Summary :
In Mac OS X, it is part of the Disk Utility program. In earlier versions of the Mac operating system, it is a separate program called Disk First Aid. It is a good idea to run First Aid or Disk First Aid once a month or so if you use your computer frequently to prevent major corruption to the files on your computer. Mac Disk Utility. Note: formatted data can be recovered by data recovery software. Disk Utility is a built-in app in macOS. When you open this app, it will show all the hard drives and devices on your Mac. You can use the erase function to format a hard drive or device.
Do you know what Disk Utility Mac is? Do you know how to access it and use it to partition, wipe, repair, restore, and copy a drive on your Mac? If your Mac data gets lost by mistake when using Disk Utility, do you know how to get it back? MiniTool Solution will show you the answers in this post.
Quick Navigation :
What Is Disk Utility on Mac?
Disk Utility is a hard disk management tool that comes with your Mac operating system. It can be used for disk partition and disk volume-related tasks on your Mac computer.
What does Disk Utility Do on a Mac?
Mechanical 3d modeling software. To be specific, Mac Disk Utility can do these things for you:
- Format volumes on your Mac storage devices.
- Manage volumes on your Mac storage devices.
- Create a disk image for data migration/backup/archive.
- Combine multiple hard disks into a RAID set to make it act as a single disk.
- Check for and repair disk errors on your Mac.
- ..
When Use Disk Utility on Mac?
Under these situations, you can use Mac Disk Utility to fix your issues:
- One or more applications on Mac quit unexpectedly.
- There are some corrupted files on your Mac.
- You need to mount, unmount, or eject a disk.
- You need to change the file system of a disk or a partition on Mac.
- There is something wrong with your startup disk.
- There is a damaged or corrupted disk on your Mac and you need to repair it.
- You need to erase, format a partition or a disk for some reason.
- And more….
How to Use Disk Utility on Mac?
Now, we will show you how to use Mac Disk Utility including how to open it and how to use it to solve your issues.
How to use Disk Utility on Mac:
- Open Disk Utility on Mac
- Partition drives or format partition on Mac
- Repair the file system on Mac
- Wipe a partition or a drive on Mac
- Create and restore a disk image on Mac
- Set up RAID disk sets on Mac
How do I Open Disk Utility on Mac?
Where is Disk Utility on Mac? You can’t directly find Mac Disk Utility on the desktop. Then, how to access Disk Utility on Mac? There are different methods in different situations. Here we will show you some universal methods.
Way 1: Open Disk Utility via Spotlight Search
- Press Command+Space on your keyboard or click the Spotlight icon in the upper-right corner of the top menu bar to open Spotlight search.
- Type Disk Utility into the search box.
- Double-click Disk Utility - Utilities from the search results to open it.
Way 2: Open Disk Utility via Launchpad
1. Press the F4 button to open Launchpad.
2. Select the Other folder from the Launchpad.
3. Select Disk Utility to open it.
Way 3: Open Disk Utility via Finder
- Click Finder from the bottom menu on your Mac.
- Click Application from the left sidebar, double-click the Utilities folder, and double-click Disk Utility to open it.
Way 4: Open Disk Utility via Recovery Mode
You can also access Disk Utility via Recovery Mode. This method is especially useful when your Mac won’t turn on.
- Press and hold Command+R when you boot your Mac.
- You will enter Mac Recovery Mode, seeing the following interface. Then, you need to select Disk Utility and click Continue to open it.
Tip: In Recovery Mode, your macOS can run in a special environment, allowing you to use Disk Utility to wipe or repartition the whole drive.
How to Partition Drives and Format Partitions on Mac?
How to View All Devices in Disk Utility?
In Disk Utility, you can see all the internal and external drives on your Mac. You can also see all the mounted volumes on the left side list. But you can’t see the empty hard drives by default. You need to go to Views > Show All Devices to make Disk Utility show a tree of drives and the internal partitions.
The parent drive stands for a separate physical drive and the drive icon in the subdirectory stands for a partition on that drive.
Do you know how to clear disk space on Mac? In this post, we will show you how to free up disk space on Mac automatically and manually.
How to Partition or Format a Drive on Mac?
To manage a specific partition on your Mac, you need to click the parent drive and then select the targeted partition from its subdirectory. You will enter the partition layout interface as follows. Then, you can resize, create, rename, delete, and reformat that partition.
Tip: Many of the operations in this interface are destructive for the data. So you’d better back up your Mac with Time Machine beforehand.
However, if you want to partition your system disk, you will need to do the job in Recovery Mode. But there is an exception: APFS volumes. APFS is a new file system on Mac. It is the default file system on the solid-state drive (SSD) since macOS High Sierra.
If you want to add a new APFS volume, you can just select the system disk, click Edit > Add APFS from the menu bar, and then set up the volume according to your requirements.
Want an alternative to Time Machine for Windows 10/8/7 to back up your PC? MiniTool ShadowMaker is the best alternative to keep your PC safe.
How to Repair File System on Mac?
If the drive on your Mac is corrupted, damaged, or inaccessible, you can use the First Aid feature in Disk Utility to check the file system for errors and then correct them.
You can just:
- Select the drive you want to fix from the left drive list.
- Click the First Aid button. The file system checking and fixing process will start automatically. If it is checking your system drive, your Mac will have no response. You should wait until the whole process ends.
Get 'Disk Utility can't repair this disk' error message on Mac when using Disk Utility to fix certain disk problems? Here are the solutions!
How to Wipe a Partition or a Drive on Mac?
The Erase feature in Disk Utility allows you to securely erase all data on a disk or a partition. You can even only erase the free space using it.
- Select the drive or partition you want to wipe.
- Click the Erase button on the top menu.
- Click Security Option and then select a security level to overwrite the data on the drive.
The Fastest option is not a secure choice because a Mac data recovery program can recover these erased files. You can switch to the next level to erase the drive. Of course, you can use a more advanced level to erase the drive.
Note: This feature is only available for a mechanical drive. You should not do this to a solid-state drive because it just wears down the drive for no advantage.
How to Create and Restore a Disk Image on Mac?
How to Create a Disk Image on Mac?
1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. You can also use other methods mentioned in this post to open Disk Utility on Mac.
![Apple mac disk utility Apple mac disk utility](https://help.apple.com/assets/5A71F63F680CE218781BBA2A/5A71F641680CE218781BBA32/en_US/6a0915bcea1e57f1bcec91d40e4f26da.png)
2. On the Menu bar, you need to go to File > New Image > Image from Folder.
3. Select your startup disk ad then click Open.
4. Type a name for the disk image and add tags for it if necessary. Then, select a location to save it.
5. You can encrypt the disk image by clicking the Encryption pop-out menu and choosing an encryption option.
6. Click the Format pop-up window and you will see 5 format choices: Read-only, Compressed, Read/write, DVD/CD master, and Hybrid image (HFS+/ISO/UDF). You can select one option according to your requirements.
7. Click Save and then click Done to save the disk image.
You can also use the same method to create a blank disk image for storage/a disk/a connected device.
How to Restore a Disk Image on Mac?
The Restore feature on Disk Utility can help you restore a disk image to a partition or a disk. Here, you need to know that this process will erase the destination partition or disk and copy the data from the disk image to it.
How to Set up RAID Disk Sets on Mac?
You can also use Disk Utility to set up RAID on your Mac. The operations are very simple:
1. In Disk Utility, you need to go to File > RAID Assistant.
2. Select a RAID type you want to use when seeing the following interface.
3. Follow the wizards to define RAID and save the settings.
Reading there, you can see that Disk Utility Mac is like the Disk Management tool on Windows. It is more advanced. If you are a Windows user and you are looking for a more powerful partition manager, you can try MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Apple Disk Utility
What If You Lose Some Important Files when Using Disk Utility on Mac?
As mentioned above, some operations in Disk Utility can destroy files on the targeted drive. If your operation is wrong, you will lose your data unexpectedly. As long as the missing files are not overwritten by new items, you can use Stellar Data Recovery for Mac to get them back.
This Mac data recovery software has a trial edition. You can go to the MiniTool download center to get it. Then you can use it to scan the target drive and see whether it can find the files you want to restore.
You can follow this guide to make the software scan the drive for lost files:
![Utility Utility](https://www.macobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/disk-utility-guid.jpg)
1. Open Stellar Data Recovery for Mac. Online editing software like photoshop.
2. Select the files’ types you want to recover. For example, if you want to recover all types of files, you need to make sure the button for Recover Everything is turned on. If you only want to recover videos, you just need to turn on the button for Videos.
3. When seeing the next interface, you need to select the drive you want to recover data from to continue. If you want this software to perform a deep scan, you need to turn on its button that is at the bottom left corner. While a deep scan will last longer relatively. You need to wait patiently.
4. After scanning, this software will show you the scan results that are in the Classic List. You can switch to the Deleted List to only view the deleted items.
5. You can open the folder from the left list and check whether your needed files are there. You can also preview some types of files like photos, videos, etc.
You are not allowed to use the trial edition to recover the found files. You can go to the MiniTool store to upgrade this free Mac data recovery program to a full edition and then use it to get your data back.
Bottom Line
Now, you should know what Disk Utility on Mac is and how to use it to manage your disk and partitions on your Mac computer. Should you have any related issues, you can let us know in the comment or contact us via [email protected]. Apple lion uk.
Disk Utility Mac FAQ
Command+R is a keyboard shortcut for Mac. It allows you to enter the Mac Recovery Mode when your Mac won’t turn on or for some other reason.
If your Mac fails to boot, you can press Shift+Control+Option and the Power button at the same time. Then release these four buttons at the same time. Next, press the Power button to turn your Mac on.
First Aid can be used to verify and repair some directory structures issue on your HFS or HFS+ hard disks or volumes. This article shows you how to use this tool to fix an unreadable disk on Mac: Fixed - The Disk You Inserted Was Not Readable by This Computer.
If First Aid fails to repair your disk, you can try it again. If the issue persists, you should first back up the data on that disk if possible and then reformat the disk. After that, you can restore the data from the backup.
Looking for the best ISO to USB burner for Mac? It's possible, but ISO is not native file type in Mac OS X or macOS environment, so you need to use workaround methods or employ a third-party ISO burning utility for Mac to get this done. This article covers three ways to burn ISO to USB stick on a Mac computer, powered by macOS Mojave, High Serria and earier Mac OS X systems.
The first thing you need to know is that you can't use an ISO disk image file on a Mac, since Apple primarily uses the DMG format. However, if you merely want to burn it to a disk, that's definitely possible. The only thing you can't do is run an ISO file on an Apple computer. Let's look at the various ways to burn ISO to USB on a Mac machine.
Part 1: How to Burn ISO to USB With Mac Terminal Software
Terminal is Apple's command line equivalent of Command Prompt in Windows and Terminal in Linux. Using this command line utility, you can burn an ISO file to an external DVD or USB disk. If you did not t have any experience with text command, then this is not recommended because it is too risky to damage the local disk with wrong input. Terminal allows you to do several system-level operations, so don't input anything other than the commands specified in the process outline shown below:
Step 1: Click Terminal icon from the Dock. Or Go to the Applications folder on Mac and find the Terminal app in Utilities folder.
Step 2: Copy the ISO file in a convenient location so your command doesn't have to be too long. Saving it to desktop or downloads folder is usually a good idea. Make sure you remember the name of the ISO file because it will be used in the command.
Step 3: If your ISO file is in your Desktop, then run the following command (press Enter after typing the command): cd desktop
Step 4: Now run the following command (hit Enter after typing): hdiutil burn filename.iso
Step 5: Once you run the command, your ISO file will be burned to the USB drive in your default optical drive. If you haven't inserted a disk, you will be prompted to do so. There is no need to run the command again after inserting the USB.
Cons:
- Dangerous and not safe for beginners .
- Sharp learning curve.
- Bad support for USB 2.0 device.
- USB not bootable.
Apple Disk Utility
If you want to avoid any kind of command line work and if you're running one of the newer versions of macOS, then it's better to use a third-party software like the one described in Part 2 below.
Part 2: Easily Burn ISO to USB on Mac via UUByte Software (Bootable USB Creator)
Sofware being powered by a graphics user interface are always welcomed because of user friendly operation. So the second suggestion in here is UUByte ISO burner software called ISO Editor for Mac. It is popularly regarded as the best ISO burning software for Mac. It allows you to burn, extract, edit, copy and create ISO almost as if it was a native file format on Mac. The utility has been fully tested on a wide range of storage media brands as well as all versions of macOS and Mac OS X.
The biggest advantage is that you do not need any technical expertise whatsoever to use this software. It is highly intuitive, and in a matter of minutes you can burn your ISO to USB or DVD. More importantly, the USB is bootable in default. This flexibility makes it the most user-friendly Mac app for handling ISO disk images in a number of ways. The next section shows you how to easily and quickly burn any ISO file to a disk or drive to create bootable USB on your Mac.
Key Features of ISO Editor for Mac
- Designed by great UI.
- Powerful Burning options.
- Able to make bootable USB or DVD.
- Support the latest macOS Mojave and High Serria.
- Include other useful ISO tools such as edit, extract and create.
Step 1: Download UUByte ISO Burner for Mac
Download and install ISO Editor for Mac to your computer and launch the program. Click on the Burn module on the first page, which will take you to the ISO burning utility.
Step 2: Insert USB Drive on Mac and Import ISO Image
Insert a USB flash drive into your Mac. Select the ISO file to be burned to the media. If you want a different partition style or file system, make those changes on this page. If you don't know what they mean, leave them in default mode.
Step 3: Start Burning ISO to USB on Mac
Click Burn and the ISO file will be burned to USB drive in around 5 minutes. Please wait and be patient. Make sure the computer not going into sleep mode during the burning process.
UUByte ISO Editor for Mac boasts a 95% burn success rate, so no wasted disks or wasted time when you use this software. The software's reliability, flexibility and speed have made this the go-to Mac application for handling ISO disk image files.
Part 3: Disk Utility - The Default ISO to USB Buner (Solid for Old Macs)
Disk Utility is a built-in tool that comes with Mac OS X and macOS. Using this function, you can easily burn your ISO to a disk after mounting it. Disk Utility is primarily meant to view and repair hard drives and other drives, but also has added functionality. Follow the process below to get your ISO burned to a writable DVD or CD.
Step 1: Go to the Applications folder using Finder or by clicking the shortcut on the bottom right of your screen. From there, go into the Utilities folder and click on Disk Utility to launch the app.
Step 2: Open your ISO file and mount it as a virtual drive. This is done automatically when you click on File >Open Disk Image… in the top menu.
Step 3: When you see your ISO file in the left panel, that means it was mounted properly. You can now insert an USB and click on the Burn option to burn the target ISO file to the USB drive.
This method is only meant for OS X 10.10 and earlier versions. With Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Apple removed the ability to burn ISO to a USB. If you have one of these higher versions, you can try the above methods.
Summary
Apple Disk Utility Errors
To be honest, Burning ISO to USB was not challenging at all on Mac in the past. But the situation was changed since the release of macOS. Many apps was not supported or updated to Mojave or High Serria. So for the new Mac computer, UUByte ISO Editor is the best option out there in 2019.