What is Disk Utility?

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As its name implies, Disk Utility is a Mac OS X Utility that helps Mac users work with disks.  The types of disks that Disk Utility can manage include hard disks, disk images, DVDs, and CDs.
disk_utility_01.pngWhat can I do with Disk Utility?
The version and features of Disk Utility depend on the version of Mac OS X.  The following image demonstrates Disk Utility in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.  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.

The left pane shows the "disks" currently connected to your Mac.  At a minimum, you'll see the hard drive that has the "Macintosh HD" partition.  If you have additional internal hard drives or external hard drives connected to your Mac, they too will be visible.  If your Mac has an optical drive, you will see it as well.  The image below shows only an internal hard drive and optical drive.

disk_utility_02.png
What are some important feature of Disk Utility?
  • First Aid - to repair file systems and file permissions
  • Erase - erases all the data on a disk or volume
  • RAID - allows you to stripe or mirror disks in a RAID
  • Restore - allows you to copy or restore a disk image to a disk
You can think of Disk Utility as both a "disk repair" and "disk image" utility.

Created: 4:34 PM on Apr 6, 2010
By: switchtoamac