The Disk Utility application on MacOS has a command line counterpart, that allows Mac users to run disk maintenance and disk administration tasks, including verifying and repairing disks. There are obvious advantages and benefits to using the command line for tasks like this, particularly for troubleshooting scenarios, and remote management, but some advanced users may … Read More
You may find yourself needing to determine the file system type of a drive connected to a Mac, whether it’s an external hard drive, a USB flash drive, external SSD or HDD, an SD card, or similar. File system types are important because they can help to determine if a drive is fully Mac compatible … Read More
Many of us rely on external USB drives and storage devices, whether hard drives or flash drives, to transfer large files and to serve as backups for things like Time Machine. Typically when you buy a new hard drive or USB drive, even if for a Mac, it comes pre-formatted in a Windows friendly format … Read More
If you are having any peculiar disk issues or disk errors with an Apple Silicon Mac, you may want to try using the repair tools within Disk Utility, available in Recovery Mode.
You may find a “Purgeable” storage space when looking at disk storage and disk usage in modern versions of macOS, including Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, Sierra, etc, either within the About This Mac > Storage screen, Disk Utility, or the Storage Management section of System Information. This curiously labeled disk storage item is similar to … Read More
Need to make a disk image from a CD or DVD right on a Mac? Many Mac users continue to have and use DVD and CD media, whether it’s movie collections, proofs, music collections, files and data backups, old media, medical imaging, or anything else. Despite the fact that no Mac ships with a DVD/CD … Read More
Want to create a new partition on a Mac hard disk? Then read on!
If you have created a new APFS volume on a Mac for some purpose, perhaps to run a different version of MacOS on, you may eventually wish to remove that volume from the APFS container. Deleting an APFS volume removes all data on that volume and is irreversible, so make sure that you are targeting … Read More
You can adjust a setting in Disk Utility for Mac to see all device disks and drives connected to a Mac. This will make it so that you can view the containing drive (like “Apple SSD”) rather than simply the partition or volume that is accessible by the user facing part of the file system … Read More
For Macs using the APFS file system, you can add a new volume to an existing APFS container by using Disk Utility in MacOS. APFS is somewhat unique in that it allocates disk space on demand, meaning a containers free disk space is shared (compared to HFS+ or FAT where disk space is partitioned into … Read More
Formatting an SD card from a Mac is simple and quick thanks to the Disk Utility application. This is a commonly required task before an SD card or Micro SD card can be used as a storage medium for another electronic device, or even to remove any data stored on the SD card. This tutorial … Read More
Mac users can easily check the SMART status of their hard drives and internal disk storage by using Disk Utility in Mac OS, offering a simple way to see if the disk hardware itself is in good health or is experiencing a hardware issue. This article will walk you through how to check SMART status … Read More
If you need to find the disk ID or disk node identifier (like /dev/disk0s2) of a volume attached to a Mac for one reason or another, perhaps the easiest way to obtain this information from the command line is with the diskutil utility.
Many Mac users running a modern version of OS X El Capitan have noticed the Secure Erase Free Space feature has gone missing from Disk Utility. What the “Erase Free Space” feature did (and still does in prior versions of Mac OS X) was overwrite the free space on a drive to prevent file recovery, … Read More
Apple removed the ability to burn disc images from Disk Utility from MacOS High Sierra, Sierra, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and newer, and while that makes sense for many Macs that no longer have SuperDrives, CDRW, and DVD burners, for those who use an external burner, use disc drive sharing, or who do have … Read More
The Disk Utility app has long contained the ability to verify and repair disk permissions on a Mac, but in the latest versions of OS X this ability has been removed. That doesn’t mean you can’t verify permissions and repair permissions in OS X El Capitan 10.11 and later however, you just need to turn … Read More
Repairing Disk Permissions is a simple procedure that Mac users can run with the Disk Utility app or through the command line, and, as the name suggests, it repairs the permissions of various files on the target drive. Repairing permissions can be helpful when troubleshooting some fairly specific issues, or after installing or uninstalling a … Read More
The Disk Utility app bundled with Mac OS X has a command line equivalent which offers advanced users the ability to perform disk maintenance from the terminal, including disk verification and repairs. This allows for a variety of helpful troubleshooting abilities, including the possibility to remotely issue disk repairs though SSH, or through Single User … Read More
