| Disk Utility | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Disk Utility running onmacOS Big Sur | |
| Stable release | 22.3 |
| Operating system | macOS |
| Type | Utility |
| Website | support |
Disk Utility is a system utility for performing disk anddisk volume-related tasks onmacOS.
Features include:[1]
Disk Utility functions may also be accessed via thecommand line with commandsdiskutil andhdiutil.[3] The commands also can create and manageRAM disk images.[4]
In theclassic Mac OS, similar functionality to the verification features of Disk Utility could be found in theDisk First Aid application. Another application called Drive Setup was used for drive formatting and partitioning and the applicationDisk Copy was used for working with disk images.[citation needed]
BeforeMac OS X Panther, the functionality of Disk Utility was spread across two applications:Disk Copy and Disk Utility. Disk Copy was used for creating and mounting disk image files whereas Disk Utility was used for formatting, partitioning, verifying, and repairing file structures. The ability to "zero" all data (multi-pass formatting) on a disk was not added untilMac OS X 10.2.3.[5] Further changes introduced inMac OS X Tiger, specifically version 10.4.3, allowed Disk Utility to be used to verify the file structure of the current boot drive.Mac OS X Leopard added the ability to create, resize, and delete disk partitions without erasing them, a feature known as live partitioning. InOS X El Capitan, Disk Utility has a differentuser interface and lost the abilities torepair permissions due toobsolescence,[6] create and manage disks formatted asRAID, burn discs, and multi-pass format internalsolid-state drives and encrypted external drives.[7]
