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Does repairing disk permissions actually do anything?!

Ben1l

Ben1l

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 30, 2006
249
0
I've been having an issue with FCPX crashing or freezing. I closed it down, and repaired the permissions of my startup disk in disk utility. There were hundreds of lines in the report when it finished. I then restarted the MBP and ran another disk repair only to see the same thousands of lines of code in the error report. The same thing always happens...

I'm just wondering if this utility is actually doing anything useful? If not, are there any third party apps anyone can recommend?

Thanks,
Ben
 
Ben1l said:
I've been having an issue with FCPX crashing or freezing. I closed it down, and repaired the permissions of my startup disk in disk utility. There were hundreds of lines in the report when it finished. I then restarted the MBP and ran another disk repair only to see the same thousands of lines of code in the error report. The same thing always happens...

I'm just wondering if this utility is actually doing anything useful? If not, are there any third party apps anyone can recommend?

Thanks,
Ben
Click to expand...
I noticed the same thing with many iTunes files. It doesn't seem to make any difference to iTunes. Have you also Verified the disk using disk utility? Don't be tempted by Mackeeper.
 
Stewart21 said:
I noticed the same thing with many iTunes files. It doesn't seem to make any difference to iTunes. Have you also Verified the disk using disk utility? Don't be tempted by Mackeeper.
Click to expand...

Yes have tried to verify....

Seems odd that it appears to do absolutely nothing...
 
Ben1l said:
I've been having an issue with FCPX crashing or freezing. I closed it down, and repaired the permissions of my startup disk in disk utility. There were hundreds of lines in the report when it finished. I then restarted the MBP and ran another disk repair only to see the same thousands of lines of code in the error report. The same thing always happens...

I'm just wondering if this utility is actually doing anything useful? If not, are there any third party apps anyone can recommend?

Thanks,
Ben
Click to expand...

Known issue with latest iTunes - see other threads

Apple a little confused...
 
Ben1l said:
I've been having an issue with FCPX crashing or freezing. I closed it down, and repaired the permissions of my startup disk in disk utility. There were hundreds of lines in the report when it finished. I then restarted the MBP and ran another disk repair only to see the same thousands of lines of code in the error report. The same thing always happens...

I'm just wondering if this utility is actually doing anything useful? If not, are there any third party apps anyone can recommend?

Thanks,
Ben
Click to expand...

It keeps some people happy...

There is "disk repair" and there is "repair permissions". "Repair permissions" could fix apps that were improperly installed - that happened quite commonly many years ago which was why that utility was created, but should be exceedingly rare nowadays. "Disk repair" checks your disk and tries to fix problems. You have to boot from another startup disk or from your recovery disk.

First step would be to make sure you have up-to-date time machine backups. Often crashes and especially freezing are a sign that your hard drive is on its way out. In that case a backup will be a life saver.

You could buy a cheap external hard drive (always useful for backups), copy your hard drive with Disk Utility, and boot from the external drive. Check how that works. If it does, then it's quite likely a problem with the hard drive.
 
gnasher729 said:
It keeps some people happy...

There is "disk repair" and there is "repair permissions". "Repair permissions" could fix apps that were improperly installed - that happened quite commonly many years ago which was why that utility was created, but should be exceedingly rare nowadays. "Disk repair" checks your disk and tries to fix problems. You have to boot from another startup disk or from your recovery disk.

First step would be to make sure you have up-to-date time machine backups. Often crashes and especially freezing are a sign that your hard drive is on its way out. In that case a backup will be a life saver.

You could buy a cheap external hard drive (always useful for backups), copy your hard drive with Disk Utility, and boot from the external drive. Check how that works. If it does, then it's quite likely a problem with the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Being a newbie, I'm a bit confused by your last statement about an external backup so feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.

If the drive is "failing" and producing bad, for wont of a better term "sectors" with corrupted data, wouldn't copying the contents of the internal drive to an external one just transfer already corrupted data files to the external drive? Wouldn't you just be creating bad files on a good drive?
 
magilla said:
Being a newbie, I'm a bit confused by your last statement about an external backup so feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.

If the drive is "failing" and producing bad, for wont of a better term "sectors" with corrupted data, wouldn't copying the contents of the internal drive to an external one just transfer already corrupted data files to the external drive? Wouldn't you just be creating bad files on a good drive?
Click to expand...

There's a chance, but often files are not definitely corrupted but borderline. So if you read the same data ten times, it might work nine out of ten times. When you copy a file, it is only read once, so your chances are better.

Hangs will often happen when your hard drive has to try repeatedly to read the same data, so that will definitely go away.
 
Ben1l said:
I've been having an issue with FCPX crashing or freezing. I closed it down, and repaired the permissions of my startup disk in disk utility. There were hundreds of lines in the report when it finished. I then restarted the MBP and ran another disk repair only to see the same thousands of lines of code in the error report. The same thing always happens...

I'm just wondering if this utility is actually doing anything useful? If not, are there any third party apps anyone can recommend?

Thanks,
Ben
Click to expand...

Some people repair, or recommend repairing permissions for situations where it isn't appropriate. Repairing permissions only addresses very specific issues. It is not a "cure all" or a general performance enhancer, and doesn't need to be done on a regular basis. It also doesn't address permissions problems with your files or 3rd party apps.
Disk Utility repairs the permissions for files installed by the Mac OS X Installer, Software Update, or an Apple software installer. It doesn’t repair permissions for your documents, your home folder, and third-party applications. You can verify or repair permissions only on a disk with Mac OS X installed.
Click to expand...
Does Disk Utility check permissions on all files? Files that aren't installed as part of an Apple-originated installer package are not listed in a receipt and therefore are not checked. For example, if you install an application using a non-Apple installer application, or by copying it from a disk image, network volume, or other disk instead of installing it via Installer, a receipt file isn't created. This is expected. Some applications are designed to be installed in one of those ways. Also, certain files whose permissions can be changed during normal usage without affecting their function are intentionally not checked.
Click to expand...
If repairing permissions results in error messages, some of these messages can be ignored and should be no cause for concern.
 
Yeah, every time I look at permissions in disk utility there's tons of iTunes permissions that seem be misplaced. I thought this to be weird behavior. I guess it's something with iTunes 11 then..
 
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