Disk Utility
Overview
Utility software
Utility software is system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called a utility or tool....
created by Apple for performing disk
Disk storage
Disk storage or disc storage is a general category of storage mechanisms, in which data are digitally recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical methods on a surface layer deposited of one or more planar, round and rotating disks...
-related tasks in Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
. These tasks include:
- the creation, conversion, compression and encryption of disk imageDisk imageA disk image is a single file or storage device containing the complete contents and structure representing a data storage medium or device, such as a hard drive, tape drive, floppy disk, CD/DVD/BD, or USB flash drive, although an image of an optical disc may be referred to as an optical disc image...
s from a wide range of formats read by Disk Utility to .dmg or—for CD/DVD images—.cdr, which is identical to the .iso format; - mountMount (computing)Mounting takes place before a computer can use any kind of storage device . The user or their operating system must make it accessible through the computer's file system. A user can access only files on mounted media.- Mount point :A mount point is a physical location in the partition used as a...
ing, unmounting, and ejecting disks (including both hard diskHard diskA hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
s, removable mediaRemovable mediaIn computer storage, removable media refers to storage media which is designed to be removed from the computer without powering the computer off.Some types of removable media are designed to be read by removable readers and drives...
and disk images); - enabling or disabling journalingJournaling file systemA journaling file system is a file system that keeps track of the changes that will be made in a journal before committing them to the main file system...
; - verifying a disk's integrityData corruptionData corruption refers to errors in computer data that occur during writing, reading, storage, transmission, or processing, which introduce unintended changes to the original data...
, and repairing it if the disk is damaged (this will work for both Mac compatible format partitions, and FAT-32 partitions with Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
installed); - verifying and repairing permissionsRepair permissionsRepairing disk permissions is a troubleshooting activity commonly associated with the Mac OS X operating system. The efficacy of repairing permissions to troubleshoot application errors has been debated.-Overview:...
; - disk erasing, formattingDisk formattingDisk formatting is the process of preparing a hard disk drive or flexible disk medium for data storage. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new file systems...
, partitioningDisk partitioningDisk partitioning is the act of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions, to treat one physical disk drive as if it were multiple disks. Partitions are also termed "slices" for operating systems based on BSD, Solaris or GNU Hurd...
and cloningDisk cloningDisk cloning is the process of copying the contents of one computer hard disk to another disk or to an "image" file. Often, the contents of the first disk are written to an image file as an intermediate step, and the second disk is loaded with the contents of the image...
; - 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 TableGUID Partition TableIn computer hardware, GUID Partition Table is a standard for the layout of the partition table on a physical hard disk. Although it forms a part of the Extensible Firmware Interface standard , it is also used on some BIOS systems because of the limitations of MBR partition tables, which restrict...
, and master boot recordMaster boot recordA master boot record is a type of boot sector popularized by the IBM Personal Computer. It consists of a sequence of 512 bytes located at the first sector of a data storage device such as a hard disk...
(MBR); - creating, destroying, merging, and repairing RAIDRAIDRAID is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit...
sets; - restoring volumes from Apple Software RestoreApple Software Restoreasr or Apple Software Restore is a command line utility in Mac OS X used to apply a DMG disk image to a selected volume or mount point on a file system. It is often used for cloning large numbers of Macintosh computers...
(ASR) images; - burningOptical disc authoringOptical disc authoring, including DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring , is the process of assembling source material—video, audio or other data—into the proper logical volume format to then be recorded onto an optical disc .-Process:To burn an optical disc, one usually first creates an...
disk images to CDCD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
or DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in HFS+HFS PlusHFS Plus or HFS+ is a file system developed by Apple Inc. to replace their Hierarchical File System as the primary file system used in Macintosh computers . It is also one of the formats used by the iPod digital music player...
format; - erasing CD-RWCD-RWA CD-RW is a rewritable optical disc. It was introduced in 1997, and was known as "CD-Writable" during development. It was preceded by the CD-MO, which was never commercially released....
s and DVD-RWs; - checking the S.M.A.R.TSelf-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting TechnologyS.M.A.R.T. is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures....
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
Mac OS X v10.3
Mac OS X Panther is the fourth major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar" and preceded Mac OS X Tiger...
.
