Micromat Announces TechTool Protogo

Micromat announnced TechTool Protogo, an application that turns an iPod, a Flash drive, or similar device into a bootable device that can diagnose and repair a Mac. The announcement came on Tuesday. One of the features touted by this product is the ability to turn an older, less often used iPod into a more useful diagnostic device.

Protogo ships on a DVD and allows the Mac OS X user to install TechTool Pro 4 for Mac OS X on the iPod. (Mac OS 9 is also supported.) With the tools installed, Micromat says the the user can:

Boot most Macintosh computers

Diagnose and repair hard drive problems

Test major hardware components

Optimize and defragment hard drive volumes

Rebuild volume directories

Recover data from damaged volumes

Repartition hard drives without losing data

Boot different Mac OS versions from different partitions

TechTool Protogo will ship at Macworld on January 9th. It is priced at US$199.00.