We’re sorry to report that between approximately 2pm on Thursday 1st April and 1:30pm Sunday 4th April (UTC) there was a problem with one of our servers that may have resulted in payment processing not working for some customers.

As a result of someone listing the beta version on MacUpdate and Version Tracker, we’re getting a lot of queries about the purported “release” of version 2.0 of iDefrag.

To be clear: version 2.0 of iDefrag has not been released.

We would appreciate it if those responsible for the listings on MacUpdate and VersionTracker would please not add beta versions on those websites. We’re presently trying to get the listings removed as they’re creating confusion for our customers and generating a lot of support traffic at a time when we have limited resources because of the festive period.

UPDATE: We have now released an update to iPartition and iDefrag Lite. We are still working on the iDefrag update.

There are a few known minor issues with Snow Leopard:

1. Snow Leopard uses compression for some files. If these become fragmented and you use the Quick (on-line) algorithm to defragment them, they will become uncompressed. Until we release an update we advise you not to use the Quick (on-line) algorithm.
2. In the Info window, iDefrag will display zero for the size of compressed files and they will have no data fork. This is just a display issue.
3. Both iDefrag and iPartition will crash at launch time when running on a 64 bit kernel. By default, only the latest Xserve machines will be running the 64 bit Kernel so it should not affect many people. You can easily work around this by booting with the 32 bit kernel instead: hold down the 3 and the 2 keys as you power on the machine.

Please be aware that it’s perfectly fine to run iDefrag on a volume that has Snow Leopard installed whilst booted from a volume that has an earlier version of OS X, and that includes any bootable DVDs you might have made. The issues above still remain though i.e. you still shouldn’t run the on-line algorithm on a Snow Leopard volume until we’ve issued an update.

We will be releasing updates to iPartition and iDefrag soon that should address these issues. Please report any other issues to us via our support team.

Previous visitors to our website will now notice that we have overhauled our payment process to provide a better user experience for our customers.

We also now accept American Express, though presently only for GBP transactions; if you attempt to put through an AMEX payment in some other currency, the site will convert it to GBP before billing the card—it will show you the converted amounts and alert you to the fact that it has done this.

As part of this change, the way we take payments has changed completely; while we have tested the new pages extensively, it is just possible that there may be one or two teething problems still to iron out, so if that happens please contact us to let us know and we should be able to help.

Many of you will be aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre-Budget Report included, as part of its fiscal stimulus package, a temporary reduction in the rate of VAT charged in the United Kingdom from 17.5% down to 15%.

Due to the rules governing the sale of downloadable software within the European Union, VAT is charged at the rate applicable in the vendor’s member state, and so E.U. customers will, from Monday 1st of December, see the rate of VAT charged by our site decrease from 17.5% down to the new 15% rate. The VAT rate is presently scheduled to return to its previous value at the beginning of 2010.

Assuming everything works properly, the new VAT rate should take effect automatically at midnight on Sunday 30th of November (GMT). We recommend that E.U. customers avoid starting the purchase process for a few minutes before and after the rate change, as this will both reduce the risk that you will be charged more VAT than necessary and will afford us a little time to verify that everything has worked as intended.

As usual, VAT registered business customers located in an E.U. member state other than the United Kingdom should contact us in advance with their VAT registration details so that we can verify them in order to avoid paying VAT. If you make your purchase without completing this step, you will be charged VAT, even if you provide a VAT number during the purchase process, as there is no way for our web server to automatically determine that you are entitled to use a given VAT number.

The brand new unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro machines do work with our software, however please keep in mind the following:

• Manufacturers of SSDs (if you have one) do not recommend defragmenting as it is likely to lower the life of the unit. Since SSDs have essentially zero seek time, there will be relatively little benefit of defragmenting or optimizing your SSD in most cases anyway.

• When using CDMaker, you must insert the Install Disc that came with the machine when prompted for a template.

  The downloadable templates that we have available as of 11th November will not work with the new machines as they require additional code that is only available on the install discs that ship with these systems. You cannot use a retail Leopard disc or a seed provided by ADC as a source for the template files unless that disc is also capable of booting the system; most are not.

  If you have already created a template, you may need to choose the option “Create New Template…” from the “Coriolis CDMaker” menu. After inserting your Install Disc, wait for the top option to turn black, then select it. CDMaker should read the required files from your disc.

• We have had one report of problems with CDMaker and the Install Disc that shipped with a MacBook system. Others, however, report that everything works fine. If you do experience difficulties, please let us know as soon as possible.

  Again, make sure that you are using the Install Disc that comes with the machine. This disc is not interchangeable with a retail Leopard install disc, as it contains a newer build of Mac OS X containing extra code required to make the new models function.

When Apple has provided us with suitable materials to create a new bootable disc template for these new systems, we will be able to provide a downloadable template. Until then, please follow the instructions above and contact us if you have any difficulty.

We were recently contacted by a customer who lost data after using iPartition on a Drobo unit. Having reviewed the information on the Drobo website, we believe iPartition is probably incompatible with Drobo.

The reason for the incompatibility is that it looks as if Drobo is using knowledge of the Mac and PC filesystems that it supports to optimise data storage on its disks. That, coupled with the fact that Drobo is able to lie about the amount of space available on the disk (“Thin Provisioning”), means that there is a significant risk of problems if you attempt to use repartitioning software on a Drobo unit.

We have contacted Data Robotics, Inc., the manufacturers of Drobo, and if possible we would very much like to work with them to resolve this issue.

In the meantime, we strongly advise customers not to use iPartition on Drobo units.

It has come to our attention that someone has attempted to crack the protection on both iPartition 3 and iDefrag 1.6.6, and has distributed the results of their efforts. Unfortunately the crack is botched in such a way that the cracked copies could cause significant and potentially irreversible damage to users’ data. As a result, we strongly recommend that anyone considering using the cracked copies avoid doing so.

We will not help you if you destroy your data with a damaged and illegal copy of our software. We didn’t provide it to you and we didn’t break it.

If you are a user of a challenge-response e-mail system like SpamArrest, please note that we will not reply to e-mail challenges for the following reasons:

1. There is no way for us to distinguish between legitimate challenges and those caused by spammers attempting to deliver e-mail with addresses forged to look like they come from our domain.
2. There is no way to tell whether any given challenge is actually legitimate. Some spammers have been sending out e-mail that looks like e-mail challenges in order to get people to click links, whether to validate their e-mail addresses or to install malware on their systems.
3. Some of the supposedly legitimate challenge-response operations have previously used their challenges to harvest other peoples’ addresses for unsolicited commercial e-mail (aka spam). There is also a concern that they may be retaining data on past communications for various purposes.
4. Challenge-response places all of the burden for spam on legitimate senders of e-mail. Essentially you are fobbing your spam problem off on other users rather than taking responsibility for it yourself. The burden belongs on the spammers, not on legitimate users of e-mail, and so challenge-response is an inappropriate way to attempt to screen incoming mail.

We do provide DKIM signatures on all outbound mail, and we also publish a draconian SPF record. These steps should enable e-mail providers to screen out any e-mail with forged addresses corresponding to our domain. And since we do not send spam, there should be no reason to use challenge-response addresses with us.