Disk Utility

This article is about the software by Apple Inc. For disk utilities in general, see disk utility.

Disk Utility is a system utility for performing disk and disk volume-related tasks on the macOS operating system by Apple Inc.

Disk Utility

Disk Utility running on macOS Big Sur
Stable release	22.3
Operating system	macOS
Type	Utility
Website	support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/welcome/mac

Functions

The functions currently 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 for FAT32 partitions with Microsoft Windows installed)
• Erasing, formatting, partitioning,^[2] 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 Map, GUID Partition Table, and master boot record (MBR)
• Restoring volumes from Apple Software Restore (ASR) images
• Checking the S.M.A.R.T. status of a hard disk

Disk Utility functions may also be accessed from the macOS command line with the diskutil and hdiutil commands.^[3] It is also possible to create and manage RAM disk images by using hdiutil and diskutil in terminal.^[4]

History

In the classic Mac OS, 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.^{[citation needed]}

Before Mac OS X Panther, 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 whereas Disk Utility was used for formatting, partitioning, verifying, and repairing file structures. The ability to "zero" all data (multi-pass formatting) on a disk was not added until Mac OS X 10.2.3.^[5] Further changes introduced in Mac OS X Tiger, specifically version 10.4.3, allowed Disk Utility to be used to verify the file structure of the current boot drive. Mac OS X Leopard added the ability to create, resize, and delete disk partitions without erasing them, a feature known as live partitioning. In OS X El Capitan, Disk Utility has a different user interface and lost the abilities to repair permissions due to obsolescence,^[6] create and manage disks formatted as RAID, burn discs, and multi-pass format internal solid-state drives and encrypted external drives.^[7]

See also

• Apple Software Restore
• Logical Disk Manager
• Palimpsest Disk Utility
• GNU Parted
• diskpart
• fdisk
• cfdisk
• sfdisk

References

1. "Intro to Disk Utility on Mac". Apple Support. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
2. "Partition a physical disk in Disk Utility on Mac". Apple Support. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
3. Landau, Ted; Frakes, Dan (December 20, 2005). Mac OS X Help Line, Tiger Edition. Peachpit Press. ISBN 9780132705240.
4. "Create a RAM Disk in Mac OS X". March 23, 2007.
5. "Mac OS X: About the Mac OS X 10.2.3 Update" Archived March 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Apple Inc.
6. "OS X v10.11 Developer Beta 7 Release Notes". Mac Developer Library. Apple Inc. August 18, 2015. Retrieved October 7, 2015.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
7. Cunningham, Andrew; Hutchinson, Lee (September 29, 2015). "OS X 10.11 El Capitan: The Ars Technica Review". Ars Technica. Retrieved September 30, 2015.

External links

• Online man page for diskutil
• Online man page for hdiutil