A Bot To Repair Mac OS
A Bot To Repair Mac OS
- Turn off your Mac and then restart it, holding down Command+R while it starts. This should get you into Recovery Mode, where you’ll see the macOS Utilities window. Recovery Mode provides four services.
- Command (⌘)-R: Start up from the built-in macOS Recovery system. Or use Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet. MacOS Recovery installs different versions of macOS, depending on the key combination you use while starting up.
- Feb 26, 2021 To use any of these key combinations, press and hold the keys immediately after pressing the power button to turn on your Mac, or after your Mac begins to restart. Keep holding until the described behavior occurs. Command (⌘)-R: Start up from the built-in macOS Recovery system. Or use Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet.
Although Macs are reliable machines, they are not exempt from hiccups. All you need to do is carry around a single USB flash drive to be ready for situations the require you to diagnose, repair, or experiment with Mac OS X.
One of the maintenance tools every Mac user should have available in case of emergency is a bootable copy of Mac OS X on a removable device. A clean installation of the operating system can help pinpoint problems and will come to the rescue in a bind. And since most Mac owners use a MacBook of some kind nowadays, portability is a valuable thing. That means carrying around a bulky external hard drive with cables is not always ideal. It turns out a tiny USB flash drive serves as a great alternative.
MacOS (formerly Mac OS X (1999-2012) or OS X (2012-2016)) is a series of graphical operating systems developed by Apple for Apple computing devices. It is the second most used desktop operating system, after Microsoft Windows.
Not sure when having OS X loaded on a flash drive would come in handy? Here are just a few examples:
- Your Mac isn’t starting correctly and you’re not sure if the internal hard drive is failing or if another piece of hardware is to blame.
- The file system on your startup disk has become corrupt and needs to be repaired.
- A software problem is plaguing your Mac and you’d like to see if you can replicate it in an isolated environment.
- Your Mac’s hard drive is completely dead and you’d like to use your computer for basic tasks like email and web browsing while you wait for your new drive to arrive.
Now that you’re convinced, let’s figure out how to do this. First you’ll need an Intel-based Mac from the past few years. Second, at least a 16GB USB flash drive, such as this SanDisk Cruzer Micro for about $30 at Amazon. Keep in mind 10.6 Snow Leopard was used to demonstrate this tutorial, so I’m not sure how much space 10.5, 10.4, and earlier require. While they should be fine, squeeze those versions of Mac OS X on a 16GB drive at your own risk. And the third thing you’ll need to get the job done is your OS X installation DVD.
- To start things off, connect the USB flash drive to your Mac. Make sure there’s no valuable data on there because it will be permanently wiped out in a couple minutes.
- Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) and click on your flash drive in the list on the left.
- Go to the Partition tab and select “1 Partition” from the Volume Scheme menu. Enter a name for the volume (I called mine “OS X USB”), select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” as the Format, and make sure the size is somewhere around 15-16GB.
- Click on the Options button towards the bottom and choose “GUID Partition Table” from the popup window. Click OK.
- Now that all of the settings have been chosen, click the Apply button and then Partition. Disk Utility will take a minute or two to complete the task.
- I don’t believe this step is required, but it makes me feel better and doesn’t hurt. Click on the volume name you entered in Step 3 (in the list under the flash drive’s name). Go to the Erase tab, make sure the Format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled),” and click the Erase button.
- Insert your Mac OS X installation disc if you haven’t already. A window should pop up with the contents of the disc. Double-click the “Install Mac OS X” icon and progress through the installer until you get to the screen that says “Mac OS X will be install on…”
- Click the Show All Disks button and select your USB flash drive.
- Click on the Customize button and a new window will appear. Un-check all of the items except “Essential System Software.” You may choose to check “Rosetta” and “QuickTime 7” since they are so small and might come in handy. Click OK and then Install. The rest of the process should be automated and might take between 30-60 minutes since USB flash drives are slower than internal hard drives. When all is said and done, you should find about 9GB of your 16GB drive has been filled.
- Eventually, the installation will finish and it should reboot directly to the USB drive. If it doesn’t, restart the Mac manually and hold down the Option key to choose the drive yourself. This is how you will access it in the future, too.
- Set up the fresh installation just like you would a new computer. Once you’re in, run Software Update a few times to get the latest patches and install any third party diagnostic utilities you may have. For example, Alsoft’s DiskWarrior is an invaluable tool that goes above and beyond what OS X’s own Disk Utility has to offer. This way both tools are available in one convenient place whenever you need them.
All done! That wasn’t too painful, was it? Yes, booting to the flash drive will be a tad sluggish, but it’s not meant to be used on a regular basis. This is mainly for diagnosing issues and trying potentially risky things in a virtual sandbox that won’t ruin any of your data. While you’ll hopefully never need to use it, having a bootable copy of OS X on a USB flash drive is a cost-effective, portable emergency tool for your Mac.
You don’t have to bother about repairing disk permissions in latest versions of Mac OS X. But, if you are running an earlier OS X on your Mac then, you should solve disk and file system problems on your own.
But, definitely this is not going to be a tougher job since, Mac OS X has a range of tools starting from First Aid to “fsck” for fixing the disk, partition, and file system issues.
So, in this editorial, I have explained how to repair disk and file system problems on your Mac in simple ways.
- Launch Mac in Safe Mode
The simplest way to fix disk and file system errors on your Mac is to boot the machine in Safe Mode. Safe Mode/Safe Boot encloses an automatic startup check and repair mechanism. Thus, your several problems will get resolved when a Mac is booted in Safe Mode.
To boot your Mac into Safe Mode,
- Restart the Machine and hold Shift key (during Mac boot)
- Sign in with essential password and Mac starts to check the disks
- This login process takes more time compared to the normal boot action, so take a break
- If you are logged in and can see the desktop, then it says the check is done
- Now, you can reboot your Macintosh as usual
- Try First Aid
Mac Disk Utility consists a First Aid option. This First Aid performs a disk health check on your Mac system. Apple updated this feature (interface) in El Capitan yet it’s working mechanism remained same.
So, how to use First Aid to repair disk and file system problems on Mac?
Step 1: Hit Command and Space keys together to open Spotlight.
Step 2: Type Disk Utility and click on Enter button.
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Step 3: In the Disk Utility wizard, choose the disk or volume you want to check.
Step 4: Click on First Aid button.
Step 5: Choose Run option to check the selected disk for errors.
Step 6: If Disk Utility finds any error, it shows a list of found issues. You can use Show Details option to view detailed information about the error that came up.
Step 7: Next, Disk Utility will ask your permission to automatically fix the found issues. Proceed and fix them.
If you see messages like “Storage system check exit code is 0” and “Filesystem check exit code is 0” then it indicates, no errors are found (code “0” is a good sign).
- Try First Aid in Recovery Mode
In some cases, Mac fails to find and repair disk or file system issues when you boot it into Safe Mode. This is due to the “live mode”. The check runs in live mode, examines the disk meanwhile the OS X is running from it. Thus, the check cannot make changes to the system drive.
So, the solution now is to boot the Mac in Recovery Mode and then try First Aid, using Disk Utility in the same way as mentioned above.
To boot Mac in Recovery Mode,
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- Hold Command and R keys while your Mac is booting
- Release the keys when you see a progress bar
- This loads your Mac directly in Recovery Mode
If you can’t reach Recovery Mode then, reboot the Mac again and repeat the same steps.
Once you entered into Recovery Mode, run Fist Aid using the second method.
- Try fsck in Single-User Mode
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You need to boot the Mac into single-user mode and try the fsck (file system check) command if First Aid in Recovery Mode (or any other technique) won’t help you to fix the problems.
To run fsck command in Single-User Mode,
- Restart your Mac and press Command + S (when it’s booting) buttons to reach Single-User Mode.
- Type /sbin/fsck –fy and hit Enter key to run file system check
- Wait for some time
After the check, you will see either “** The X (volume name) appears to be OK” or “***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****” message.
- If you see “FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED” message then it indicates, fsck found and fixed problems
- Run fsck until you see “the volume appears to be OK” message twice
- Finally, type Reboot and press Enter
- The Mac reboots and gives you the typical login screen.
In case, if you fail to repair disk and file system problems on your Mac via any of the above techniques and the Mac machine is failing to function normally then it seems your disk is nearby to the deadline.
Therefore, hurry up. Backup entire data from your drive onto a safe external device. If you cannot backup your files, then try Yodot Mac Data Recovery. The tool can effortlessly restore files from MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, etc. and 100% compatible with all versions of Mac OS X. Never lose your precious data due to any issue that made your Mac fail. You cannot recreate them, once they are gone!
A Bot To Repair Mac OS