Disk Utility in OS X El Capitan has lost the function of restoring access rights.

Many people know about the existence of "Disk Utility" in OS X. Today we will talk about how to use it effectively, because it is necessary.

Reinstalling the system regularly is not an option for the user OS X... Let's leave a similar procedure to the owners of computers under Windows control... However, any mechanism needs to be prevented, and the same applies to the operating system of our Mac computer. Today we'll kickstart this process with preventive maintenance on the drive.

To do this, we do not need an expensive third-party software... No, everything you need can be done in " Disk Utility"Which has been part of the standard OS X programs since time immemorial. It has a simple and straightforward graphical interface and is aimed at the average user. You don't have to understand the partition tables and types of file systems, but at the same time keep your computer's drive in decent condition.

So, to get started, let's start the "Disk Utility" with the help of Launchpad... If you cannot find it there, then from the upper right corner and enter the name of the program you are looking for. The result will be as follows:

Okay, now let's talk about what we are going to do and, most importantly, why. There are a number of reasons why Mac system storage can be prevented, here are the most obvious:

System performance is increased.
The status of the drive and the presence of errors are checked.
Access rights are corrected.

Let's start with the last point. Within OS X access rights play an essential role. Putting them in order may not be the solution to all problems, but it can save you from certain problems with operating system right now or in the future. The procedure is recommended to be performed regularly.

To do this, select the main HDD or solid state drive on the left side of the window. In the same place, select the system partition - it will be located just below. Below the button "Check access rights" will be available - press it.

After waiting for the result of the check, after some time, boldly click "Fix access rights" and again wait until the procedure is completed.

The first stage of prevention has been completed.

Now check the drive for errors... To do this, click the "Check Disk" button. Verification takes certain time: in the case of an SSD - less, with a conventional HDD - longer.

Further, two options are possible. The check may not find errors, which is good. If errors are found, then, without hesitation, we press "Fix disk" and wait for the result. In my case, as you can see in the screenshot, there were no problems.

It remains to remember the promised increase in productivity... In fact, you may not even notice it when using a solid state drive. Although if the system is two or three years old and you run this procedure for the first time, then the result should still be. Concerning hard disk, here regular maintenance is simply necessary: this directly affects both the performance of the drive itself and the entire system. If there is nothing to help the drive, and this sometimes happens, then the only way out will become advance.

This is the end of the system storage prevention. Similar procedures can be organized for other drives that you have: external hard drives, solid state drives or flash drives. It certainly won't get any worse. Now let's turn our attention to several other useful features of Disk Utility.

In the "Erase" section for the selected drive, you can not only completely format it, if we are not talking about the system disk, but also " Erase free space ". This procedure can be useful if you have deleted some files and do not really want them to be restored. In the settings, you can select the level of thoroughness of data deletion.

With the "Disk Utility" you can burn discs and create images. It will show about any connected drive or image details. This program will even create a RAID array or delete an unneeded Windows partition. The usefulness of Disk Utility in OS X cannot be overemphasized, but we urge you to simply run it as often as possible to keep your Mac's drive tidy.

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Fresh hot apples:

The access rights recovery feature has long been standard in OS X. Despite its ambiguity, Apple allowed, if necessary, to launch Disk Utility and check and restore access rights caused by software glitches. A new version OS X El Capitan has brought changes to this streamlined process.

“I was shocked to learn how Disk Utility has changed. I can't believe there is no way to check and restore the permissions or drive. It's not a utility anymore, ”says SelectGroup.

In this case, we are talking about disk utility number 15 included with OS X El Capitan. Previously, it performed many important functions. For example, scanning the system disk for damaged objects. Another important function was the management of hard drives: formatting, partitioning, error correction. From now on, this functionality is not available to Mac owners out of the box.

But, most likely, most OS X users won't notice the change. If you believe the statistics, only a small part of the "Mac growers" used the function of restoring access rights.

If you are one of those who preferred to fix errors manually, we hasten to please. OS X El Capitan has built-in automatic file system scanning. It regularly checks the drive and fixes any software glitches. By at least in theory.

This is how Disk Utility looked in OS X Yosemite:

And this is how it looks now:

Much more visual and therefore convenient demonstration of the distribution of data on the disk. In fact, Disk Utility was of dubious value for working with files. According to Apple, it was almost a panacea for all problems. But in reality, it turned out that most of the corrupted data remained undetected. Any specialized software from App Store offers much wider possibilities.

OS X El Capitan September 30. All Macs released in 2009 or later and some models released in 2007 and 2008 are compatible with the operating system.

Checking and repairing disks or partitions using Disk Utility does not allow you to check and correct the physical condition of the disk, it only fixes software errors on the disk. The utility itself is located in the Applications-> Utilities folder or via Finder Cmd + Shift + U

Restore backup disk: (connected via USB)

Turn off Time Machine (in TM settings). Run Disk Utility and select the desired disk.

Then select "First Aid" and "Check Disk". If any errors appear according to the results of the check, click the "fix disk" button

If the restore procedure is completed successfully, you will receive a message "Volume<имя тома>apparently okay "

If the required drive is not listed in the list of available drives in Disk Utility, then you need to make sure that it is connected directly to your computer, and not through a network or Time Capsule.

Disk Utility cannot repair normally boot disk with OS X. This requires launching disk utility from the installation procedure.

If the recovery is unsuccessful.

If Disk Utility was unable to restore the disk, carefully read the messages that were next to it (before the message about the failure to restore). If some of the data on the disk has been corrected, but not all, it is necessary to repeat the disk recovery procedure (over and over) until there is a complete recovery or a complete failure of recovery.

If Disk Utility cannot recover internal drive you can try third-party low-level recovery utilities such as DiskWarrior(http://www.alsoft.com). This utility quite expensive (about $ 100), but a very reliable recovery tool. If you decide on such actions, be sure to make sure that the version of the utility is compatible with the version of your OS X (how to check the version of OS X)

Working with the disk utility through the Terminal program

Some of the actions inaccessible to the "Disk Utility" program can be done with the diskutil command in the Terminal

In this article, we will show you how to erase partitions and format a hard drive on a Mac using Disk Utility.

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Attention! Before proceeding with the steps described below, take care of the safety of important data. Exercise backup or use the utility.

What you need to know about Disk Utility?

This free app Apple shipped with macOS. It is distinguished by its simplicity and sufficient functionality for the common needs of users. It works with hard drives, SSD drives, and disk images. Disk Utility can erase, format, repair disks as well as partition and even provide first aid.

The program works with disks and partitions. A disk is a physical storage device and a partition is a formatted section of a disk. Any disk contains at least one section.

It is very important to know and understand the process of interaction between the disk and the partition (s). You can erase a separate partition without affecting the entire disk, but if you erase the disk, you will also destroy all the information on each partition.

Interface Disk Utilities consists of three main elements:

toolbar (upper part of the program, header);
left side menu containing disks and partitions;
Workspace.

How to erase a disk or partition using Disk Utility

Erasing a disk or partition is one of the most simple ways freeing up space. There is no fundamental difference between cleaning a disk or partitions.

1 ... In the left side menu, select the disk or partition of interest (the disk icon has priority in the tree. Clicking on the triangle next to the disk will open a list of partitions it contains).

2 ... On the toolbar, click the " Erase».

3 ... Enter a name for the new disk and select a format.

4 ... Click the " Erase».

How to securely erase a disk or partition using Disk Utility

You can perform a secure erase if necessary. To do this, repeat steps 1-3 and press the button " Security options ...". There are three types of secure erase. The higher the security level, the longer the erasing process will take. " Security options"Include the following options, which will vary depending on the location of the slider:

1) Safe erasing of files, without overwriting information with zeros. It is highly likely that the data can be recovered. Erasing provides a low level of security.

2) Erasing files with an acceptable level of security, achieved by writing random data with a one-pass write of zeros over the entire disk.

3) Erase according to US Department of Energy standards (write random data twice and write zeros three times over the disk).

4) The most serious safety standard. This is how magnetic media are erased at the US Department of Defense. In addition to writing random data, it is overwritten with zeros seven times.

Then press the button " OK" and " Erase».

We talked about how to install macOS on a formatted disk.

“Rifat, I bought new disc and I need to make it work on both Mac and Windows. " “Hi, I have a disc, but I can’t write anything to it on my Mac, what should I do?”. “Listen, how to format a Mac disk, what would it be?”.

Approximately such questions are asked to me by my friends and clients, once a week, if not more often! So now, I will show you how to format a disk in a disk utility, for different cases!

First, a short introduction to the major file systems (FS). If you do not want to bother with theoretical aspects, you can skip below, directly to the formatting procedure.

To format the disk, you need to go to Disk Utility, which is located in the Applications - Utilities (Utilities) folder, or find it through Spotlight. In the window that appears, on the left side, you need to select the disk to format - the disk itself, not the volume name. In my case, this is 160.04 GB Seagate TOSH ... and not Extended HD. Next, we need to click on the Disk Partition button, at the top in the middle, and here we will be able to see all the options for formatting the disk for different needs! So, now I will describe all the sections and what they give us:

1) Partition scheme - by clicking on "Current", we can select the number of partitions on the disk. Someone may need to create a disk with 2 or more storage partitions different files or for use on different computers.

2) Partition information - here you need to select the disk name and FS. For use on Mac and Win, choose FAT or ExFAT. To use the disk for Time Machine, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

3) Parameters - by clicking on this button we select the type of bootloader - this is very important parameter since it depends on it whether the disk will be detected on the computer or not!

— GUID Partition Scheme- no matter which file system you choose, the disk will be detected only on a Mac with Intel processor(all modern poppies). Together with the HFS + file system (Mac OS Extended), the disk will be available for creation backups via Time Machine! No other combination of "Partition Scheme" and File System settings will allow you to use the disk for copies!

— Apple partition diagram- designed for use in old Mac computers with PPC processor. We won't need it.

— Master boot record- when you select this item, the disk will be visible on computers with Win. But besides this, you need the format to be FAT or ExFAT.

ATTENTION! FORMATTING THE DISK WASTE ALL DATA FROM IT !!! BEFORE FORMATTING THE DISK, MAKE SURE THAT IT HAS NO IMPORTANT FILES OR SAVE THEM ON ANOTHER MEDIA !!!

After selecting all the parameters, you can click on the "Apply" button in the lower right corner and this will appear:

The system will warn you that all data will be deleted from the disk, and if you agree, then click on the "Partition disk" button. Formatting takes place quite quickly - from 3 to 20 seconds, depending on the size of the disk.

If you chose the path for Time Machine creation, then immediately after formatting a window may appear with the choice of this disk for backups.

I will clarify again which items you need to choose for:

— Time Machine and Mac-only Disk — file system Mac OS Extended and GUID Partition Scheme;

— Disk for Mac and Win- ExFAT file system and Master Boot Record.

So we figured out how to format a disk in Mac, and what options you need to choose for different cases! This method suitable for disks, flash drives, regardless of the connection interface - USB, FireWare or Thunderbolt. If you have any question or difficulty in the process of formatting a Mac disk, write about it in the comments 🙂

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