Disk Utility - Use?

I'd say that repairing weekly is probably overkill, but it can be useful to do after system OS upgrades, and installing new software that uses an installer package. Mostly though, it's witchcraft.

 

If you believe in voodoo, then you might want to do that every week. If you don't believe in voodoo, "repair disk permissions" will not make the slightest difference. It used to fix problems that happened with installers maybe four years ago, with MacOS X Version 10.0. It doesn't serve any useful purpose today.

 

actually, i could not disagree more!

try installing an HP printer or some other 3rd party app, then try and use your computer without repairing permissions.

pointless......you HAVE to repair permissions after installing apps or your asking for trouble..

for example, i installed Quark, and it took over 7 minutes of repairing with endless listings relating to Quark Files being listed..

the computer was perfect after that, whereas before i repaired it was unusable.

id love to know why you say its useless...?

 

Repair permissions is great on External Drives also.

 

On the other hand, from my experience doing the same I haven't had to repair permissions yet and everything works perfectly.

 

in my experiences, sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. i do it every now and then, though, just to clean up whatever may be lying around. i don't know what it does, but repairing permissions gives me peace of mind - especially after coming from Windows where i had to do a disk cleanup, a defrag, a virus scan, and spyware/adware scan weekly.

 

I would repair permissions as followings:
- Once per month
- Before and after you install new software
- When the computer starts acting up.

Remember, to repair your HD, you have to boot from the install disk and then go to Disk Utilities. Definitely do after installing new software. You might want to also do it before.

 

i mainly use disk utility to eject a disc not showing on my desktop. kinda lame.

 

Disk images

In additon, I use disk utility to creat disk images of CDs or DVDs.

 

Before and after is just silly, after yes but even then no. I've maybe only ever done it 2 - 3 times since I've had OS X, a year past June.

Once per month is rather nuts unless someone is installing software packages like crazy...

 

Sigh..

So much misinformation.

When ANY install requires an admin password, it's likely that it drops an installer receipt in /Library/Receipts/, in which is a BOM (Bill of Materials) that contains what the proper permissions that installed detritus should have. This includes Apple software installs, Apple software updates, 3rd party installs, anything that requires an admin password and has an actual installer.

After that, is the only time you should be Repairing Permissions. Anything else, other than as a desperate measure in troubleshooting steps is a complete waste of time and energy.

Some things to note:

One CANNOT Repair Permissions on an external drive. Nor any other drive besides the boot drive.

One CANNOT use Repair Permissions to fix permissions issues in their home directory.

There is no point in using Repair Permissions as a maintenance step.

One should not use the installed DVD to Repair Permissions unless the boot disk is borked. The BOM archives are vastly out of date.

Disk Utility is very useful for (as noted previously), creation if disk images, CD/DVD images, repairing permissions on the boot disk, fixing the file system on local or mounted drives, mounting and/or unmounting drives, buring disk images to CD/DVD, checking SMART status, etc, etc.




That is all. [End Communication]

 

Oops, it was 'Repair Disk', not repair permissions.