Disk Utility is a much-overlooked tool

The Baltimore Sun

There's a very practical piece of software many Mac users may not even know they have, even though it's included on every Mac sold.

I speak of Disk Utility, Apple's much-overlooked tool for managing and repairing hard drives. Disk Utility is indeed great for formatting, partitioning and erasing drives, and can fix basic disk problems. But it can do much more than that, which makes it a tool every Mac user should check out.

For example, Disk Utility can burn CDs (and DVDs, should your Mac have a SuperDrive). Sure, you can do that from the Finder. But Disk Utility allows you to burn multi-session CDs (though not DVDs), meaning if you have a lot of leftover space on the disk after burning your first batch of data, you can add more later. When you click on the Burn button, the dialog box that appears contains a checkbox that says "Leave disk appendable." Clicking on it will allow you to burn more data again and again to the disk until it's full.

To use the multi-session feature, you need to draw upon yet another handy tool included in Disk Utility, its ability to create and manage disk images. A disk image is a sort of virtual disk, a container that holds files and folders in a form that appears to be a disk on your Desktop. When you download Mac shareware, the files frequently arrive as a disk image. Double clicking on the file's icon generates another icon that looks like a white floppy disk drive, which can be opened and used as if it were an actual disk. To burn a CD with Disk Utility, you must create one of these containers and copy the files you want to burn onto the disk image. Then you select the disk image from the Disk Utility window that lists your available disks and click the yellow and black Burn button (it looks like a nuclear radiation sign).

These features also make Disk Utility a great tool for copying disks you've made yourself with Apple's iLife suite - iMovie, iPhoto, etc. (You cannot copy commercial disks, as they're protected. Anyway, what were you thinking? It's illegal!) You pop your CD or DVD in your Mac and when it appears in the list of available disks, select it. Then you just click on the New Image icon and Disk Utility will create a disk image that you can burn as I described above. Burning more copies is as easy as dropping in another blank CD. This sort of thing is helpful if you have, say, a photo slideshow on a CD that you want to duplicate for several family members.

If Apple hadn't already installed it on your Mac you'd probably want to buy it.

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