fix no error information after HFS+ "Invalid B-tree node size".

New in Drive Genius 6.2.1 (Jul 21, 2021)

  • Malware Scan is free to all users.
  • Update malware scan engine to version 0.103.2.
  • Support [Set Icon] / [Remove Icon] on APFS startup drive.
  • Support Secure Erase with Initialization on APFS drives.
  • Show "Complete" info after Secure Erase and Malware Scan.
  • Exclude AppleAPFSMedia drives without user volumes from UI.
  • Exclude Apple M1 system volumes from UI ("ISC", "Recovery").
  • Fix System Information window layout on Big Sur.
  • Fix corrupt/garbled text in help popups on Big Sur.
  • Fix malware database not updating (mirror-sync issue).
  • Fix application does not restart during install.
  • Fix invalid info after adding/removing volumes.

New in Drive Genius 6.2.0 (Dec 22, 2020)

  • Add support for macOS 11.0 Big Sur.
  • Drive Pulse live malware scan now resolves and scans embedded file paths in Launch Agent config files.
  • Add Data Rescue 6 support.
  • Updated malware engine.
  • Fix a potential hang in Active Files and while sending support information.
  • Fix missing Xprotect update notifications on 10.15 and 10.14.

New in Drive Genius 6.1.3 (Oct 6, 2020)

  • Fix Drive Pulse Clone auto-sync task not running for 10.15 system volumes.
  • Tweaked Drive Pulse task scheduling to be less agressive in canceling tasks when Time Machine is active.

New in Drive Genius 6.1.2 (Jul 19, 2020)

  • Malware Scan now displays a data-loss warning when automatic Move-to-Trash is enabled.
  • Fix BootWell required restart failing with 'drive not availble' when using an APFS startup drive.
  • Fix Bootwell drive update failing when the startup drive was APFS and the Bootwell drive was HFS+.
  • Fix Consistency Check potentially failing with 'can't open drive' on 10.13+ HFS startup drives.
  • Fix Apple Hardware Encryption being spuriously detected for external drives on machines that did not have a T2 chip.
  • Fix Malware Scan re-scanning infected files that were previously moved to the Trash.

New in Drive Genius 6.1.1 (Jul 19, 2020)

  • A licensed computer can now be deactivated from the Drive Genius menu.
  • Fix a minor resource leak during APFS volume discovery.
  • Fix potential virtual memory thrashing during a malware scan on machines with 4GB of RAM.
  • Fix a potential stability issue when launching Drive Genius from Drive Pulse.

New in Drive Genius 6.1 (Jun 4, 2020)

  • macOS 10.15 Catalina support.
  • Speed can now be run on on the startup drive without needing to reboot to a Bootwell drive.
  • Find Large Files and Find Duplicates results can be previewed using Quicklook (in List view only).
  • Find Large Files and Find Duplicates now ignore all hidden files and folders. This greatly reduces "noise" in the results.
  • Updated malware engine.
  • Data Rescue can be opened from the Drive Pulse menu.
  • Moved Defrag, Rebuild and Repartition utilities to a new "Legacy" group. Speed has been moved to the "Clean" group.
  • The Help book now supports dark mode.
  • Fix Clone/Bootwell drives not working as startup drives when the source APFS drive contained multiple startup volumes.
  • Windows Restore volumes are now hidden.
  • BootWell will only allow external drives or SD cards to be used for creating a BootWell drive.
  • Reduce possibility of Drive Pulse using an inordinate amount of memory.
  • BootWell drive creation now ignores the Backblaze library folder. This folder can be quite large, unecessarily bloating the BootWell drive.
  • Fix Find Large Files and Duplicates potentially taking an inordinate amount of time to cancel.
  • Fix Clone hanging when the target was a disk image (6.0 regression).
  • Fix Malware Scan indicating that it's still scanning files when it completed with 0 files scanned.
  • Fix APFS Fusion drive physical drive detection for 10.14+.
  • Fix Instant Pulse not working in Lite mode.

New in Drive Genius 6.0.1 (Jun 4, 2020)

  • Better detection of system hibernation file when calculating optimal Free Space for the startup drive.
  • Fix potential failure to recognize a new activation without a relaunch.
  • Fix Bootwell creation failure due to copying extremely large database files created by Acronis True Image.
  • Fix stability issue when support folder creation failed due to a permissions issue.

New in Drive Genius 6.0 (Jun 4, 2020)

  • Added automatic synchronization support for cloned drives. When enabled Drive Pulse will continually update clones in the background.
  • Updated UI, including full support for 10.14 Dark Mode support.
  • Malware Scan can now generate a report of all files scanned.
  • DrivePulse displays the temperature of drives in the DrivePulse menu (if supported by the drive).
  • DrivePulse "Live" Malware Scan is now a better energy citizen while the computer is on battery.
  • Duplicates and Large Files export now include a column showing if the file was removed or not.
  • Drive Pulse scheduling is now adaptive to system load allowing Drive Pulse tasks to run even when the system is constantly busy.
  • Drive Pulse will now cleanup log files on launch. This prevents unbounded log growth when Drive Genius has not been launched for an extended period.
  • Basic support for 10.15. Full support is forthcoming.
  • macOS 10.12.6 or later is required.
  • Repair no longer treats warnings as errors.

New in Drive Genius 5.3.1 (Oct 18, 2019)

  • Fix Lite plan licenses not being recognized.
  • Fix a potential clone instability issue.
  • Fix a rare instability issue with Defrag.
  • Fix several potential instability issues when quitting Drive Genius.
  • Fix spurious DrivePulse error mode when Physical Check failed to open a restricted drive in 10.14.
  • Fix Instant Pulse not working in Lite mode.

New in Drive Genius 5.3.0 (Nov 22, 2018)

  • 10.14 Mojave support (not including Dark Mode).
  • Find Duplicates and Find Large Files can now save search results as a CSV file.
  • Fix incomplete French localization.
  • Fix incomplete Voice Over support for Drive Pulse menu.
  • Fix Consistency Check, Repair and Rebuild cancel appearing to hang forever.
  • Fix DrivePulse being stuck in Lite mode after an upgrade.

New in Drive Genius 5.3.0 Beta (Sep 5, 2018)

  • 10.14 Mojave support (not including Dark Mode).
  • Fix incomplete French localization.
  • Fix incomplete Voice Over support for Drive Pulse menu.

New in Drive Genius 5.2.2 (Jul 19, 2018)

  • Fix HFS volumes always being created as HFSX.
  • Fix a possible spurious Fusion drive warning when running on 10.13.
  • Fix a possible DrivePulse instability issue.
  • Time Machine backups are now ignored by Malware Scan since they cannot be modified.

New in Drive Genius 5.2.1 (May 24, 2018)

  • Browser extension folders are automatically scanned for malware.
  • Workaround Finder issue with missing files after running a Verify on a APFS FileVault volume.
  • Verify warnings are no longer treated as errors.
  • Fix "jumping" DrivePulse icon.
  • Fix phantom error state in Drive Pulse. This could occur when a malware database update failed; which is not a critical error.

New in Drive Genius 5.2.0 (Mar 15, 2018)

  • Clone now uses APFS snapshots if possible. This allows for perfect copies and optimizations to allow for a faster clone.
  • Clone was also optimized for all drives so that data copy begins ASAP (before progress information is available). This reduces the clone time for large drives.
  • FileVault volumes can now be mounted (File->Mount).
  • New Lite mode (free) and options for reduced pricing on specific utilities.
  • Fix APFS clones not working as Startup drives.
  • Fix system being allowed to idle-sleep while Drive Genius is busy.
  • Fix spurious errors with consistency checks of APFS FileVault volumes.

New in Drive Genius 5.1.1 (Feb 2, 2018)

  • Info now displays the drive serial number (if available).
  • Fix physical SoftRAID drives being mis-identified as HFS leading to spurious corruption warnings from DrivePulse.
  • Fix empty drive information for drives attached via PCI-Express.
  • Fix a potential stability issue while attempting a volume resize.
  • Detect and warn of a system configuration issue that would prevent installation.
  • Fix automatic DrivePulse APFS consistency checks not running.
  • Fix Instant Pulse failing when run on exFAT formatted drives.

New in Drive Genius 5.1.0 (Jan 9, 2018)

  • Full support for 10.13 and APFS.
  • ExFAT drives can now be verified and repaired.
  • The user launch agents folder is automatically scanned for malware.
  • Fix an issue that resulted in registration info randomly being "lost" and having to be re-entered.
  • Fix a potential stability issue when drives were updated by the system.
  • Fix Bootwell drive creation not ignoring certain login items on the host system.
  • Fix login item monitor not catching certain login item changes.
  • Fix possibility for dedicated Time Machine volume clones to end up empty. See the help manual for more information.
  • Workaround a system bug that caused unusual scroll behavior in Set Icon.

New in Drive Genius 5.0.5 (Sep 20, 2017)

  • Due to major changes in macOS 10.13 all current versions of Drive Genius are incompatible with the upcoming release. We are working hard on a new version to fully support 10.13, but in the meantime we are releasing 5.0.5 to disable Drive Genius on 10.13.

New in Drive Genius 5.0.4 (Jul 31, 2017)

  • A bug fix that missed the 5.0.3 release.

New in Drive Genius 5.0.3 (Jul 27, 2017)

  • Truly fix possible run-away malware scans that could lead to system out-of-memory warnings.
  • Fix possible stability issue while gathering drive SMART data.
  • Fix possibility of some browser download folders being skipped during Malware auto-scan

New in Drive Genius 5.0.2 (Jun 30, 2017)

  • Email support no longer requires an external email client application.
  • Fix possible run-away malware scans that could lead to system out-of-memory warnings.
  • Fix potential stability issue during activation.
  • Fix incomplete French localization.

New in Drive Genius 5.0.1 (May 12, 2017)

  • Fixed Defrag utility failing to launch.
  • Fix Clone failure when an invalid path was encountered.
  • Fix for a situation where Malware Scan would always attempt an update and then never complete.
  • Known issue: French localization is not complete. This will be corrected in a future release.

New in Drive Genius 5.0 (Apr 5, 2017)

  • New Malware Scan tool that allows you to scan drives for malware.
  • Drive Pulse performs "Live" malware scanning of well-known download folders automatically.
  • Basic support for APFS.
  • Better support for 10.12.x Bootwell drive creation.
  • Fixed a stability issue when the target drive ran out of space during creation of a Bootwell drive.
  • Fixed manual update check silent failure.
  • Known issue: French localization is not complete. This will be corrected in a future release.

New in Drive Genius 4.2.2 (Jul 20, 2016)

  • Fixed a missing Defrag fragmentation overview graph on some systems.
  • Fixed "Windows/Camera Card" drive initialization failure on 10.11.x.
  • Fixed some incompatibilities with the 10.12 developer build.

New in Drive Genius 4.2.1 (Jan 19, 2016)

  • Fixed an issue where selecting a history item would fail to load the corresponding utility.
  • Fixed a stability issue when ejecting a disk.
  • Fixed a Repartition stability issue when attempting to resize a volume that did not have enough free space.
  • Fixed Repartition not opening on 10.8 and 10.9.

New in Drive Genius 4.2.0 (Oct 22, 2015)

  • The Repartition utility has returned.
  • Support for OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
  • Fixed copying superfluous data during BootWell creation when using OS X server.
  • Fixed copying superfluous data during BootWell creation when Aperture, Final Cut Studio, or certain 3rd party applications are installed.
  • Fixed a potential spurious warning on launch about editing system files.
  • Fixed a stability issue when attempting to sort Defrag file results.
  • Fixed a potential DrivePulse stability issue on 10.11.
  • Worked around a Physical Check conflict with Fusion/File Vault drives that could result in the check being immediately and silently canceled.

New in Drive Genius 4.1.1 (May 27, 2015)

  • Fixed a potential stability issue when opening the Defrag utility.
  • Fixed a launch hang on 10.8.x.
  • Fixed Find Large Files utilty not opening on pre-10.10 systems.
  • Fixed DrivePulse UI displaying in French on 10.8.x English systems.
  • Fixed possible registration interruption by DrivePulse alert.

New in Drive Genius 3.2.5 (Sep 11, 2014)

  • OS X 10.10 Yosemite and 10.9.5 compatibility.
  • Bug Fix: rare, but potential stability issues.

New in Drive Genius 3.2.3 (Aug 23, 2013)

  • Minor bug fixes.

New in Drive Genius 3.2.2 (Dec 12, 2012)

  • When purchasing the full version from within Drive Genius, Drive Genius will automatically detect the purchase and register itself.
  • Bug fix: potential stability issues with Defrag and Repair.
  • Bug fix: stability issue on certain Mac Pro systems.

New in Drive Genius 3.2.1 (Aug 16, 2012)

  • DrivePulse now performs automatic software update checks so update notifications are presented even if Drive Genius is not running.
  • Animations are automatically disabled upon first launch on 10.8 due to several issues present in OS X 10.8 that cause Drive Genius to crash.
  • Bug Fix: fixed a few possible crashes for OS X 10.6.8 compatibility.

New in Drive Genius 3.2 (Jul 27, 2012)

  • OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion compatibility, including support for Gatekeeper.
  • Defrag performs more checks for corruption before attempting to defragment a disk.
  • Scan time has been reduced significantly when dealing with bad blocks.
  • Bug fix: duplicating some drives to a disk image could spuriously fail.

New in Drive Genius 3.1.2 (Sep 8, 2011)

  • Application Help is now provided via the standard Mac OS X help viewer.
  • Repartition will automatically prompt to create a new volume when an existing volume is shrunk.
  • Bug Fix: DrivePulse™ now updates its menu to reflect volume name changes.

New in Drive Genius 3.1.1 (May 11, 2011)

  • Live defrag can now be canceled (on some machines this may require a wired keyboard).
  • DrivePulse is now installed on a per-user basis instead of for all users.
  • The Information tool now displays use-based statistics for drives in the Details tab.
  • DrivePulse will open a Finder window for mounted volumes with a click on the disk icon in the DrivePulse menu.
  • Initial support for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
  • Bug Fix: Defrag and Repartition now work with native "large block" (4KB) drives.
  • Bug Fix: Minor Duplicate issues with native "large block" (4KB) drives.
  • Bug Fix: Stability improvements to DriveSlim while searching for files.
  • Bug Fix: Stability issue if a drive was removed from the system while a defrag was in progress.
  • Bug Fix: The overview information for unmounted volumes was displaying free space as used space.

New in Drive Genius 3.1 (Jan 26, 2011)

  • The system startup volume can now be defragmented without the need of a DVD or alternate startup volume ("live" defrag).
  • DrivePulse verifies the preference files of the logged in user and the global preferences located on the startup volume.
  • DrivePulse displays visual error and warning status hints in its menu.
  • Up to one month of DrivePulse event history can be browsed.
  • Repartition offers the option to add HFSX volumes. UFS volume support has been removed as Apple is moving away from supporting UFS.
  • ExFAT volume support. (10.6.5+ only)
  • Drobo devices are officially not supported for most tools. Drobos are proprietary devices and due to the way they store and manipulate data on multiple physical drives, Drive Genius cannot safely manipulate that same data. It is the decision of Data Robotics, Inc to not share the technical information necessary to safely support Drobo devices.
  • Bug Fix: Possible spurious failures when defragging an 8TiB or larger volume.
  • Bug Fix: Missing fragmentation information in the Defrag overview for volumes that contain a very large number of files (such as Time Machine volumes).
  • Bug Fix: Stability improvements to DriveSlimwhile searching and while slimming files.
  • Bug Fix: The DriveSlim Universal Binary slimming plan could spuriously fail.
  • Bug Fix: If DriveSlim found an application that matched multiple slimming plans and one of the plans was Universal Binary slimming, only the Universal Binary plan would be run on the application.

New in Drive Genius 3.0.2 (Aug 10, 2010)

  • Defrag offers the option to Verify volumes before defragging them. Defrag performs basic volume verification as part of its normal operation, but a full Verify will expose pre-existing issues that a basic verification may not reveal.
  • DriveSlim™archives are now read-only instead of write-compressed images.
  • Bug Fix: Stability improvements to DriveSlim™when searching for files.
  • Bug Fix: Defrag recognizes HFSX volumes again.
  • Bug Fix: On 10.6.x, Duplicate would always quit if a bad block was encountered even if the continue option was selected.
  • Bug Fix: Possible issue with DrivePulse™that caused preference changes to not stick.
  • Bug Fix: DrivePulse™could display drives in its menu that should not be displayed.
  • Bug Fix: Defrag displays the correct size for packages in the File Fragmentation list.
  • Bug Fix: Possible UI glitch when used on a secondary display.
  • Bug Fix: Possible issue detecting NTFS volumes.

New in Drive Genius 3.0.1 (Jun 3, 2010)

  • Defrag now reports fragmentation as a percentage of used space and total space.
  • Workaround for a possible DrivePulse launch error after a system restart due to heavy system load.
  • DrivePulseshould no longer trigger the use of the discrete GPU in the 15" and 17" 2010 MacBook Pros.
  • DrivePulse no longer requires an admin password to launch, but it must have read access to the Drive Genius application.
  • Several haxies that caused Drive Genius to crash are now detected and will prevent Drive Genius from launching.
  • Stability improvements to DrivePulse and DriveSlim.
  • Bug Fix: The Secure Erase system service would not operate on the boot volume.
  • Bug Fix: Possible spurious volume integrity warning from DrivePulse. (Only affected a small number of Time Machine volumes.)
  • Bug Fix: DriveSlim failed to cancel during the search phase (32bit only).

New in Drive Genius 3.0.0 (Apr 21, 2010)

  • An Intel-based Macintosh running 10.5.3 or later is required.
  • DrivePulse optionally monitors the overall health of your drives in the background, alerting you to possible issues before they become major problems.
  • Runs as a 64-bit application on 10.6 or later with a compatible 64-bit processor.
  • Enhanced Defrag provides even better defragmentation of files and presents more fragmentation information in a new UI.
  • Includes a System Service to securely erase files, folders or volumes from any application (as part of DrivePulse).
  • E-mail notifications can be sent when long-running tasks complete and you are away from your computer.
  • Drives formatted with Bootcamp support are supported by Repartition. Windows volumes can be moved, but not resized.
  • Scan supports realtime bad-block sparing and an extended block verification test that stress tests the read and write validity of every block.
  • Scan can perform a "live" block verification of the boot disk/volume.
  • Repair can perform a "live" file system verification of the boot volume.
  • Hardware based RAID and Apple's software RAID are supported. Software RAID support is limited; the physical drives belonging to the RAID set cannot be used with most tools. The logical RAID volume though is fully supported by all tools. Please note that SoftRAID is not supported.
  • Drive, volume and file sizes are displayed to match the OS (base 10 on 10.6+ and base 2 on 10.5.x).
  • DriveSlim ignores files in the Trash.

New in Drive Genius 2.3.0 (Feb 2, 2010)

  • Bug Fix: Possible (benign) crash during a Defrag on 10.6.x.
  • Bug Fix: Possible data loss while moving a volume with Repartition.
  • Bug Fix: Possible error when Shredding the free-space of a volume.
  • Bug Fix: Repartition issues with 8TB or larger HFS+ volumes.
  • Bug Fix: Initialize works once again on 10.6+.
  • Bug Fix: Verify Preferences works once again on 10.6+.
  • Bug Fix: Repartition could spuriously fail on 10.4.x.

New in Drive Genius 2.2.1 (Aug 31, 2009)

  • Defrag stability improvements for a specific situation involving a clean install of 10.6.

New in Drive Genius 2.2 (Jul 29, 2009)

  • Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard" support.
  • Where possible, Drive Genius now works with non-HFS volumes.
  • Volume duplication gains verification and bad block support (as whole-drive duplication did in 2.1.1).
  • Defrag, Scan and Volume Shift/Move now display the estimated remaining time to completion.
  • Scan includes a detailed log of any bad blocks found.
  • Increased Repartition performance.
  • Bug Fix: Defrag once again works with HFS+ volumes containing Mac OS 9 drivers (after volume conversion).
  • Bug Fix: Volumes can be resized to larger than 1TB now.
  • Bug Fix: When duplicating a volume, the progress sizes are displayed correctly.

New in Drive Genius 2.1.1 (Apr 16, 2009)

  • Enhanced Duplicate tool has an option to verify the destination of whole-drive copies. In addition, source bad blocks can be skipped if found during a whole-drive copy.
  • Increased performance and reliability of Defrag.
  • Bug Fix: spurious "test aborted by disk" S.M.A.R.T. warnings in 10.5.x
  • Bug Fix: after shredding a volume, a new volume would always be created as "Untitled" instead of using the previous volume name.
  • Bug Fix: the tooltip displayed for duplicate files in DriveSlim™ contained an invalid path to the original file when displaying results from the boot volume.
  • Bug Fix: crash during launch if information about installed languages could not be obtained (10.4.x/PPC only).
  • Bug Fix: Adobe and Microsoft application updates would fail if language bundles were removed or their binaries trimmed; these are now excluded from the DriveSlim™search results.
  • Other bug fixes.

New in Drive Genius 2.1.0 (Sep 23, 2008)

  • Brand new DriveSlim tool that intelligently finds and frees space on your volumes that is redundant or unused.
  • Enhanced Shred tool that now shreds individual files or complete folder hierarchies as well as volumes and disks. In addition, there is now a single-pass zero option.
  • Enhanced Repair tool that finds corrupted preference files and performs additional volume repair and rebuild actions.
  • Enhanced S.M.A.R.T. reporting if an error is detected (via the Information tool).
  • Many other tool and UI enhancements to make Drive Genius even more useful and easier to use.
  • Bug Fix: Benchtest results and Drive information can be saved once again.
  • Bug Fix: Mouse wheel scrolling works.
  • Other bug fixes.

New in Drive Genius 2.0.3 (Jun 5, 2008)

  • All drive operations are re-enabled on systems running OS X 10.5.3 or later.
  • New OS X 10.5.3 (Leopard) based boot DVD.
  • Increased Shred performance.
  • Bug Fix: Spurious "HFS volume could not be created" warning after shredding a disk listed in the "Devices" tab.
  • Bug Fix: Never ending unmount warnings in Sector Edit if the volume failed to unmount.
  • Bug Fix: Increased font size of contextual help.
  • Bug Fix: Text for two or more icons in the main menu could be shown at the same time.
  • Bug Fix: Rare crash in Defrag (Intel only).