In this step-by-step tutorial, you'll learn how to erase and format a flash drive, hard disk, or another external drive using the built-in Disk Utility app on your Mac.
How to erase and format external drives on your Mac
Disk Utility
How to add, mount, unmount, erase, and delete volumes using Disk Utility on Mac
In this Mac tutorial, we show you how to create a new volume using Disk Utility and erase or delete it if required.
How to create a macOS Ventura volume partition on your Mac
This tutorial shows you how to create a separate volume (partition) on your Mac’s internal drive to install macOS Ventura on it.
Using this method, you will have two macOS versions on the same Mac. The first volume will have the macOS you’re currently running (likely macOS Monterey), and the second volume will have macOS Ventura. You will be able to start up your Mac into either one.
New to Mac? Here’s all the tools in the Mac Utilities folder
If you’ve just purchased your first Mac, and especially if you’re coming from Windows, you might be wondering about the Utilities folder. You may see the folder but have yet to open it or you might be looking for a specific tool and don’t realize it’s in that folder.
Whatever the case, we’re here with another in our New to Mac series to help you out! We’ll explain what’s in the Utilities folder and what each tool is for.
How to encrypt and password protect folders on Mac
Secure sensitive files and folders on your Mac by learning how to encrypt and password-protect them using both built-in and third-party tools.
macOS High Sierra 10.13 Supplemental Update fixes Keychain & APFS Disk Utility vulnerabilities
Apple on Thursday released a supplemental update to macOS High Sierra 10.13 which fixes a few bugs, among them a major vulnerability (we told you about it this morning) that could expose the passwords of encrypted Apple File System volumes in plain text in Disk Utility.
macOS High Sierra’s Disk Utility exposes passwords of encrypted APFS volumes
Brazilian developer Matheus Mariano has discovered a pretty serious security vulnerability in macOS High Sierra which exposes passwords of any encrypted APFS volumes in plain text.
How to remove disk partitions on a Mac with Disk Utility
Following on from our guide on creating and disk partitions on macOS, today we'll cover safely removing them, including in what situations it involves loss of data. This guide uses macOS's built-in disk management program, Disk Utility.
How to create a disk partition on Mac
If you've ever needed to add an extra partition to an external hard drive, then look no further! This guide goes through how to add a partition to an existing drive on macOS, using its built-in program, Disk Utility.
How to hide specific mounted volumes from your Mac’s desktop
We've already covered how to completely prevent partitions from mounting under macOS, but sometimes you want a partition mounted and ready to use but still want the benefit of it not cluttering up your desktop. For example, many people want their Time Machine partition constantly mounted and backing up throughout the day but don't need it to be visible at all.
Finder's preferences allow for hiding all volumes from the desktop but offer no control on a volume-by-volume basis. Therefore, we'll show you how to use the Terminal to hide mounted volumes on a case-by-case basis.
How to create blank disk images with Disk Utility
Should you ever find yourself in the need to create blank disk images, OS X's built-in Disk Utility is your friend. A disk image usually has a .dmg extension and appears, looks and behaves like any ordinary file, with one key exception: launching it prompts OS X to mount the volume on the desktop.
These mountable disk images can be useful in a number of situations. For example, you may want to create blank disk images for storage.
Furthermore, disk images can be used as a virtual disk for software distribution, to burn CDs or DVDs and so forth. In this step-by-step tutorial, you'll learn how to create blank disk images in Disk Utility, at any size, with optional password protection, formatting options and more.
How to repair Mac disk errors in macOS Recovery Mode
macOS on your Mac includes a disk-repairing app, called Disk Utility, which you can use to scan your connected drives for errors, erase a disk, repair disk permissions, check the disk's structure for physical errors and more.
But what can you do, if anything, should your Mac experience issues preventing it from starting up properly? Not to worry, our friends, because macOS lets you launch a standalone version of Disk Utility from your Mac's built in recovery partition.
In other words, macOS' Recovery Mode gives you a chance to repair a malfunctioning startup disk that prevents your Mac from booting properly.