Subscribe to this site's feed ››
Add to Google Toolbar ››
Submit News ››
Help, Guides, and News on making the Switch To Apple Macintosh Computers
What is Disk Utility?
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.

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.

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
By: switchtoamac
Recent Guides
- What is Lion?
What is Disk Utility?
What is Boot Camp Assistant?
What is Snow Leopard?
What is Airport Utility?
What is Activity Monitor?
Quickly navigate to the Utilities folder
What are Utilities?
Forward delete on a Mac keyboard
Show or Hide Sidebar items via Preferences
Determine which updates have been installed by Software Update
Disable automatic updates in Software Update
Manually run Software Update on Mac OS X Leopard
Different ways to launch a Mac OS X Application
Expose for Apple keyboards that have volume controls on F9, F10, and F11
What is MobileMe Gallery?
What is iWeb?
Visit the Guides List
Recently Updated
- What is Lion?
- What is Mac OS X?
- MacBook Pro
- MacBook Air
- MacBook
- Choose Your Mac
- The Mac Models
- What are Utilities?
- What is Disk Utility?
- What is Boot Camp Assistant?
- What is Snow Leopard?
- What is Airport Utility?
- What is Activity Monitor?
- Quickly navigate to the Utilities folder
- Expose for Apple keyboards that have volume controls on F9, F10, and F11
- Forward delete on a Mac keyboard
- Show or Hide Sidebar items via Preferences
- Customize the Sidebar - Hide and Show
- Finder and Sidebar - an Ideal Combination
Recent Articles
Apple to offer free OS X Lion upgrade for new Macs via the Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date program
Forbes: Apple Gets Predatory With Lion OS Pricing
Town of Wellesley Massachusetts - 'Macs Apple of their eye'
WWDC 2011 - Apple's SVP of Product Marketing Phil Schiller, discusses the State of the Mac
WWDC 2011 begins today - Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud unveiling sets the stage for a Unified Apple Platform
Apple CEO Steve Jobs to introduce Apple's next generation software Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud during WWDC Keynote Address on Monday, June 6
Amazon launches a Mac Download Store - software and games for your Mac
AllThingsD - The Mac is kicking ass
Where in the world are Mac sales growing? Everywhere.
Corporate Mac sales surge 66 percent as Apple makes significant enterprise headway
Parallels Transporter an app that makes it easier to switch from a Windows PC to a Mac