What to do about my Disc Utility? I am using a G4 Mac Pro with OS 10.5.8. I clicked on repair disk & 21 problems came up and now all the options are inactive except Verify Disk. Should I click on it or has it already been verified with Repair Disc. Has it been repaired. There is no confirmation that its been repaired. Is that what verify disc does. iI don't where to go from here to fix everything. Can someone help?
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Question
Disc Utility Disabled
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12 Posts
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Answer
Was years ago. It turned out the HDD had begun to fail so a new drive cured the problems. Before you do anything else be sure your backups are current.
Bob
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The learning curve is a little steep for me , but I try and if you can walk me through it that would be great.
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In the absence of Time Machine, you have a number of options but all of them involve using media, which is not the internal drive, to store the backup.
Your choices are an external hard drive connected via Firewire or USB, Optical Drive (CD/DVD) or Tape Drive.
If you plan to run regular backups as opposed to just the occasional drag and drop method, you will also need Backup Software. Google for that.
I note that you run 10.5.8 which means that you should have Time Machine installed on that G4. This is by far the easiest solution for you.
You will need a large capacity external hard drive, either Firewire or USB. Both Western Digital and Seagate make large capacity, low(ish) cost, drives. 1TB should be enough for you. It does not have to be a Mac formatted drive, Time Machine will require the drive to be formatted as Mac and will take care of that.
Just plug the drive in, configure Time Machine and off you go. Automatic backups from then on.
P
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how you missed this:
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I note that you run 10.5.8 which means that you should have Time Machine installed on that G4.
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and the rest of the post that dealt, exclusively, with Time Machine
P
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Answer
Disk Utility cannot repair a disk that you are currently booted from.
To repair that disk, you need to be booted from either a bootable CD/DVD, (an OS X installation disk for example) or a bootable hard drive.
You will find the Disk Utility on either of those two options.
P
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but do they give an option for only installing "Disk Utility"? I have a little trepidation about fooling with the other
data and I still do not know how to do backups except to save everything and make copies.
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Boot from the OS X installation disk.
On the first screen, you will note that there is no menu bar at the top.
CAREFULLY step through the installation process until you see the Menu bar at the top of the screen.
When you see that, look at all the options. The one you are looking for is probably called Utilities.
Open that menu and choose Disk Utility.
Proceed as you normally would with it.
Your G4 is now booted from the installation disk which means that the hard drive is not being used for anything at all.
DU will unmount the drive and do whatever repairs it can.
On completion, back to the menu bar and choose Quit Installer.
P
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