Open the disk utility app on your mac using one of the following methods, depending on the type of disk or volume you want to erase. Repair a storage device in disk utility on mac apple support. Disk utility is free and included with every copy of the mac os. If you have tried to repair the boot volume before in mac os x before, youll undoubtedly have found the repair disk option is grey and. Download, install and launch iboysoft mac data recovery on your mac. In order to create an external lion recovery using the lion recovery assistant, the mac must have an existing recovery hd. How to burn disc images in mac os without disk utility. Disk utility is desined to repair minor errors on disks. Today i am showing how to make a boot able usb drive for mac using a. There are existing commands for macos x for the works we perform via gui. We have collected the commands all over the web, of course original source is apple.
The reason why i am asking is because i usually eject my hd by dragging it to the trash icon. As you can notice, most of the apps options are grayed out. Lion recovery disk assistant free version download for mac os x. Macdisk is an utility for reading, writing and formatting apple macintosh magnetic media on an ibm compatible pc, without any hardware modification of the computer and without any addon.
Disk utility mac software free download disk utility mac top 4 download offers free software downloads for windows, mac, ios and android computers and mobile devices. Before mac os x panther, the functionality of disk utility was spread across two applications. No other data recovery software for mac is as easy to use. The actual developer of this software for mac is apple inc. How to recover data from damaged mac or external drive. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. Built right into os x, os x recovery lets you repair disks or reinstall os x. Mac disk errors mac recovery mode mac disk utility. Starting with os x lion, apple did away with dvds and other media as a method of installing software and switched to a download model instead. By default, disk utility will open with the mac os x system partition selected, showing a breakdown of its usage.
File system formats available in disk utility on mac apple. Please leave a comment to help others, or if the above tools have helped you. The version and features of disk utility depend on the version of mac os x. Disk utility is an application thats built into os x that can perform lots of useful and even scary actions. Instead, you need to either boot your mac to another drive that contains the mac os, or use the recovery hd volume to start up and run disk utility from. How to make a bootable disk or usb drive of os x mountain lion.
If you run first aid on a volume, disk utility verifies all the contents of that volume only. Inside the mountain lion installation tool, you can open disk utility and erase your macs hard drive. Download the latest version of lion recovery disk assistant for mac utility to. Os x recovery disk assistant free download mac version. Os xs disk utilitywhich enables you to format, partition, repair, and perform other kinds of maintenance on disks including ssds, flash drives, and disk imagesis good for what it does.
Sep 06, 2019 how do i use disk utility to reformat my hard drive. In the disk utility app on your mac, choose view show all devices. To see all the available commands for software update, run. Mac os x leopard added the ability to create, resize and delete disk partitions without erasing them, a feature known as live partitioning. In some cases, a disk is unmountable and greyed out in disk utility because some minor disk errors are stopping your mac reading this drive. For example, it wont work when you want to resize boot camp partition to arrange free disk space, or when you need to partition an. Lion may be the first release of the mac os to be delivered as a digital download. Apple system disk for mac free download and software. The ability to zero all data multipass formatting on a. Disk utility on mac supports several file system formats.
So i figured id try repairing permissions and repairing the disk via disk utility. Disk utility can be used to format external drives as well. To browse the disk utility user guide, click table of contents at the top of the page. The ability to burn data and disk images has long existed in the finder of mac os, but now burning images is missing from disk utility, its one of the primary methods of burning a disk in mac os x 10. How to repair external hard drive greyed out in disk utility. Is there another mac disk repair utility youd suggest. Disk copy was used for creating and mounting disk image files whereas disk utility was used for formatting, partitioning, verifying and repairing file structures. And while the various cloning apps have a lot more features, if you dont have access to thirdparty apps, using disk utility will create a perfectly usable clone, although it may require a few more steps and lacks some nice features, such as automation and scheduling. The delightfully useful disk utility built into os x can burn disk images to optical media in a few easy steps. Fortunately, there is a builtin utility on your mac called first aid is able to check and repair such minor file system errors.
How to make a bootable lion install disc or drive macworld. Select the external hard drive that is greyed out in disk utility and click next to scan for data stored on this drive. If you want to erase your startup disk or startup volume. Its tucked away in the utilities folder, which is found inside the applications folder, but is easy to locate using spotlight which you trigger. Macdisk is a 32bit application and runs under all recent versions of windows vista and 78 included, even 64 bits. Disk utility has always been able to create clones, although the app refers to the process as restore, as in restoring data from a source drive to a target drive. Feb 29, 2016 today i am showing how to make a boot able usb drive for mac using a. Making bootable usb of mac os x with disk utility youtube. Experienced users find frequent need of this handy tool but those newer to the mac. The tool allows you to create os x recovery on an external drive that has all of the same capabilities as the builtin os x recovery. Note that some items are grayed out because they are not applicable to the disk i have highlighted in the left pane of the disk utility window. Accidental deletion, disk utility error, data corruption.
Start up from macos recovery, then choose disk utility from the macos utilities window. Further changes introduced in mac os x tiger, specifically version 10. Select the indented volume name of your startup disk from the left side of the disk utility window, then click the erase tab. If youre having problems with your hard drive or need to make changes to it, disk utility in os x mountain lion is a good place to start. In disk utility on your mac, make an exact copy of one volume on another volume. Launch disk utility, select the disk and click verify disk. This may seem like an inconvenience, but it provides for both a fast copy and a safe one. Even though i did it, my mac claims that it wasnt eject properly. Disk utility mac software free download disk utility mac. Although disk utility is the default disk manager app built into macos, it has limited functions when it comes to advanced partitioning.
Os x recovery disk assistant lets you repair disks or reinstall os x without the need for a physical disc. Start by clicking a disk or volume in the column on the left and then click one of the five tabs. The following image demonstrates disk utility in mac os x snow leopard. How to create a software raid on a lion server dummies. Its easy to reformat your hard drive using disk utility in macos or os x. Its also not showing up when i try and reinstall the software, which now is mac os x lion rather than yosemite or maverick which i had before. Jul 18, 2011 lion may be the first release of the mac os to be delivered as a digital download. Otherwise, you can skip this step and do it from the utilities page during the macos or os x installation.
Mac secret trick how to clone mac hard drive with disk. How to install macos or os x on a new hard drive for your mac. Click mac os x install esd in disk utilitys sidebar, then click the. If youre checking your startup disk or startup volume, restart your computer in macos recovery, select disk utility in the macos utilities window, then click continue. Repair unmountable mac internal hard drive via first aid. If youre having problems with a disk, disk utility can check the disk and repair problems it detects. Drag the existing partition upward to trim some free space from it. Format and manage volumes on physical storage devices.
Excellent mac disk repair software is provided above, for you to consider and try if you like. Create a disk image, a single file you can use to move files from one computer to another or to back up and archive your work. The most popular mac alternative is daemon tools, which is free. How to use your macs disk utility to partition, wipe, repair. Best data recovery software for mac download for free. Even so, its still easy to create a usb installation disk for os x lion if you want to install lion on a freshly formatted hard drive, if youre in an emergency booting situation, or if you need to repair your macs hard drive. If that doesnt suit you, our users have ranked 37 alternatives to disk utility and 16 are available for mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. After a few seconds, youll see a window with mac os x utilities in large. If your mac doesnt work, you can do this using a second mac and an external hard drive caddy. There are many alternatives to disk utility for mac if you are looking to replace it. To resize the partition and create a new partition to use with time machine or to install an alternative operating system we need to select the parent drive.
Then i got the dreaded message disk utility stopped repairing macintosh hd disk utility cant repair this disk. In recovery mode, macos runs a special sort of recovery environment. Burn a dmg or iso file to disk macintosh umass amherst. Now, again go to the partition tab and try to partition mac drive normally. It will work with just about any storage device that you can mount to your mac, including disk images, hard drives, ssds, and usb flash drives. The lion recovery disk assistant lets you create lion recovery on an external drive that has all of the same capabilities as the builtin lion recovery.
The tool is used to repair mac disk errors in your mac such as corrupted files, nonresponsive external devices, or the suddenly quitting of multiple apps. Itll boot into recovery mode, and you can click disk utility to open it up. From the erase tab, choose mac os extended journaled and wipe your drive. So you can try to fix the unmountable mac internal hard drive with disk utility in recovery mode. Restore a disk using disk utility on mac apple support. File system formats available in disk utility on mac. Pull down the file menu and choose burn disk image name to disc. If disk utility manages to fix your drive enough to let you boot from it again, be very careful how you use it. You should plan to get an external drive plugged in as soon as you can, so that you. Apr 06, 2010 the version and features of disk utility depend on the version of mac os x.
When you cant boot up your mac unit because of os xrelated errors, your only hope is the disk utility tool. Commonly we configure mac with homebrew, iterm2 and oh my zsh for installation of command line and other packages. Though you can install lion directly from your macs hard drive, a bootable. Jul 25, 2012 inside the mountain lion installation tool, you can open disk utility and erase your macs hard drive. Lion recovery disk assistant free version download for. For example, it wont work when you want to resize boot camp partition to arrange free disk space, or when you need to partition an external hard drive only to find the option is grayed out. Disk utility can fix certain disk problemsfor example, multiple apps quit unexpectedly, a file is corrupted, an external device doesnt work properly, or your.