OS X El Capitan's Disk Utility is a mess

[dianeoforegon]

You can restore the old Disk Utility using the steps here; https://justus.berlin/2015/10/restore-old-disk-utility-in-os-x-el-capitan/

 

[panzer06]

You can restore the old Disk Utility using the steps here; https://justus.berlin/2015/10/restore-old-disk-utility-in-os-x-el-capitan/

Very interesting but should we really need to go through that to have a usable disk utility.

I promised myself my 2011 Mac would be my last because of nonsense like this ... but I just can't use Windows full time. Expensive gaming platform, but full time for work, Windows just doesn't do it for me.

I guess as long as 3rd party developers keep up and patch their programs as Apple moves to new versions of the OS I'll live.

Thanks for pointing me at that article. Let's me know I'm not alone in thinking this version blows.

 

[MacGizmo]

[ This post was merged into this thread from a completely separate thread, so may seem out of place and repetitive. ]

This topic has been beaten up like a government mule...

The summary of the story, in my opinion, is this:

1. Yes, Apple has dumbed it down. Apple is a consumer company, not a "pro" company, so you're going to find little in the way of sympathy for geeks as the software goes.
2. Yes, the Disk Utility has lost some capabilities. Some of those capabilities aren't necessary anymore, but some are just a mystery as to why they're gone.
3. Yes, Disk Utility is having all sorts of issues with 3rd party drives, setting up RAIDS and partitioning. See #1 above. 90% of Apple's customers don't need to do any of those things. Of the 10% that do, 90% of them are smart enough to figure out how to do it another way... and the remaining 10% of the 90% just like to complain.

Of course, Disk Utility is starting to look a lot like the iWork suite makeover a year or two ago. Apple stripped out a whole bunch of features during the re-write process... then slowly started adding them back in as the features were updated. It's not always clear why Apple does something right when they do it, but many times (sometimes years later) it comes to light why and makes total sense.

 

[panzer06]

[ This post was merged into this thread from a completely separate thread, so may seem out of place and repetitive. ]

This topic has been beaten up like a government mule...

The summary of the story, in my opinion, is this:

1. Yes, Apple has dumbed it down. Apple is a consumer company, not a "pro" company, so you're going to find little in the way of sympathy for geeks as the software goes.
2. Yes, the Disk Utility has lost some capabilities. Some of those capabilities aren't necessary anymore, but some are just a mystery as to why they're gone.
3. Yes, Disk Utility is having all sorts of issues with 3rd party drives, setting up RAIDS and partitioning. See #1 above. 90% of Apple's customers don't need to do any of those things. Of the 10% that do, 90% of them are smart enough to figure out how to do it another way... and the remaining 10% of the 90% just like to complain.

Of course, Disk Utility is starting to look a lot like the iWork suite makeover a year or two ago. Apple stripped out a whole bunch of features during the re-write process... then slowly started adding them back in as the features were updated. It's not always clear why Apple does something right when they do it, but many times (sometimes years later) it comes to light why and makes total sense.

Thanks for connecting me with this issue. It's truly sad to see this. I'm not some user who wants access to all the nuts and bolts but seriously, being unable to setup a new drive that happened to come with NTFS partitions should not be so difficult. If the idea was to make this easier for consumers they failed.

Adding an wizard to setup a new drive that completely converts it to a Mac capable disk and formats the entire capacity would be the simple option, not making it impossible to use the disk. This option would make sense as the average consumer just wants to plug it in and use it.

 

[Partron22]

It's not always clear why Apple does something right when they do it, but many times (sometimes years later) it comes to light why and makes total sense.

Like the Power Mac 5500 of 1997?

 

[KALLT]

[ This post was merged into this thread from a completely separate thread, so may seem out of place and repetitive. ]

This topic has been beaten up like a government mule...

The summary of the story, in my opinion, is this:

1. Yes, Apple has dumbed it down. Apple is a consumer company, not a "pro" company, so you're going to find little in the way of sympathy for geeks as the software goes.
2. Yes, the Disk Utility has lost some capabilities. Some of those capabilities aren't necessary anymore, but some are just a mystery as to why they're gone.
3. Yes, Disk Utility is having all sorts of issues with 3rd party drives, setting up RAIDS and partitioning. See #1 above. 90% of Apple's customers don't need to do any of those things. Of the 10% that do, 90% of them are smart enough to figure out how to do it another way... and the remaining 10% of the 90% just like to complain.

Of course, Disk Utility is starting to look a lot like the iWork suite makeover a year or two ago. Apple stripped out a whole bunch of features during the re-write process... then slowly started adding them back in as the features were updated. It's not always clear why Apple does something right when they do it, but many times (sometimes years later) it comes to light why and makes total sense.

I still fail to see how Apple has been ‘dumbing’ Disk Utility down. They changed the user interface to what can be found elsewhere, e.g. Finder. The criticism is mostly about the overall sloppy and unfinished state of the program, i.e. replacing a (mostly) decent program with a newer, buggy one, and an unnecessary removal of RAID support. There is nothing else about it. If Apple had just bundled the old Disk Utility for the transition as well, just as they did when they revamped AirPort Utility a few years back, this would be much less of a problem.

 

[panzer06]

I still fail to see how Apple has been ‘dumbing’ Disk Utility down. They changed the user interface to what can be found elsewhere, e.g. Finder. The criticism is mostly about the overall sloppy and unfinished state of the program, i.e. replacing a (mostly) decent program with a newer, buggy one, and an unnecessary removal of RAID support. There is nothing else about it. If Apple had just bundled the old Disk Utility for the transition as well, just as they did when they revamped AirPort Utility a few years back, this would be much less of a problem.

I personally think the biggest issue is that the very people this simplification was to help aren't really helped. As i noted previously any ordinary user that has minimal skills who buys a Mac with this version of Disk Utility is very likely to have issues if they buy a drive for backup or to offload media files will find the system doesn't easily support the new purchase.

Most likely the reason we're not seeing much in the way of complaints is that many consumers don't back up until they lose data or some relative tells them back ups are important and then the problems start.

This version is so crippled I don't know why Apple even bothered to include it. I checked with 4 other family members and friends and asked them to try and use an old external windows disk they had or buy a new high capacity USB stick and none was able to get the system to format the drive for use with Time Machine so it doesn't work for the nontechnical crowd nor the more advanced user.

I've worked around my issue, however, I continue to be disappointed in the direction Apple has chosen, whether it's over simplification or poor quality control.

 

[xgman]

Very interesting but should we really need to go through that to have a usable disk utility.

It's already patched in a few places on google. It's not that big of a deal to grab it. Yes they could have not crippled it but it is easy to get the old one going thankfully.

 

[sricochet]

If it's any help for anyone I ran First Aid on the parent drive of the boot disk and I got an error that said "Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting Operation successful"

I verified in Onyx and the drive was ok, with no such errors. I don't know how to fix this however, and the Disk Utility just runs through First Aid very fast for my HDD.

 

[TonyK]

60-day free trial on a pre-release product sounds very much like they are looking to customers to be their Quality Assurance department.

Here's the rub, if something goes wrong, they'll hide behind the "pre-release" moniker and maybe seek details about the resulting issue. They'll say something about getting it for "free" and not being responsible for any damage or loss of data.

I think I'll hold back on Paragon's product and 10.11 for now. Yes, our laptops are running it as well as a Mac Mini but the desktops don't have to have it so waiting is going to be my best option.

I haven't had to go into Disk Utility for sometime and I must say I don't like the El Cap version. Seems very dumbed down and doesn't handle some external drives well. Ran into all sorts of problems trying to format a 128GB USB Stick. I eventually gave up and used it with my Windows system.

Then I purchased a Seagate 4TB external drive to handle Time Machine backups. Once again nothing but trouble, errors deleting and creating partitions. Completely useless.

I eventually downloaded Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac even though it's still looks to be pre-release software. It worked perfectly and worked as reliably as the old Disk Utility.

Sometimes I think Apple has gone too far with the dumbing down of systems and software.

Of course perhaps the elegant simplicity of the new tool was beyond my ability to perceive.

Anything is possible. -- I did just finish working a double.

 

[panzer06]

60-day free trial on a pre-release product sounds very much like they are looking to customers to be their Quality Assurance department.

Here's the rub, if something goes wrong, they'll hide behind the "pre-release" moniker and maybe seek details about the resulting issue. They'll say something about getting it for "free" and not being responsible for any damage or loss of data.

I think I'll hold back on Paragon's product and 10.11 for now. Yes, our laptops are running it as well as a Mac Mini but the desktops don't have to have it so waiting is going to be my best option.

I agree I normally don't use prerelease anything, however in this case I really didn't like the alternatives. I had a manual backup so it was worth the risk. Besides the only drive I had it touch was the brand me 4TB backup disk and a sub stick. Worked great.

If this iMac hadn't come with el captain I would still be on 10.10.x.

I suppose I might be able to get 10.10 working on it but other than this storage management issue 10.11 has been fine.

I agree waiting is probably best but I am concerned about what comes next with Apple. Only buying apple accessories pre formatted to support the OS X du jour?

 

[TonyK]

My wife has no problems with the removal of power user functionality. I'm not so forgiving as there are times it is needed to get at the lower levels of things to resolve issues or to setup new hardware.

I have 2 external USB drives that need to be repartitioned so I'll try one of the laptops with 10.11 and see how well they do with them. That will let me know if the desktops get updated or remain frozen.

 

[panzer06]

My wife has no problems with the removal of power user functionality. I'm not so forgiving as there are times it is needed to get at the lower levels of things to resolve issues or to setup new hardware.

I have 2 external USB drives that need to be repartitioned so I'll try one of the laptops with 10.11 and see how well they do with them. That will let me know if the desktops get updated or remain frozen.

Excellent test. As to ur wife. I don't really think this is power user functionality. If that's all they did, the minute you plugged in a non-Apple formatted drive the system would just pop up a screen and offer to make it Apple compatible.

The ordinary user would be fine and it would be done.

The way it is now someone like your wife would be try calling tech support for the new drive she bought because it doesn't work on her Mac. I can just imagine the call. " I can't copy anything to it and Time Machine backups are failing"

Disk utility isn't just nerfed, as far as I'm concerned it's broken.

It would be good to know how your experiment goes.

 

[navaira]

As to ur wife. I don't really think this is power user functionality. If that's all they did, the minute you plugged in a non-Apple formatted drive the system would just pop up a screen and offer to make it Apple compatible.

This might have been fixed in .4 betas, but 10.11.3 Disk Utility wasn't able to format a USB stick with two dots in its name. (Bodhi Linux 2.3.0 or something similar.) The Yosemite DU had no problems, of course.

 

[dgerman]

DiskUtil changes size of recoveryHD and
removes next partition on RESIZEVOLUME
Objective: Delete smaller partition, use available space to enlarge preious partition.
Results: Giant recovery partition. Lost partition after now giant recovery partition.
++++previous 10 partitions
++++ (I didnt create all those recovery HD partitions, (and that's OK with me), progressed from lepoard,snow,lion, maverick, Captian)
++++ Summary: EFI, Macintosh HS, recovy, Photos, recovy, HDIMAGES, DATA, HDIMAGES_2, recvy (disk0s5 named biggies followed photos was deleted )
sudo diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *320.1 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 31.5 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Apple_HFS DATA 32.0 GB disk0s4
5: Apple_HFS Photos 62.1 GB disk0s5
6: Apple_HFS biggies 17.5 GB disk0s6
7: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s7
8: Apple_HFS HDIMAGES 64.0 GB disk0s8
9: Apple_HFS DATA45G 45.4 GB disk0s9
10: Apple_HFS HDIMAGES_2 65.1 GB disk0s10
11: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s11

++++ Attempted to have GUI DiskUtility enlarge Photos to use space from biggies.
Error: -69742: The requested size change for the target disk or a related disk is too small;
please try a different disk or partition, or make a larger change
+++ Really???
++++ Attempted diskutil resizeVolume disk0s4 R ++++ same error

+++ Used GUI diskUtility to enlarge to almost all available space.

sudo diskutil activity #++++ (edited for breivity/clarity, like removing apostrophes, horiz align, removing extra spaces...)
***Begin monitoring DiskArbitration activity
***DiskAppeared (disk1s2
***DiskAppeared (disk1
***DiskAppeared ((no BSD name), DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/MobileBackups/,
***DiskAppeared ((no BSD name), DAVolumePath=file:///home/, =autofs
***DiskAppeared ((no BSD name), DAVolumePath=file:///net/, =autos

***DiskAppeared (disk0, DAVolumePath=<null>, =<null>, DAVolumeName=<null>) Time=16:23:18.1696
***DiskAppeared (disk0s1, DAVolumePath=<null>, =msdos, DAVolumeName=EFI) Time=16:23:18.1697
***DiskAppeared (disk0s2, DAVolumePath=file:///, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Macintosh HD) Time=16:23:18.1699
***DiskAppeared (disk0s3, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Recovery HD) Time=16:23:18.1701
***DiskAppeared (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Photos/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Photos) Time=16:23:18.1703

***DiskAppeared (disk0s6, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Recovery HD) Time=16:23:18.1705

***DiskAppeared (disk0s7, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/HDIMAGES/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=HDIMAGES) Time=16:23:18.1707
***DiskAppeared (disk0s8, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/DATA/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=DATA) Time=16:23:18.1708
***DiskAppeared (disk0s9, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/HDIMAGES_2/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=HDIMAGES_2) Time=16:23:18.1710
***DiskAppeared (disk0s10, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Recovery HD) Time=16:23:18.1712
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:23:18.1713
+++++++++++++++++++++

***DiskUnmountApproval (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Photos/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Photos) Comment=Approving Time=16:29:29.7431
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=<null>) Time=16:29:30.0635
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:29:30.0637
***DiskMountApproval (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Photos) Comment=Approving Time=16:29:44.4419
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Photos/) Time=16:29:44.6176
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:29:44.6177

***DiskUnmountApproval (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Photos/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Photos) Comment=Approving Time=16:31:26.4429
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=<null>) Time=16:31:26.7744
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:31:26.7745


***DiskMountApproval (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Photos) Comment=Approving Time=16:31:41.0089
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Photos/) Time=16:31:41.1946
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:31:41.1947
***DiskUnmountApproval (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Photos/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Photos) Comment=Approving Time=16:31:41.5111
***DiskUnmountApproval (disk0s7, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/HDIMAGES/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=HDIMAGES) Comment=Approving Time=16:31:41.5287
***DiskUnmountApproval (disk0s8, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/DATA/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=DATA) Comment=Approving Time=16:31:41.5505
***DiskUnmountApproval (disk0s9, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/HDIMAGES_2/, =hfs, DAVolumeName=HDIMAGES_2) Comment=Approving Time=16:31:41.5739
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=<null>) Time=16:31:42.5952
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s7, DAVolumePath=<null>) Time=16:31:42.9401
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s9, DAVolumePath=<null>) Time=16:31:44.8947
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:31:44.8948

+++++++++++++++++++++++

***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s3, DAMediaContent=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC) Time=16:32:12.6856
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s4, DAMediaSize=89999998976) Time=16:32:12.6858
***DiskDisappeared (disk0s6, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Recovery HD) Time=16:32:12.6860
***DiskPeek (disk0s5) Time=16:32:12.7022
***DiskAppeared (disk0s5, DAVolumePath=<null>, =<null>, DAVolumeName=<null>) Time=16:32:12.7129 ++++ ???????
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:32:12.7130
***DiskMountApproval (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Photos) Comment=Approving Time=16:32:13.7924
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s4, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Photos/) Time=16:32:13.9791
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:32:13.9792
***DiskMountApproval (disk0s3, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Recovery HD) Comment=Approving Time=16:32:14.5122
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s3, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Recovery%20HD/) Time=16:32:14.6114
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:32:14.6116
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s7, DAVolumeName=Recovery HD, DAVolumeUUID=<CFUUID 0x7fc503415d20> 718648D6-6469-3893-891F-9CDE77499BEE) Time=16:32:14.8237
***DiskMountApproval (disk0s7, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=Recovery HD) Comment=Approving Time=16:32:14.8241
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s7, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/Recovery%20HD%201/) Time=16:32:14.8935
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:32:14.8936
***DiskMountApproval (disk0s9, DAVolumePath=<null>, =hfs, DAVolumeName=HDIMAGES_2) Comment=Approving Time=16:32:15.0976
***DiskDescriptionChanged (disk0s9, DAVolumePath=file:///Volumes/HDIMAGES_2/) Time=16:32:15.4737
***DAIdle (no DADiskRef) Time=16:32:15.4738
+++ now the bad news
> diskutil list /dev/disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *320.1 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 50.3 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Apple_HFS Photos 90.0 GB disk0s4
5: Apple_Boot 650.0 MB disk0s5
6: Apple_HFS Recovery HD 64.0 GB disk0s6 +++?? wheres HDIMAGES
7: Apple_HFS DATA 45.4 GB disk0s7
8: Apple_HFS HDIMAGES_2 65.1 GB disk0s8
9: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s9

sudo diskutil info disk0s6
Device Identifier: disk0s6
Device Node: /dev/disk0s6
Whole: No
Part of Whole: disk0
Device / Media Name: Recovery HD
Volume Name: Recovery HD
Mounted: No
File System Personality: Journaled HFS+
Type (Bundle): hfs
Name (User Visible): Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Journal: Unknown (not mounted)
Owners: Disabled
Partition Type: Apple_HFS
OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: SATA
SMART Status: Verified
Volume UUID: 718648D6-6469-3893-891F-9CDE77499BEE
Disk / Partition UUID: D66791E4-EB2C-4D84-A1E4-ACFE01C43C4C
Total Size: 64.0 GB (64005746688 Bytes) (exactly 125011224 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space: 0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size: 512 Bytes

Next move is to delete disk0s6 and recover HDIMAGES from backup (I hope)
Any comments appreciated.
PS this posting looked much better when I created it.

 

[TonyK]

Well that was a glorious failure of Disk Utility under 10.11.

One of the two drives had already been partitioned. The remaining drive was my old TimeMachine drive. The DiskUtility in 10.11 kept reporting errors in trying to format the drive as ExFAT. Unlike previous DiskUtility applications the version in 10.11 does not allow a user to remove the existing partition.

Brought the drive to my desktop running 10.10.5 and the DiskUtility on this system reported the drive unreadable. Asked if I wanted to initialize the drive. Then I attempted to remove the only partition and it is sitting at "Preparing to remove partition." I'll give it a bit before doing a force kill on DiskUtility and trying again.

The short version is the DiskUtility in 10.11 made the drive unreadable. That is not a good thing and something Apple should fix.

Excellent test. As to ur wife. I don't really think this is power user functionality. If that's all they did, the minute you plugged in a non-Apple formatted drive the system would just pop up a screen and offer to make it Apple compatible.

The ordinary user would be fine and it would be done.

The way it is now someone like your wife would be try calling tech support for the new drive she bought because it doesn't work on her Mac. I can just imagine the call. " I can't copy anything to it and Time Machine backups are failing"

Disk utility isn't just nerfed, as far as I'm concerned it's broken.

It would be good to know how your experiment goes.

 

[IowaLynn]

I've used tools to format, initialize, map out sectors, and just jumped from Lion to 10.11.3 on new rMB and i was aghast at the new DU! Dumped down is right. Command line is still an option.

've used Paragon products like HDM Pro for years and while it harkens to XP looking interface, it worls as does its excellent backup features.

10.8.4 broke support for 4TB internal drives on Mac Pro and even when it was reported and known, guess Apple felt support for iMac 3TB Fusion drive or something was more important.

What happens when the iOS team is given free design reign on desktop, and "Mac OS X" became OS X. Or, the "iOS-ification" process.

 

[panzer06]

Well that was a glorious failure of Disk Utility under 10.11.

One of the two drives had already been partitioned. The remaining drive was my old TimeMachine drive. The DiskUtility in 10.11 kept reporting errors in trying to format the drive as ExFAT. Unlike previous DiskUtility applications the version in 10.11 does not allow a user to remove the existing partition.

Brought the drive to my desktop running 10.10.5 and the DiskUtility on this system reported the drive unreadable. Asked if I wanted to initialize the drive. Then I attempted to remove the only partition and it is sitting at "Preparing to remove partition." I'll give it a bit before doing a force kill on DiskUtility and trying again.

The short version is the DiskUtility in 10.11 made the drive unreadable. That is not a good thing and something Apple should fix.

Thank you for your follow up. I agree it's more broken than anything else. I hope apple fixes the problem.

 

[profbg]

I'm having the same problem (NTFS partition with Win 10 on it not showing up in Disk Utility - I've got Paragon NTFS, their latest El Capitan compatible version, installed and running) - funnily enough, the partition WILL show up in Recovery Mode. But that uses the same version of Disk Utility (15.0 / 1150) as far as I can see - doesn't seem to make sense now, does it?

 

[pier]

Sadly there is no way to replace DU in the OSX installer.

I just spent 20 minutes trying to remove all the partitions on a drive. You just can't just remove all partitions anymore which is pretty dumb, and the whole partitioning UI is ridiculous.

Again Apple trying to "solve" a problem that wasn't there to begin with.

 

[Riwam]

Sadly there is no way to replace DU in the OSX installer.

I just spent 20 minutes trying to remove all the partitions on a drive. You just can't just remove all partitions anymore which is pretty dumb, and the whole partitioning UI is ridiculous.

Again Apple trying to "solve" a problem that wasn't there to begin with.

I know that speaking of torrents and mentioning hacked parts of the OSX system makes some people react as a bull when showing it the famous red rug (although apparently bulls are actually colour blind).
However many months ago I found easely in the net a Yosemite DU modified in a way that allowed me to install it in El Capitan side by side with it's own DU.
I ignored some outraged MacRumor members who said it was dangerous and irresponsible and I would have terrible problems...blah, blah.

Since then when I need the DU...I use that one and neither had my computer exploded util now nor the OSX become ruined because of that.
I don't advise others to do it if someone is afraid of touching his or her system. I cannot take any responsibility for other people.
I only say that for me it works much better than the DU which came with El Capitan.
Ed

 

[jgelin]

I know that speaking of torrents and mentioning hacked parts of the OSX system makes some people react as a bull when showing it the famous red rug (although apparently bulls are actually colour blind).
However many months ago I found easely in the net a Yosemite DU modified in a way that allowed me to install it in El Capitan side by side with it's own DU.
I ignored some outraged MacRumor members who said it was dangerous and irresponsible and I would have terrible problems...blah, blah.

Since then when I need the DU...I use that one and neither had my computer exploded util now nor the OSX become ruined because of that.
I don't advise others to do it if someone is afraid of touching his or her system. I cannot take any responsibility for other people.
I only say that for me it works much better than the DU which came with El Capitan.
Ed

Same, I refuse to use the one that came with El Capitan.

 

[pier]

Same, I refuse to use the one that came with El Capitan.

No choice on the OSX installer...

 

[simon lefisch]

I actually use diskutil in Terminal. I don't really touch the new DU.

 

[orioncrystalice]

My TM disk got full and I had to delete some backups, worked fine before, but then the most recent update....affirming that I wanted to delete old backups somehow managed to annihilate my drive and make it invisible. Even on the PC at work the thing won't show up.