DiskUtility
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Dear Aunt TUAW: What is the lifespan of a large-capacity hard drive?
Dear Aunt TUAW, So here's the deal. There are 8-terabyte drives on the market now which, unless you are working for a production company or shooting buckets of RAW, you are never going to use. That's just extra space, which is great! Except, what is the lifespan of those drives? Will they fail on the average user before they even get close to capacity? If so, what would you recommend for the average user as the best value? In other words, if I do minor photo and video editing, keep a lot of photos, download a few movies and have a decent iTunes collection, will my need for storage hit 1TB or 2TB before they fail? Your loving nephew, Phillip Dear Phillip, Although Uncle Chris is snarking quietly about "640 K should be enough for anybody" jokes, Auntie is going to ignore him and try to do her best to answer seriously, because one's drive space never exceeds one's grasp. As a rule, Auntie recommends replacing hard drives (especially those used for Time Machine backups) every eighteen months. There is absolutely no science or engineering behind her answer, only a lot of frustrating experience. Of course, you can say that any machine with moving parts is technically prone to failure at any moment... Eighteen months is about long enough for each new generation of storage to appear on the market and to ensure that fresh storage will meet your ever-growing data needs: it's never just about RAW images. There are home movies, TV shows (hello rapacious EyeTV recordings), audiobooks and more. The minor photo and video editing that you've described, plus a few movies and a decent iTunes collection can happily live on 1-2 TB for a while, and you'll know when you're about to burst at the data seams. Just make sure the age of your drives and backup system doesn't put your data at risk. Hugs, Auntie T.
Find My Mac not working for you? You're not alone
If you're having trouble getting Lion to let you enable Find My Mac, you're not the only one. It seems at least a few people are running into a problem where they see the above message in the iCloud preference pane, but clicking the update button (or running System Update manually) yields no updates to install. If this describes your situation, the good news is that there is a solution -- the bad news is that it might require a little bit of patience. Before getting too worked up over the problem, though, it's a good idea to try the simplest methods first. Go to System Preferences, go to the Security and Privacy preference pane, and click on the Privacy tab. Check to make sure that Location Services are enabled: If that didn't do the trick, head on over to Apple's support site and download the Lion Recovery Update package manually, and install it. It's approximately 832 MB, so it may take a while to download if you're on a slower Internet connection. Once installed, reboot your Mac and go back in to the iCloud preferences (under the Internet category in System Preferences) to see if you can enable Find My Mac now. If you can check the box, you're all set! If Find My Mac is still greyed out, however, then the problem is likely that your Mac is in need of a couple of housekeeping tasks to get things in order. This next step works best if you close any apps you have open. Open your Applications folder, then open the Utilities folder and select Disk Utility. You should be presented with a screen similar to the following: From here, select the volume that Lion is installed on from the list on the left side of the menu as shown above. Then click the Verify Disk button on the bottom right of the window, and Disk Utility will scan the volume for any problems. The process usually takes about five minutes, but might take longer depending on the size of your hard drive. If you're still with me at this point, I'm betting that you will probably receive a message similar to the following: What this means is that somewhere along the line, the part of the system that keeps track of where files are stored on the hard drive recorded some information incorrectly. My guess is that this probably happened during the upgrade to Lion, and affects a specific part of the disk that is used by the recovery system. Luckily, it's not necessarily anything bad, and it's relatively easy to fix, though the process might be a bit complicated if you're unfamiliar with it, so I've outlined it below. Power off your Mac completely. Use the Shut Down command from the Apple menu. Power on your Mac, and immediately press and hold the Option key on your keyboard. Once you see the boot menu appear, you can release the key. In the boot menu, select the Recovery HD item with your mouse, or the arrow keys on your keyboard. You may need to press the Enter key to confirm the option if clicking with your mouse does not seem to work. After a few moments, you will be presented with a screen labeled Mac OS X Utilities. This menu allows you to perform tasks like restoring a Time Machine backup or reinstalling Lion on your Mac. The option we want, however, should be the last item in the list -- Disk Utility. This will open the same screen we saw before, but this time you might notice that the Repair Disk button (in the bottom right, under the Verify Disk button we clicked last time) is now enabled. Go ahead and click the repair button, and Disk Utility will automatically find and fix any problems that are found. Once the repair has finished, close Disk Utility, then restart your Mac by selecting Quit from the OS X Utilities menu. When your Mac is finished restarting, you'll need to head back over to the Apple support site to download the 10.7.2 Update (or download 10.7.2 Server Update if you're running Lion Server). When the download finishes, go ahead and install the update, which will require a restart when the installation has finished. Finally, you'll want to go to your Downloads folder and install the Lion Recovery HD update that we downloaded earlier. If all went well, you should be able to go into your iCloud preferences now and enable the Find My Mac option:
Apple sued over Disk Utility patent
The words "Apple" and "lawsuit" have nearly become synonymous lately, as companies crawl out of the woodworks to sue the Cupertino company. On August 17, 2011, Software Restore Solutions filed a complaint against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The company claims Apple's Disk Utility feature violates a portion of its network manager patent from 1998. SRS claims Apple was aware of the violation and ignored it. The company is asking for triple damages because this case allegedly involves knowing and willful infringement on Apple's part. Software Restore Solutions filed a lawsuit against Citrix, Nuance, Activision, Adobe, IBM, Skype and more in a case filed June 11, 2011. Apple is listed as one of 26 defendants in this earlier case as well.
Dev Juice: Help me recover my beta partition
Dear Dev Juice, I was in the Lion beta program. Now that 10.7 is about to release I want to reclaim the small partition I added to my laptop that I was using to test it. How do I do this? Shawn Dear Shawn, Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) makes it easy to recover OS partitions assuming you have a standard scheme where you partitioned off a chunk of your drive to host the beta. Assuming you did just that, you'll have a primary partition occupying most of your disk, and a secondary partition after that. Back up everything you can, especially on the second partition. Boot on your primary partition that you have now updated to Lion. Open Disk Utility and select your hard drive (not the partitions under the hard drive) and open the Partition tab. Your layout should have the primary partition on top, the secondary below it. Select the secondary partition and delete it by clicking the - (minus) button. Make sure you read the messages that Disk Utility presents you. You only want to remove the secondary partition, you do not want to affect the primary. If you get any message other than something like 'this will only remove the secondary partition and leave the primary unaffected', stop and re-group. Otherwise, go ahead and perform the removal. (You did backup, yes?) Next, resize your primary partition to reabsorb that extra space. Edit the Size field by entering 9999 GB (or whatever). When you press return, Disk Utility will automatically change that to match the actual available space. Click Apply. It can take several minutes for Disk Utility to verify and apply the changes. But it is able to make the changes (as it did with the original partition) in-place. You will not need to reboot afterwards, although you may want to just for sanity's sake. Good luck and happy developing!
Disk Drill protects your Mac disks, recovers files
Many of the disk utilities available for Mac OS X have been around for quite a few years, so it's surprising when a new entry shows up in this very important class of Mac app. The latest entry, Disk Drill from Cleverfiles, comes in four different flavors ranging from a free Basic edition that may be right for most Mac users up to Pro, Expert, and Enterprise versions. All of the Disk Drill editions use a feature called Recovery Vault that knows where every file is on your Mac media. As a result, if you accidentally delete a file, empty the Trash Can when you didn't mean to, or even run into a hardware issue, chances are very good that Disk Drill will be able to find the file using Recovery Vault. All of the versions also provide S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) to keep an eye on your disks and other media and warn you of impending failures. Disk Drill's many versions also provide a way to quickly back up failing drives to disk image (.dmg) files. When you bump up to the US$89 Pro version, Disk Drill adds both Quick and Deep Scan and Recovery utilities. That's right, you can't recover files with the free Basic version. The Basic edition will scan and find those files for you, but you're not going to get them back unless you upgrade to the pro version. The Quick Scan and Recovery works with HFS/HFS+, NTFS, and FAT volumes to run a fast scan for accidentally deleted files. If there's no file system on a drive, or even if a drive has been reformatted, Deep Scan and Recovery can find and bring back almost any file. The Pro version comes with a higher support priority from Cleverfiles as well. Click the read more link to see the rest of this review. %Gallery-118603%
Ask TUAW: File ownership and permissions, converting FLV and OGG, extra displays, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about changing file ownership and permissions, adding two external displays to a MacBook Pro, converting OGG and FLV files on an older Mac, transferring a Time Machine backup to a new disk, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Ask TUAW: Prepping a Mac for transfer, adding words to spell check, updating Boot Camp, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about preparing a Mac that you're transferring to a new owner, updating Boot Camp, adding words to the built-in spell check, dealing with flaky network disks, FTP clients, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Ask TUAW: Automatic file sorting, Disk Utility, iPod battery replacement, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about automatically sorting downloaded files, using Disk Utility to change partitions and format external drives, using a KVM in a multi-platform environment, replacing an iPod touch battery, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Why is there a progress bar when my Mac is starting up?
Update: As several of our commenters pointed out, the OS is probably running the fsck utility in the background to repair directory problems, while showing the progress bar to the end user so they know there's something going on (fsck can take quite a while). Here's an older Apple support article that explains the disk repair process very well. We will update you if we find a support article with more information. Here's a story for anyone who's come across an unusual progress bar during boot and my best guess at what it really is. The moral of my story: backup frequently and try not to turn off your Mac while it is starting up. Five days ago, I was prepping my late 2008 MacBook Pro for resale when I encountered the ever-spinning gear at boot. Ridiculously enough, I hadn't kept up any of my backups in a month and I hard powered off the machine while it was booting because I forgot to select the boot drive (yes -- I'm a technician and I did something dumb -- I know). Many thoughts went through my head: I've lost the last month's worth of work, I have to waste hours trying to recover data from my drive, why did this have to happen while I was trying to back it up? It goes to show that it can happen to anyone at any time and that the only real solution is to keep a current backup (if not several) of all your information. Now for a quick word on backups. I usually keep a continuous Time Machine backup of everything and clone my internal drive every couple weeks. The cloned drive is kept in a fireproof safe here in my house. Also, as much as I love Time Machine, in my profession, I've seen several instances where Time Machine backups don't restore properly. I always suggest having a manual clone as a backup to your backup.
Backup or copy your iDVD home movies
If you've ever used iDVD to burn your own home movies then chances are pretty good that you've had a family member request a copy. And since your iDVDs are yours to share and duplicate, then you are more than happy to pull up the project and whip out another copy. Lo and behold, as fate would have it, the iDVD project has vanished (or in my case, was eaten by a recent HDD failure). Luckily for you, savvy OS X user, there's still a way to get a copy of that holiday montage onto a disc for Grandma to use. Over at MacFixIt, there is a pretty simple tutorial for making a backup or copy of an unprotected DVD. In the past, TUAW has covered some methods of using downloaded software to back up DVDs that you don't own. The MacFixIt tutorial provides handy information about how to copy unprotected DVDs that you do own, using the software that is baked right into OS X. The basic process involves inserting the DVD, firing up Disk Utility, and making an image file using the DVD as a source. From there you can either retain the image file for future use/backing up or you can burn it to disc and pass it off to any friend/relative of your choosing. This method will work for any unencrypted DVD, not just iDVDs made on a Mac. That means you can work with discs created by your Windows-loving cousin who swears that Windows 7 is not going to have any of the problems that Windows Vista had.
TUAW Tip: Wipe down an old Mac with Target Disk Mode
A reader recently contacted us with a question regarding her decision to recycle an older iMac computer. She wanted to know how she could clear/reformat the hard drive, but didn't have the disks that came with the system. So, we thought we would take a minute to tell you how you can cleanse your hard drives before getting rid of your computer. I'm going to show you how to wipe the hard drive using Target Disk Mode, since this will work even if you don't have the install disks. Step 1: Get a FireWire CableBoth of the Macs will need to have FireWire, which means everything between the iMac DV and the current lineup (except for the MacBook Air and unibody MacBook) is eligible. You will also need a FireWire 400 cable so you can connect one end to the old Mac, and the other end to another Mac. If you don't have one of these cables, you can easily pick up one online or at a retail store. If both of the Macs support FireWire 800, you can use one of those cables as an alternative to 400; it will be faster. If one has only a 400 port and the other has only an 800 port, a converter cable (available online for less than $10) is what you need. Once you have the FireWire cable, just simply connect the two computers together. Step 2: Boot into Target Disk Mode on the old Mac Shut down the old Mac that will be receiving the hard drive cleaning, and reboot it while holding down the "T" key on your keyboard. After a few moments, you should see a FireWire symbol appear on the screen -- when you see this, you are in FireWire Disk Mode (FDM). When in FDM, your old Mac's hard drive should show up on the new Mac as a connected external FireWire drive.Step 3: Do some Disk Utility magicOpen Disk Utility.app on your new Mac (located in /Applications/Utilities), and click on your old Mac hard drive in the selection area on the left. Note that you should click on the drive, and not the partition (often called "Macintosh HD") to ensure a complete disk wipe. The disk drive will most likely have a FireWire icon to denote that it is connected as an external disk. Once you select the drive, click the Erase tab, and click Security options.In this section of Disk Utility, you will be able to select a few different erase options that will also add security to the standard disk erase. First, lets specify a name for the drive -- in the name field type what you would like the drive to show up as when it is erased, otherwise it will default to "Untitled." Continue reading to learn about security options and how to fully erase the hard drive on an old Mac.
Time Capsule disk corruption issues? Base station firmware may fix it
If you've been having issues with corrupted Time Machine images either inside the Time Capsule or connected externally to your base station, the 7.4.1 firmware update (for all base stations from 2007 to today) plus the 10.5.6 update might help, according to TidBITS. Apple says this update will fix problems that lead up to corruption issues, but TidBITS recommends you essentially start fresh just to make sure -- after using the Archive feature in Disk Utility to copy your previous Time Machine disk to an external drive. Don't have enough drives to do the data shuffle? You can always take your chances that you either don't have a corrupt Time Machine backup (which is pretty likely, honestly) or do a little soul/data-searching for anything you might want to preserve for posterity.I don't use Time Machine as a sort of universal undo, but I understand some might. In either case: update your system and firmware as recommended by the manufacturer.
Ask TUAW: Removing printer drivers, renaming partitions, running your Mac with the lid closed and more
Once again, it's time for another edition of Ask TUAW, where we try to answer all your Mac and Apple-related questions. This week we're taking questions about keeping your Mac laptop running with the lid closed, removing unwanted printer drivers, renaming partitions and the best way to prepare for a clean install of Mac OSX. As always, we welcome your suggestions and questions for next week; they should be left in the comments to this post. When asking a question please include which machine and which version of Mac OS X you're running. If you don't specify, we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac.Okay, let's get to it.Our first two questions today come from Quasimoto, who asks:On my Macbook, is there a way I can keep my computer running without it having to automatically fall sleeping when I have my lid closed?Absolutely. Just head on over to developer Semaja2's website and download the InsomniaX utility. This handy piece of software will keep your Mac running with the lid closed and prevent it from going to sleep. One thing to consider if you do decide to use this software, however: Even though Apple supports using a MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air and a Powerbook G4 with the lid closed, you may want to keep an eye on your laptop to help prevent any potential overheating issues. This is especially true if you plan on never letting the computer go to sleep using a tool like InsomniaX. Quasimoto also asks:I have a partition running Windows 7 perfectly, but when I'm on OSX, it shows that partition as 'Untitled' on my desktop. Is there a way to rename that partition to say 'Windows'? Sure. It's as simple as using a tool you already have on your Mac: Disk Utility. Just go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility and double-click to run. Once open, select your Windows partition and then simply replace 'Untitled' with the name of your choice.
Mac OS X tools for real life
This article made me chuckle-- Stuart Frisby of Thirty Six Degrees wrote a short piece about five Mac OS X tools not that he'd like to see on the iPhone, but that he'd like to see in Analog Life (or Analogue Life, in his case).The Finder function is an old favorite-- it really would be great to find your keys via a Spotlight-like interface. But Disk Utility in real life would be a nice bonus as well; a quick Restore right after I'd said something inappropriate to a lady friend would be a lifesaver. But the best would be Uno-- every car could be a Porsche, everyone could be beautiful all the time, and even fast food could taste like steak.Five tools doesn't seem like enough-- if you could put a Mac OS X app to work in your real life, what would you choose?Thanks, James!
Ecamm brings iPhone disk storage
Yesterday, ecamm introduced iPhoneDrive, a utility that lets you use your iPhone disk to store arbitrary data files. I downloaded a copy and after a quick false start and a software update that addressed compatibility issues with my PowerPC G4, I was able to load files onto and recover them from my iPhone drive. Ecamm are the developers who brought us such Mac classics as iGlasses and iChatUSBCam. Apple seems to have deliberately omitted hard drive storage from the iPhone (probably to protect the underlying OS X files from public scrutiny and hack-cidents). Hard drive storage is a valuable component of any portable media player since it allows you to bring files with you that you'd normally carry on a separate thumb drive. To deliver your files from one computer to another, you will have to install iPhoneDrive on the receiving computer. I found that file transfer, both onto and off from the iPhone, went smoothly. It took about 5 minutes to transfer a 350 MB 45-minute episode of America's Next Top Model in each direction. Unfortunately, being the first release, iPhoneDrive has a few flaws that should clear up in later versions. You cannot rename a file once it is on your drive. Also, although you can create a folder hierarchy, you cannot drag items into or out from folders. I suspect this is just the first of what I hope will be many third party iPhone utilities. You can try out iPhoneDrive for 7 days without restriction. After, it will cost you ten bucks--not a huge price for a feature that many of us wish Apple had built into the iPhone in the first place.
Selling your Mac? Erase that hard drive
Did you know that Apple, maker of the iPhone, also makes computers? It is true! You might even own one yourself! This tip is for those of you looking to sell your Mac to get an iPhone (or if you're selling it for any other reason in fact). Our friends at Small Dog Electronics have posted some tips on securely erasing your Mac's hard drive BEFORE you sell it to some random dude.Sure, you can just nuke and pave (aka reinstall OS X), but if you're using OS X 10.4 the Disk Utility can make sure none of your data will be readable from that drive (or least not without extreme effort). Head on over to Barkings and check it out.
Ask TUAW: middle button paste, screen lock, previewing pictures, Mac 101 questions
Last week happened to be the start of our Mac 101 series and we had a lot of questions posted in the comments to the inaugural post. So this week in Ask TUAW, in addition to our normal questions, I've decided that to tackle some of those questions as well. I want to emphasize that new Mac users and Switchers should feel very welcome to post questions for Ask TUAW. We're happy to take questions from all levels. As always, please submit your questions by commenting to this post or using our tip form. This week we'll be addressing questions about pasting with the middle mouse button a la X11, previewing pictures in the Finder, locking the screen to preclude mischief, and much more. Let's get to it.
Everything you need to know about Repairing Permissions (and more)
The 'Repair Permissions' function of Disk Utility has been under quite a bit of speculation as of late. There are those in one camp, such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who believe repairing (restoring, resetting, etc.) permissions is not much more than voodoo, while others in the support end of the Mac OS X community swear by it as the first line of defense. So what's a confused Mac OS X user to do when trying to draw up a formidable troubleshooting game plan? Heading over to Dan Frakes' Repairing permissions: what you need to know article at Macworld is a great first step at trying to cut through all the confusion. Dan dissects virtually every aspect of the permissions repair process, from explaining what exactly 'permissions' are, to a few specific situations when it's a good idea to add the operation to your troubleshooting tool-belt. It's an informative read that helps demystify this much-debated aspect of Mac OS X.
TUAW Tip: Mac OS X can verify itself now
Disk Utility is a great maintenance and troubleshooting tool for those times when your Mac starts acting up. Repairing permissions can sometimes be handy (even though its true validity is in question as of late), but using the Verify and Repair Disk operations is often a more useful tactic. However, until Mac OS X 10.4.3, you had use Disk Utility to verify or repair your Mac's drive from some sort of an external source. You either had to plug into another Mac in Target Disk mode, or reboot and use the install disks that came with your Mac - not the most friendly process to your workflow. But now, With 10.4.3 and later, you can start up Disk Utility right from within Mac OS X and chose the verify option to make sure system level elements like your file catalog are all in order. One warning though: it is completely normal for your Mac to temporarily freeze or 'seize up' at the beginning of running this operation (you should get the infamous beachball), as this Apple support document explains. After a little while, depending on your Mac's speed and all that jazz, it will come out of its daze and you can continue working/chatting/surfing while it finishes the disk verification process.This is a really handy tool, perhaps even more valuable than checking permissions, and should be a welcome addition to any Mac maintenance arsenal.
Maintenance 3.3 released
Maintenance, the ever-handy Automator action (and applescript for those without Tiger) that runs a variety of, well, maintenance tasks in one fell swoop, has been updated to version 3.3. It isn't a massive update, save for two new options: Update Locate Database and Update Whatis Database. As usually, you can snag your very own copy (which includes the aforementioned applescript) of Maintenance for free from Automator World.
