Micromat on Tuesday announced the upcoming release of TechTool Protogo, a Mac OS X application that turns an old iPod, flash drive other device into a bootable diagnostic tool containing several Micromat utilities. It’s expected to begin shipping at next week’s Macworld Expo and will cost $135.
The Protogo software ships on a DVD that includes a configuration app, TechTool Pro Classic (for Mac OS 9 systems), TechTool Pro 4 (for Mac OS X) and DiskStudio, Micromat’s disk configuration software.
With Protogo, you can boot most Macs, diagnose and repair hard drive problems, test major hardware components, find viruses and system conflicts on “Classic” Mac OS systems, optimize and defragment hard drive volumes, rebuild directories, recover data, repartition hard drives dynamically without losing data and more, according to Micromat.
System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.4 or later, DVD-ROM drive, 512MB RAM or greater, and an external FireWire device like an older iPod.