In that case, you need to run First Aid from Recovery Mode.įor non-startup disks, we recommend you run First Aid more than once to ensure a consistent result. If your disk is healthy, you will see a green tick on your drive.įor startup disks where the operating systems are stored, it may report that First Aid found corruption that needs to be repaired. When it detects problems, Disk Utility First Aid will try to fix them. Note that running diagnoses on the startup disks will cause your computer to stop responding. Then Disk Utility First Aid will examine the partition maps on the disk and each volume.

If you are running a macOS later than El Capitan, you can click the desired drive and click the 'First Aid' button to check your drive. It's a free built-in tool in macOS, which can check and repair directory damages. If your hard drive is experiencing problems and you would like to make a diagnosis, Disk Utility First Aid is at your disposal. We will explain how to use every tool in the following paragraphs. They allow you to add or delete volumes, check and repair hard drives, partition, erase, restore and unmount a disk or a volume. Six tools you can perform on the shown disks or volumes are listed horizontally. Take a look at the top-right of the menu. Beneath it is the APFS container if you are running macOS 10.13 or later and two volumes - Macintosh HD for system files and Macintosh HD - Data for user data. The picture below shows a Disk Utility interface on macOS 11 Big Sur.Ĭlick View > Show All Devices, then all the detected internal or external drives and disk images will appear on the left sidebar, beginning with the startup disk. The position of icons may look slightly different on your Mac running a different operating system.

If your Mac fails to boot up, or the options on the toolbar are dimmed, you need to first boot into Mac Recovery Mode to access Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities window.īefore diving into its essential functions, let's go through the items listed on its interface. It looks like a disk going through a stethoscope. If your Mac functions well, you can find it in the 'Other' folder of your Launchpad. There were two utilities in the classic Mac OS: Disk Utility and Disk Copy, and it was not until Mac OS X Panther that they merged to the nowadays Disk Utility. Repair hard drives using Disk Utility First Aidĭisk Utility, a built-in disk manager on Mac that can be accessed with or without your Mac booting up, can repair, restore, partition, and erase internal disks and external storage devices.

Boot into disk utility for mac