Techtool Pro 20.1.7 — Mac version

Volume cloning is one of those jobs where you need the result to match. A recent update tidied up a File Sync clone verification hiccup, so the copy you make is the copy you get. Beyond cloning, this is a workshop full of tools for when a Mac misbehaves. You can scan for bad blocks on a spinning drive, repair damaged SSD volumes, or pull back files you thought were gone for good. Techtool Protection sits in the background watching for abnormal behaviour, ready to flag trouble with an on-screen alert or an email before a small wobble becomes a dead machine. Protogo is on hand for building bootable diagnostic media when the main system won't play ball.

• Checks and repairs volumes, including SSDs
• Recovers deleted files and lost data
• Scans for bad blocks and retrieves files stuck in them
• Monitors the system continuously for early warning signs
• Builds bootable diagnostic media with Protogo

It's a toolkit that makes sense if you're keeping an older machine useful or just want a safety net. No magic fixes promised, just a solid set of tests and repair routines that have been polished over a long run.

Feel in daily use

On an older Intel MacBook running High Sierra, the interface stays snappy and doesn’t feel like it’s dragging the system down. Memory use hovers around 120–150 MB during a surface scan, and the fans might spin up if you run a full suite — hard drive, RAM, video memory — but that's expected. You can carry on with light work while a volume rebuild ticks away in the background. On Apple Silicon machines it barely registers; the native ARM build starts cold in under three seconds.

Stability is the headline. Crashes are rare, and the 20.1.7 build specifically squashed a Techtool Monitor launch crash that used to trip up a handful of users. If you leave Techtool Protection running overnight, you’ll usually find the same desktop you left, plus a quiet log entry noting that your free space dipped below your set threshold.

The full toolbox next to Disk Utility’s basic spanner

Disk Utility (built in) handles first aid and basic partitioning, but it doesn’t dig for bad blocks, recover lost files, or monitor drive health over time. It’s the spanner in your glovebox; Techtool Pro is the full toolbox.

Onyx leans hard on system maintenance — cache cleaning, preference checking, log tidying. It’s useful, but it won’t clone a volume or run a SMART check. Many folk run both: Onyx for lightweight housekeeping, Techtool Pro when something feels properly wrong.

DriveDx specialises in SMART monitoring and gives you a deeper readout on drive health than Techtool’s own SMART checks. But it stops there. Techtool Pro wraps that monitoring into a broader set of repair and recovery tools, so you get a wider net in one package.

A repair-café Sunday

Someone wheels in a 2015 iMac that won’t boot past the Apple logo. The owner’s a photographer with a half-finished project on the desktop. I hook up a Protogo USB stick, boot into the Techtool environment, and run a volume structure check. It finds directory damage and a handful of bad blocks. The volume repair sorts the directory; the bad-block scan recovers three stubborn files and relocates what it can. Twenty minutes later the machine boots, the project folder is intact, and the photographer’s relieved. No heroics — just a methodical set of tests doing what they’re supposed to do. That’s the kind of afternoon where a tool like this earns its spot on the shelf.

• macOS 10.13 High Sierra or newer
• Intel and Apple Silicon Macs