How to Restore OS X in Disk Utility?

MacBook Air
OS X 10.9.1
Reinstall because of corrupted files on Macintosh HD
Not clear with next steps?
1. Do I install the top line disk image: disk1 or the indented startup disk: OS X Base System?
2. Once order is determined, I would select restore?
3. How do I determine the destination?
4. Then what?
I tried to follow a great discussion around this but lost my confidence. Thanks for the assist.
James

James,
Why do you think you have corrupted files and need to reinstall Mac OS X?
Where did you get those steps to do a reinstallation?
You do not reinstall Mac OS X 10.9.1 that way. Do do so you need to have the computer connected to the internet, restart while holding the Command and R keys. Then from the options displayed, choose Install Mac OS or it may say Reinstall Mac OS. That will then install the Mac OS X operating system.
If your goal is to erase the hard drive, you must first choose Disk Utility, and then Format or Erase Macintosh HD.
Then choose Install Mac OS.
You will have nothing on the hard drive after that except the operating system. You will have removed all applications and data.
So, is that your goal?

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Hi, how do I manage storage? Disk Utility says "other" is taking up most of my storage but I don't know where to find "other". Please help!

Hi, how do I manage storage? Disk Utility says “other” is taking up most of my storage but I don’t know where to find “other". Please help!

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the Storage display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside a photo or iTunes library will corrupt the library. Changes to such a library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper 2>&-
sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective 2>&-
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. Ignore any other messages that appear in the Terminal window.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

TS1388 hello..i am getting a screen when i turn my laptop on theta says OSX utilities....restore, reinstall osx or disk utility....what does this mean

Hello.. I am getting a screen when i turn my laptop on startup says OSX utilities....restore, reinstall osx or disk utility....what does this mean?

Hi, that sounds like it's booting from a Restore partition, but that is only for 10.7 & up, you list 10.6.8 though.
Anyway, hold alt key at bootup, what boot choices are shown?

How to Solve Problem Restoring Hard Drive on Disk Utility?

Hi everyone, my hard drive recently crashed. I got a new one placed in my computer, and I'm trying to recover data off of the one that crashed and transfer it onto my existing hard drive (which is larger in capacity than the one that crashed). I got this crashed hard drive tested, and the data is still intact; I was told that it will be possible to recovery data off of it. I bought an enclosure to place my crashed hard drive in, and I connected it to my MacBook Pro using a USB cable. Disk Utility then automatically opened. Upon going to the restore window in Disk Utility, I'm unable to drag down the name of the crashed hard drive into the source window, nor my existing hard drive into the destination window. No error message comes up; Disk Utility simply won't let me drag the names of these drives into these respective fields. Does anyone know how I can get Disk Utility to let me drag each respective drive into the source and destination fields? Thanks.

I don't know if Disk Utility is going to be of much help - you may want to try rescuing your data using Data Rescue 3 or some other data recovery application. I've tested Data Rescue 3 and found that I had excellent results.
Good luck,
Clinton

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Hello. i ran into some problems installing snow leopard and can't get back into 10.5. i can only boot into my windows partition. how would i go about creating a back up from Disk Utility being run off of the installation dvd?

If your OS X partition cannot be accessed then you may not be able to back it up. If you have another computer with FireWire then you can try booting the computer into Target Disk Mode. If you can access the drive from the other computer, then you can try recovering your files. Otherwise see the following:
Basics of File Recovery
Files in Trash
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten with recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

How to back up Files on Disk Utility

My Mac Book Pro doesn't start. when I press the start button It chimes, apple logo, line loading and turns off. Once and again. I tried the Comand-option-P-R and nothing. Tried a lot of tricks I found online and nothing. Finally -And Im not sure how, I think it was the Comand-R opened the Disk Utility and could hit the repair the disk, It said that It couldn't repair -I have almost full capacity 499GB used- but cant remove files since I cant start the computer. Disk Utility told me to Back up Files and Restore -meaning it will wipe out the data, but i will have it on my back up- How do I back up using external hard drive. Thanks for any help.

You need to boot from your backup disk using:
Boot Using OPTION key:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the
      "OPTION" key.
3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.
4. Select the desired disk icon from which you want to boot.
5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.
Once booted from the backup drive then:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
       it to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
      the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the now erased internal drive. Source means the external backup drive.
Once booted from the backup drive you need to partition and format the internal drive:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Cant restore my macbook with Disk utility and my .dmg image

My macbook would not boot anymore. Stuck on gray screen with apple logo, spinning wheel and a loading bar for a while after shutting off.
I was able to get to Disk Utility in the recovery mode and, after a while, was able to make an image of my filesin an attempt to back them up.
The .dmg was put on an external and i checked it on my imac, i could open the .dmg file and browse all my files from my macbook, so those are safe!
After that i tried to wipe the SSD of my macbook and put the image back but that didn't work, also some resource is busy errors.
After trying this a few times without succes i figured i'd try to do a clean install. This worked.
My macbook air is working again but if Iuse Disk Utility in the recovery now and try and restore my image (.dmg file) it gives me Restore Failure; An error (-16) occured (resource busy) as well. I also tried to copy the dmg onto my macbook and run disc utility when booted into OSX. I open up the back up .dmg with Disk utility, then i go to my macbooks partition (Macontiosh HD) and use that as a destination and drag the mounted image as the source as shown on the image below. Am I doing something wrong here?
Doing this i get an error as well: (-119,930,878) Resource busy as you can see.
What can i do to get my image back on my macbook? Any 3rd party software?
I considered just transferring the files after opening the .dmg file but this works only for documents and not for programs and settings of the default apps.
I've looked all over the Internet and it seems more people have had this error but then with making the image, they also suggest unmounting the destination disk before trying to restore but my destination is Macintosh HD, i cant really unmount that can i?
Thanks in advance!

To make a clone, in the future you need to use a program like superduper or carbon copy cloner.
Either program makes an identical clone while preserving certain system files and marking/indicating to OS X that the clone is bootable.
Using Disk Utility to make a DMG was a good idea, but this will not yield a bootable image.
If Disk Utility could do a 1:1 copy of everything, then people would be using it to rip/duplicate DVDs.
But Disk Utility does not (it leaves out certain invisible/system files), hence it cannot duplicate/clone a hard drive or DVD.

How to reinstall OS X? Disk Utility error. HELP!

My iMac failed start up normally so I have to enter the recovery mode (by holding the option key or command+R).
After researching online, I found my mac might have been corrupted. So I tried to use the first aid option in disk utility to verify and repair it but evertime I clicked repair, it shows a message "Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.""
I don't think I have a time machine backup as I tried the time machine back up option but there were no back-ups found. I can't create one now either since I'm on the starting gray screen. So I don't want to erase and reinstall since I don't have a back up.
So then I tried to reinstall OS X (Yosemite). But after following the first few steps, when it asks to choose the disk where you want to install the OS, it either says "this disk is locked" or "cannot install on Macintosh/Recovery HD." I still have about 273 GB available.
I've tried all this many times but it doesn't seem to work. I'm really stuck now and don't know any other option so please HELP!

If you want to preserve the data on the startup drive, and it's not already backed up, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is not fully functional. You need an external hard drive or other storage device to hold the data.
1. Start up from the Recovery partition, from Internet Recovery, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
If you use FileVault 2, then you must first unlock the startup volume. Select its icon ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) It will be nested below another disk icon, usually with the same name. Click the Unlock button in the toolbar. Enter your login password when prompted.
2. If Method 1 fails because of disk errors, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
3. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
4. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

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I put a new hard drive in my 1st gen iPod.
It still shows up in iTunes and music can be transferred over, but when disconnected the iPod shows a folder and exclamation mark so I can't navigate to / listen to any music.
As it's first gen ipod I can't get it to restore or update via iTunes - no options show up to restore or update the software.
Is there any other way I can restore or update the iPod - via disk utility or some other means?
I do have a back up of all the original files that were on the iPod hard drive before I swapped it over.

Hi - thanks, but unless I'm reading the article wrong that won't work for me because you need to use iTunes to restore the iPod and I can't do this - as it's a 1st gen iPod it will only sync with an old version of iTunes and the 'update' and 'restore' tabs don't appear.
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Restore Multiple Partitions Through Disk Utility With AppleScript?

Hi!
I need an AppleScript to restore a bunch of partitions from a master drive to a stack of external target drives. I don't mind partitioning them 1st, if necessary.
The master drive has 16 partitions, all equally sized, and I'd like a script to run that will have Disk Utility to just go down the list restoring each partition to the matching 16 partitions on one of the target drives.
Anyone know of or have anything l could use for this? Any advice on making this script? I'm not an advanced AppleScripter. And finally, would there be any way to have the script partition the target drives as well?
Thanks in advance!

Camelot wrote:
And can you explain why why the IDs in the repeat script end in s, as in disk1s?
Sure - disk0 refers to the entire disk and all its partitions. The s denotes a slice (aka partition) on that disk.
So disk0s4 refers to the fifth slice/partition on disk0 (slices are 0-based, so disk0s0 is the first partition).
Note that the boot volume is commonly disk0s2 - the third partition since there's likely a partition map and a EFI boot partition before the actual boot volume. You'll need to look at the partition map of a sample disk to work out what the appropriate numbers are.
10-4. Thanks! I figured that was the case from the info I'm viewing about my disks. Makes perfect sense!
So I gave the script a whirl and here's the result I got in Apple Script Editor:
Basically, it seems to be trying to restore part1 of source to slice1 (device) of target. Here are the results from Terminal shell:
[1] 84221
[2] 84222
[3] 84223
-bash:     : command not found
-bash: part: command not found
[4] 84224
-bash: --target disk2s: command not found
-bash: part: command not found
-bash: --erase: command not found
[1]   Exit 127                          do shell script "/usr/sbin/asr restore --source disk1s"
[2]   Exit 127                part
[3]- Exit 127                " --target disk2s"
[4]+ Exit 127                part
I'm thinking I should change the script to specify the 1st partition on disk2 like this:
do shell script "/usr/sbin/asr restore --source disk1s" & part & " --target disk2s2" & part & " --erase" with administrator privileges
Make sene? Please lemme know whatcha think!
And thanks!

Ok to use computer while restoring a drive with Disk Utility?

Hey everyone,
I'm backing up my HD onto an external by using Disk Utility's restore function. I was wondering if it was ok for me to use my computer during this process or if it'll screw up the process. I know it'll make it go slower, but I was wondering if that was the only draw back.
Thanks alot!
Message was edited by: ewanog

No, not is not wise. Run the program and than continue. I know this takes a while, yet wait until you go to Leopard, in which the average time is over 10 minutes. But, please do not interrupt Disk Utility.
Ray

Restore mirrored set with disk utility

It is possible to create mirrored set of 2 arrays without destroying the data stored in one of the arrays?

I don't think you'll need another computer or eight hours of downtime. You didn't mention the size of your internal drive but I'd assume the 300gb external will hold it all. I'll also assume the external is a firewire drive, if it's not none of this will work.
This is what I would do:
1. Download Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone your remaining raid slice to the external 300gb drive, and make sure to check the "make bootable" box.
2. In System Preferences set your startup disk to the external.
3. Restart from the external.
4. Run disk Utility to reformat your internal drive. At this point you're going to need to decide wether or not to set it up as a raid again. I don't think I would.
5. Use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone the external back onto your internal drive.
6. System Prefs again to reset the startup drive to your internal.
7. Restart and you should be good to go, and you've got your first backup done on your external.
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Make sense? I know I rambled a bit but it's really easy.
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tried to burn the project IMG as a disk utility,
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What brand and type DVD are you using?

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Hello everyone,
I am currently running OSX Mountain Lion, but at the time of this problem, I was just running OSX Lion.
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Any help would be greatly appreciated. The unallocated space measures up too about 125 gb...... which I kind of want back
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Hi I realize this is an old thread but I thought I might chime in with my workaround. I did what you did, and resized my windows partition to include 50 more gigabytes using partition wizard. Later I decided to give it back to macintosh and when trying to reclaim the unallocated space with the disk utility it simply snapped back to where it was before. After digging around I decided to mess with it because I really did not want to delete my windows partition. I tried just repartitioning 49 of the 50gb and it worked. I still have about 1gb that is unallocated but for me it is a much better solution than to reinstall windows.
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Hi, so I'm not sure his this has happened but I have deleted my disk utility. Now I'm attempting to do an uninstall and a reinstall snow leopard, please help us !!!!

If you have OS X 10.7 you shouldn't get a copy of Disk Utility from 10.6 (and might not have it). If you don't have a copy of the 10.7 installer to use Pacifist as Niel suggested, you can hold down the Command + R keys while booting up to enter the Recovery partition if your Mac supports it, and choose the Reinstall OS X option.

How to Restore OS X in Disk Utility?

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