An important application in your maintenance toolbox is the Disk Utility, which is located in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder. When you first run this program, it looks something like Figure 1, displaying all the physical disks and volumes on your system.
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Figure 1: The familiar face of Tiger’s Disk Utility.
Mac HD Mac HD - Data. Then I reinstalled my apps and ended up with three volumes (included space used for comparison) Mac HD uses 10.56GB Mac HD - Data uses 515.08GB Mac HD - Data uses 774 KB. I went ahead and removed the third (774KB) volume in Disk Utility. How to Repair a Mac Boot Disk with Disk Utility in Mac OS X. Reboot the Mac and hold down Command+R to boot into Recovery, or hold down OPTION; Select “Recovery HD” at the boot menu; At the Mac OS X Utilities screen, select “Disk Utility” Select the boot volume or partition from the left menu and click on the “Repair” tab; Repair.
Disk Utility underwent a change when Apple released OS X El Capitan.The new version of Disk Utility is much more colorful and — some say — easier to use. Others say it lost many of the basic capabilities that old Mac hands took for granted.
The Disk Utility application has its own toolbar that you can toggle on and off. Click the lozenge-shaped button at the upper-right corner of the window to display or hide the toolbar.
Displaying the goods on your disks
The volume tree structure on the left of the Disk Utility window lists both the physical disks and the partitions that you’ve set up. A partition is nothing more than another word for volume, which is the formatted section of a disk that contains data. A single physical hard drive can contain several partitions. The information display at the bottom of the Disk Utility window contains data about both the volumes and the partitions on your hard drive.
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To illustrate: Clicking a drive labeled at the top of the tree displays a description of the drive itself, including its total capacity, interface (connection type), and whether the drive is internal or external, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Display data on a physical drive. Honda accord hybrid mechanic manual 2016.
Clicking the tree entry for a partition, however, displays information about the type of formatting, the total capacity of the partition and how much of that is used, and the number of files and folders stored on the partition (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Display data on a volume.
Playing doctor with First Aid
From the First Aid pane, Disk Utility can be used to verify (or check) any disk (well, almost any disk) for errors, as well as repair any errors that it finds. Here are the two exceptions when the buttons are disabled:
- The start-up disk: Disk Utility can’t verify or repair the start-up disk — that’s Mac talk for the boot drive that contains the Mac OS X system that you’re using at the moment — which makes sense if you think about it because that drive is currently being used!
- If you have multiple operating systems on multiple disks, you can boot from another Mac OS X installation on another drive to check your current start-up disk. Or, you can boot your system from the original Mac OS X installation CD and run Disk Utility from the Installation menu.
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- Your start-up disk is automatically verified and repaired (if necessary) during the boot procedure, so you really don’t need to worry about checking the start-up disk.
- Write-protected disks: Although you can use the Disk Utility to verify CDs, DVDs, and write-protected removable disk drives (like a write-protected Zip disk), it can’t repair them.
- You also can’t repair a disk that has open files that are currently being used. If you’re running an application from a drive or you’ve opened a document that’s stored on that drive, you won’t be able to repair that drive.
You can also elect to verify and repair permissions (also called privileges) on a disk; these are the read/write. If you can’t save or move a file that you should be able to access, check that drive for permissions problems. Unlike fixing disk errors, you can verify and repair permissions on any volume that contains a Mac OS X installation (whether it was used to boot your Mac or not).
In order to verify or repair, you must be logged in as an admin-level user.
To verify or repair a drive, first select the target volume/partition in the list at the left. To check the contents of the drive and display any errors, click the Verify Disk button. Or, to verify the contents of the drive and fix any problems, click the Repair Disk button. Disk Utility displays any status or error messages in the scrolling list; if you’ve got eagle eyes, you’ll note that the window can be resized so that you can expand it to display more messages. (You can also drag the dot between the left and right panes to expand the list.)
Check your disks once every two or three days. If your Mac is caught by a power failure or Mac OS X locks up, however, it’s a good idea to immediately check disks after you restart your Mac. (Don’t forget that the start-up volume is automatically checked and repaired, if necessary.)
You can’t reformat a drive in macOS Disk Utility when the Erase button is grayed out. This might happen for a variety of reasons, all of which keep you from erasing or reformatting the drives connected to your Mac.
If your MacBook’s Disk Utility won’t let you erase drives, follow the steps below to fix it.
Contents
- 2 What if the Erase Button in Disk Utility is grayed Out?
- 3 Learn how to reinstall macOS after erasing your Drive
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How to erase or reformat a Drive using Disk Utility
Let’s start with a brief explanation of the correct way to reformat or erase drives using your Mac. Feel free to skip this section if you already know how to do it.
You may want to erase your drive as a quick way to create space for new files. Or you might need to reformat it so it works with different operating systems, like Windows, Linux, or even iPadOS.
When you reformat a drive, it also erases all the data on it. So make sure to back up any important files before erasing or reformatting your drives.
When you’re ready, here’s how to erase or reformat drives:
- Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder in your Applications.
- In the sidebar, select the drive you want to erase or reformat.
- Click the Erase button at the top of the window.
- Choose a new name and format for your drive, then click Erase.
- Wait for Disk Utility to erase or reformat your drive, then click Done.
What if the Erase Button in Disk Utility is grayed Out?
You’re probably reading this article because the Erase button was grayed out when you tried to erase or reformat a drive using Disk Utility. Use the steps below to fix it and let us know in the comments which one worked for you.
Step 1. Show All Devices and Erase the Parent Drive
By default, Disk Utility only shows the Volumes on your connected drives, rather than the drives themselves. A Volume is the partition or section of a drive you store data in.
Open Disk Utility and select View > Show All Devices from the menu bar. You should see the device names for each of your drives appear in the sidebar.
Select the parent folder for the drive you want to reformat or erase, then click the Erase button again. Take note that when you erase a device, it erases all the Volumes contained within it as well.
Step 2. Run First Aid to Repair Your Drive Before Erasing It
Disk Utility has a First Aid feature that fixes all kinds of issues related to your drives: slow performance, corrupt files, or unexpected behavior. When you run First Aid, it scans the entire disk for errors and lets you know if there are any it can’t repair.
Open Disk Utility and select the drive you want to erase from the sidebar. At the top of the window, click the First Aid button, then agree to Run First Aid.
The length of time First Aid takes to run depends on the size of your drive, how much data is on it, and how many errors need fixing.
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Combine this step with the previous one to run First Aid on the parent device for your drive, as well as the individual Volumes.
Step 3. Boot Into Recovery Mode to Erase Your Startup Disk
If you’re trying to reformat or erase the startup disk on your Mac, you need to boot into Recovery Mode first. The startup disk is the main hard drive on your computer: the one that stores macOS and all your data. It’s not usually possible to erase the startup disk because your Mac is using it to run macOS.
Boost mobile unlock my phone. Recovery Mode is a special partition on your Mac you can use to restore from a backup, reinstall macOS, get online support, or erase your startup disk.
You should back up your Mac before trying to erase or reformat it.
When you’re ready to boot into Recovery Mode, restart your Mac and hold Cmd + R while it boots up. Keep holding both keys until you see an Apple logo or hear a startup sound.
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You should see a macOS Utilities window appear. Select Disk Utility from this window and try erasing or reformatting your drive again.
Learn how to reinstall macOS after erasing your Drive
After erasing or reformatting the startup disk—if that was your goal—you need to reinstall macOS before you can use your Mac again. This is because the original macOS installation was on the startup disk you just erased.
Boot into Recovery Mode once more to reinstall macOS or follow our guide to factory reset any Mac. When you reinstall macOS, your Mac behaves as though it’s a brand new machine, with no data on it waiting for you to set it up.
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Dan is a freelance writer based in South West England.
He spent two years supervising repairs as a Genius Admin for Apple Retail and uses that knowledge to keep our troubleshooting guides up to date.
Long before that, Dan turned to Apple products from a musical background. Having owned iPods for years, he bought a MacBook to learn sound recording and production. It was using those skills that he gained a first-class Bachelor of Science in Sound Technology.