Disk Utility
 | |
 | |
| Developer(s) | Apple Inc. |
|---|---|
| Stable release | v13 / March 14, 2013 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X |
| Type | Utility |
| License | Proprietary |
Disk Utility is an Apple Mac OS X operating system utility for performing disk and disk volume-related tasks.
The functions supported by Disk Utility include:[1]
- Creation, conversion, backup, compression and encryption of logical volume images from a wide range of formats read by Disk Utility to .dmg or, for CD/DVD images, .cdr
- Mounting, unmounting and ejecting disk volumes (including both hard disks, removable media and disk volume images)
- Enabling or disabling journaling
- Verifying a disk's integrity, and repairing it if the disk is damaged (this will work for both Mac compatible format partitions, and FAT32 partitions with Microsoft Windows installed)
- Verifying and repairing permissions[2]
- Erasing, formatting, partitioning[3] and cloning disks
- Secure deletion of free space or disk using a "zero out" data, a 7-pass DOD 5220-22 M standard, or a 35-pass Gutmann algorithm
- Adding or changing partition table between Apple Partition Table, GUID Partition Table and master boot record (MBR)
- Creating, destroying, merging[4] and repairing RAID sets
- Restoring volumes from Apple Software Restore (ASR) images
- Burning disk images to CDs or DVDs in HFS+ format[5]
- Erasing CD-RWs and DVD-RWs
- Checking the S.M.A.R.T. status of a hard disk
Disk Utility functions may also be accessed from the Mac OS X command line with the diskutil and hdiutil commands.
Disk Utility was updated with Mac OS X v10.3. Prior to v10.3, the functionality of Disk Utility was spread across two applications: Disk Copy and Disk Utility. Disk Copy was used for creating and mounting disk image files, and Disk Utility was used for formatting, partitioning, verifying and repairing file structures. The ability to "zero" all data on a disk was not added until Mac OS X 10.2.3[6]
Further changes introduced in 10.4.3 allowed Disk Utility to be used to verify the file structure of the current boot drive. However, as Apple notes in their public knowledge base,[7] doing so can sometimes yield false error messages.
Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard added the ability to create, resize, and delete disk partitions without erasing them, a feature known as live partitioning.
In versions of the Mac OS prior to Mac OS X, similar functionality to the verification features of Disk Utility could be found in the Disk First Aid application. Another application called Drive Setup was used for drive formatting and partitioning, and the application Disk Copy was used for working with disk images.
See also
- Apple Software Restore
- Logical Disk Manager
- Palimpsest Disk Utility
- GNU Parted
- diskpart
- fdisk
- cfdisk
References
- ↑ "Disk Utility 10.5 Help: Testing and repairing a disk or volume". Apple Inc.
- ↑ "About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature". Apple Inc.
- ↑ "Mac OS X 10.5: About resizing disk partitions". Apple Inc.
- ↑ "Mac OS X: How to combine RAID sets in Disk Utility". Apple Inc.
- ↑ "Burning a disk image file on a CD or DVD in Mac OS X". Apple Inc.
- ↑ "Mac OS X: About the Mac OS X 10.2.3 Update". Apple Inc.
- ↑ "Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later to verify or repair disks". Apple Inc.
External links
| ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||