Norton Speed Disk 4.0 Beta: conflicts and problems

Regarding the public beta of Norton Speed Disk 4.0, readers are reporting a number of major bugs (of course, this is still betaware; discovering and reporting bugs is part of the fun of using it!):

Conflict with Alsoft PlusMaximizer? Frank Welder reports that Speed Disk successfully optimized his HFS Plus formatted drive. However, after he used Alsoft's PlusMaximizer on the drive, Speed Disk no longer worked. Instead, it warned: "The disk cannot be optimized because it is damaged (Volume bitmap inconsistent with directories). It is suggested that you repair the disk with Norton Disk Doctor or Disk First Aid." However, Disk First Aid said the disk was fine. So Frank erased the partition, using Apple's "Mac OS Extended" format (without using PlusMaximizer). Speed Disk then again worked successfully with the drive.

W. Warner similarly reports that Speed Disk worked okay on his HFS Plus volumes until he used Alsoft's PlusMaximizer to change the block size.

Conflict with IDE drives? Peter Chin and Pat Ellis both write that Speed Disk 4.0 reported "volume bit map errors" when checking IDE drives. Other utilities (such as Disk First Aid and TechTool Pro) reported the drives as fine. Speed Disk did not report these errors when checking SCSI drives. Peter's IDE drive had been formatted with Anubis CharisMac v.3.01; Pat was using Drive Setup 1.4. Pat notes that "the Speed Disk Read Me file emphasized that this is an false error that could occur with 68K machines," but she was not using a 68K machine.

More errors When Paul Ringsmuth tried to use Speed Disk on his HFS Plus drive, he got the following error message: "The disk cannot be optimized because it is damaged (B-tree records out of order)." Again, other utilities reported no problem. As a work-around, he turned off "Verify Directories" in Speed Disk's Options menu. After that, the optimization "worked fine." While I am glad it worked, personally I would not risk turning that option off in a beta version. Actually, I would hesitate to experiment with beta versions of optimization software even with the option on (and would always make sure my hard drive is backed up first). Here's one reason why:

Jurgen Vogt tried Speed Disk on his HFS Plus formatted partition. He writes: "When Speed Disk finished, the partition was still visible on my desktop but all the custom ikons were missing. I then tried to open several of the applications on this partition but all I got were #50 error messages, nothing would launch. After restarting the computer, the partition did not mount at all. The partition is still there but seems to be unfixable."