How to use Disk Utility to repair the hard drive and decentralize the drive

Disk Utility has long been integrated with OS X to work with Mac storage devices, including hard drives, SSDs, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, etc. Disk Utility is flexible, not only can delete, format, partition and work with disk images, but also the first line of defense to verify if a drive is working correctly. Disk Utility also fixes problems that are having problems, including problems that may cause the Mac to fail while booting or freezing while in use.

Two versions of Disk Utility: Which is the right choice for you?

Disk Utility has evolved over time, gaining more features after every newly released OS X version. Previously, Apple only added features to the original Disk Utility application. But when OS X El Capitan was released, Apple decided to create a new version for Disk Utility. Although the name remains the same, the user interface of Disk Utility has undergone a spectacular molting. Therefore, the following article is two separate instructions to work with Disk Utility's First Aid feature.

1. Use First Aid to repair your hard drive and assign drive permissions

If you are using OS X El Capitan or macOS Sierra or above, you should switch to the article: Fix Mac hard drive with Disk Utility's First Aid feature, for instructions on First Aid features, corresponding to 2 Disk Utility version.

Use First Aid with OS X Yosemite and previous versions

If you are using OS X Yosemite or older versions, this section will guide the process of using Disk Utility's First Aid feature for the OS X version you are using.

First Aid feature

Disk Utility's First Aid feature provides two unique functions: Helps repair hard drives and allows you to modify permissions for files and folders.

Fix the drive

Disk Utility can repair common disk problems, from broken entries in folders to unspecified files, often due to power outages, forced rebooting or exiting the application. Disk Utility's Repair Disk feature is excellent at fixing the drive, as well as the volume file system. It can fix most hard drive directory structure, but does not replace regular data backup strategy. The Repair Disk feature is not as powerful as some third-party applications, tools that better perform disk repair and restore files. These are things that Repair Disk is not designed to do.

Modify disk permissions

Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature is designed to restore file or folder access to the state expected by the operating system and applications. Permission is the flag set for each item in the file system. They determine whether an item can be read, written or executed. Initial permissions are set when an application or file group is installed. The installation includes the .bom file (Bill of Materials) which lists all installed files and permissions for them. Repair Disk Permissions use the .bom file to verify and correct authorization issues.

What you need

1. Disk Utility, located at / Applications / Utilities /.
2. The interval from 10 minutes to 1 hour, depending on which First Aid tool you will use.

2. Repair hard drive and volume

After the repair process is successful, Disk Utility will not display any error or warning messages, but will display the green text that determines the volume is OK.

Disk Utility's Repair Disk can work with any hard drive connected to a Mac, except the boot drive. If you choose the boot drive, the Repair Disk button will be gray. You will only be able to use Verify Disk feature, to check the hard drive and determine if there is any problem.

You can still repair the boot drive with Disk Utility. To do so, you must boot from another hard drive that has installed OS X, boot from the OS X installation DVD or use the hidden volume Recovery HD included with OS X Lion and newer versions. In addition to the time needed to reboot from another hard drive, installation DVD or HD Recovery, using Disk Utility's Repair Disk feature will work like the aforementioned First Aid tool and also take a while. the same, similar. If you need to boot from the OS X installation DVD, you'll find instructions on how to do it in this article: Create Mac OS X Lion installation disc for Mac.

Fix the drive

First, back up your hard drive. Although the hard drive is experiencing some problems, you should create a new backup of this hard drive before running Repair Disk. Although Repair Disk usually does not cause any new problems, the drive may be unusable after you try to repair it. However, this is not the fault of Disk Repair.

B1 : Launch Disk Utility, located at / Applications / Utilities /.

B2 : Select the First Aid tab .

B3 : In the left pane, select the hard drive or volume you want to run Repair Disk.

B4 : Check the Show details box .

B5 : Click the Repair Disk button .

B6 : If Disk Utility logs any errors, repeat the Repair Disk process until Disk Utility reports The volume xxx appears to be ok .

3. Modify decentralization

Disk Utility's Repair Permissions feature is probably one of the most used services in OS X. Whenever there is something wrong with your Mac, users often run Repair Permissions. Fortunately, using Repair Permissions is quite safe. Even if the Mac does not need to fix any permissions, Repair Permissions is not capable of causing any kind of problem, so this is one of the things to do in any case.

With the advent of OS X El Capitan, Apple removed the Repair Permissions feature from Disk Utility. The reason behind this move is that starting from OS X El Capitan, Apple began locking system files, preventing the right to change from the beginning. However, whenever the operating system is updated, system file permissions will be checked and corrected automatically, if needed.

When to use Repair Permissions

You should use Repair Permissions if you are using OS X Yosemite or an older version and have an issue with an application, such as an application that does not start, boots very slowly, or one of its plugins refuses to work. dynamic. Authorization issues can also cause the Mac to take longer than usual to boot or shut down.

What does Repair Permissions really fix?

Disk Utility's Repair Permissions feature only repairs files and applications installed with the Apple installer package. Repair Permissions will verify and correct if necessary, all Apple applications and most third-party applications, but will not check or repair the files or applications you copied from another source or files and folders in Home. In addition, Repair Permissions will only verify and correct files located on the volume containing OS X capable of booting.

To use Repair Permissions, do the following:

B1 : Launch Disk Utility, located at / Applications / Utilities /.

B2 : Select the First Aid tab.

B3 : In the left pane, select the volume you want to run Repair Permissions. (Remember, the volume must contain a bootable copy of OS X).

B4 : Click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

B5 : Disk Repair will list any files that do not match the expected decentralization structure. Repair Permissions will also try to change the permissions for those files to return to the expected state. Not all permissions are changeable, so some files are always displayed with different permissions than expected.

Hope you are succesful.