Built-in Disk Repair Utilities in Mac OS X (10.2 and later)
Mac OS X (10.2 and later) is bundled with several disk repair utilities that allow users to repair a variety of problems. Disk Utility, which is located in the Utilities folder inside of the Applications folder, allows the user to repair some problems with the file directory on a hard drive. Disk Utility will also repair file permissions of programs installed with the Apple installation program, erase and format hard drives plus it can create RAID disks. Unfortunately, it cannot be used to repair problems on the drive from where it's being run. Since most people usually only have one internal hard drive, and it's usually not partitioned, it will be necessary to start the computer from the software installation disk that came with the computer. To do this, insert the installation CD into the CD drive, select Restart from the Apple menu and hold the C key down until the installer window appears on the screen. Select Disk Utility from the Installer menu. The built-in hard drive is now available for repair.
There is a second repair utility included with the system called fsck, which stands for "file system consistency check and interactive repair." It can do a more comprehensive repair than Disk Utility but in order to use fsck it is necessary to start the system in single user mode. Select Restart from the Apple menu and then hold down the Command or Apple key as well as the S key until the screen turns black and text begins to appear on the screen. In single user mode there is no graphical user interface so when the system finishes starting up a few seconds later it will wait for a typed command. Type fsck -y and press the return key. The system will proceed to run a comprehensive file directory check, repairing problems it encounters. If it does find errors the it?s advisable to run the program again and again until no errors are detected. Type Reboot to restart the computer and the repair process is completed.
Note that in Mac OS 10.3.x, 10.4.x, and 10.5.x it is necessary to type in fsck -f in order to check the disk because by default the computer has journaling enabled, which requires fsck to force the check. However, journalling seems to decrease the need to run such utilities since it allows the disk to correct many of the more common problems.
Current Record: 1225
Create Date: 04-17-2003
Last Reviewed: 02-21-2008
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