Repair Drive using Disk Utility in Mac-Explained
The Disk Utility application enables you to perform many tasks related to hard drives and other storage devices. For the purposes of troubleshooting and solving problems, you can try to repair the hard drive on which your primary system lives or to repair the permissions on the drive. Either process involves a fair amount of complicated technical information, but you don’t need to understand it to be able to use the tool. Run the tool; if the problem is solved, all is well. If not, you have to try other solutions:
1. Restart using the Recovery HD and access the Mac OS X Utilities tool as described in the previous section.
2. Select the Disk Utility option. The Disk Utility application opens. Along the left pane are all the volumes mounted on your Mac, as shown in Figure. The drive at the top of the list is the one on which the active system software is stored. At least two icons for this drive appear; one is for the hard drive itself, which is named with the model and size of the drive, and the other is for the startup volume on which the software is stored, which is named Macintosh HD unless you have changed the name to something else. Another way to differentiate them is that the volume icon is indented under the hard disk icon.
3. Click the startup volume’s icon.
4. If it isn’t selected already, click the First Aid tab. The disk and permission repair tools are shown in the right pane of the window.
5. Click the Repair Disk button. The application starts checking the disk for problems with the disk’s data structure; as it works, progress information appears in the large pane. As problems with the disk are found, the application tries to fix them. You can read along with this information as the tool works; keep your eyes open for any problems that are found but not fixed. When the process is complete, the overall results are shown. If problems were found and fixed, the problem you were trying to fix might
be solved. If problems were found but the application was not able to fix them, you need to try another solution, which might include using a different disk maintenance application or taking the Mac in for repair.
NOTE: Repair or Verify?
You’ll notice Verify buttons that appear along with the Repair buttons. If you click Verify, the application checks the selected disk for problems but only reports them to you instead of fixing them. Is there any reason to do this? Not really. Just try to repair the disk or permissions and don’t bother verifying them first.
6. Click the Repair Disk Permissions button. This time, the application checks the permissions applied to the files on the disk and attempts to correct any problems it finds. Like disk repair, information about the progress of the process is displayed in the window. Be alert for any problems found but not solved.
7. When you’ve repaired the disk and its permissions, quit the Disk Utility application.
Restart your Mac on the primary startup drive. Hopefully, the problems you were having are corrected.
NOTE: Disk Utility
Disk Utility is an application stored in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. You can run it from the desktop, just like other applications. It works just like it does from within the Recovery HD’s Mac OS X Utilities tool, with one big exception. When you run the application from the desktop, it can’t repair the hard drive on which the active operating system is installed.
So, if you are having a problem with your primary startup disk, start up from the Recovery HD volume and run the application from the Mac OS X Utilities. If you want to work on disk drives you aren’t currently using as the startup drive, such as to prepare a new drive for use to repair a drive you are using, run Disk Utility from the desktop.
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