'No Spin' Disk Utility

I am looking for a utility for the Mac that will stop the Seagate Free Agent disks from spinning down and sleeping. Tom mentions such a utility in his "FCE4 Editing Workshop" book called 'No Spin' but the provided Site (www.electriceelprod.com) does not appear to exist any longer. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

As well as "No Spin", we have launched "App_Pauser".
I think they both can be used hand in hand when editing audio/video.
App_Pauser let's you kill/pause/resume running processes on your computer. So, you could Pause "Final Cut" while exporting video, if you needed to free up some processor for another app. When you are done, simply Resume "Final Cut" right where it left off.
I use it all the time like this.
These apps have been launched under Mosaic Interactive, so as to provide the users with better support. When under "electriceelprod.com", it was just me in my spare time.

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My 3 year-old macbook pro is very slow. I have run disk utility and virus scan with no improvement. The "beach ball" will spin for minutes at a time when opening, closing or changing windows. Apple Store looked at it a few months ago with no help.

my 3 year-old macbook pro is very slow. I have run disk utility and virus scan with no improvement. The "beach ball" will spin for minutes at a time when opening, closing or changing windows. Apple Store looked at it a few months ago with no help. What can I do?

Under CPU: 3.5% user; 5% system; 91% idle; 441 threads; 90 processes.
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Is too much of the system memory tied up? If so, what can I do to free some up?

My Macbook aliminium unibody from late 2008 will not boot. I reach the grey screen with the apple icon and the spinning grey gear. I used disk utility to boot it but it said integrity test failed. I don't know what to do can anyone please help?

My Macbook aliminium unibody from late 2008 will not boot. I reach the grey screen with the apple icon and the spinning grey gear. I used disk utility to boot it but it said integrity test failed. I don't know what to do can anyone please help?

Sounds like you may have a harddrive issue. You are probably going to need to get that changed out and then install the OS X again to get it going.

Can't get rid of spinning circle, ran disk utility, computer running slow

can't get rid of spinning circle, ran disk utility, computer running slow
MAC OS X version 10.6.8

If you are running OS 10.6.8 it has to be Intel.
Serious slowdowns, if not due to a hard drive failing, are caused by unnecessary third-party software. Please answer the following questions:
1) Are you running any anti-virus/internet security applications?
2) Are you running any "cleaning/tune-up/optimizations" applications?
3) Any peer-to-peer or torrent downloading software?
4) Any third-party disk backup software that came bundled with an external hard drive?
5) Any online backup scheme other than iCloud (Carbonite; GoogleDrive; MS One Drive)?

Spinning Beach Ball of death during disk utility

Go to disk utility and verify the startup disk, start the disk verification and the spinng beach ball of death coming up. After a minute the result is that the disk is ok. During the verify processing I see only the spinning ball.
Anyone???

drums77 wrote:
Go to disk utility and verify the startup disk, start the disk verification and the spinng beach ball of death coming up. After a minute the result is that the disk is ok. During the verify processing I see only the spinning ball.
Anyone???
Normal. The verify disk operation on the boot volume can take a while and Disk Utility may not be responding to the OS quickly enough so the mystic spinning lollipop pizza comes up for a while. Somewhere there is an actual disclaimer to that effect. It all comes from not being able to dismount the root volume, which complicates the process.

Spinning Ball & Disk Utility

When getting spinning ball is using disk utility-verify & repair okay ? Plus how often can one use disk utility ?

The esteemed Kappy hath spoken. He is a most senior member of this community and is considered gospel.
When you consider the reasons for BBoD (my favorite term "Beach Ball of Death" from among its many nicknames) are pretty simple when Wikipedia boils it down for us...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel
The spinning pinwheel is a pointer in Apple's Mac OS X that indicates an application is not responding to system events.
The icon has also been referred to as the spinning beach ball or, unofficially, the Spinning Beach Ball of Death, the Spinning Pizza of Death (frequently encountered across Mac users forums as The SPOD), the Marble of Doom, or the Pinwheel of Death. The OS X Human Interface Guidelines officially refers to it as the spinning wait cursor, noting also that the developer term cursor is equivalent to the user term pointer.
Each application has an event queue that receives events from the operating system (for example key presses and mouse button clicks). If an application takes longer than 2 seconds to process the events in its event queue (regardless of the exact cause) the operating system displays the wait cursor whenever the cursor hovers over that application's windows.
This is meant to indicate that the application is temporarily unresponsive, a state from which the application may recover, however it may also indicate that the application has entered an unrecoverable state. This prevents the user from closing, resizing, or even minimizing the windows of that application. Users can choose to terminate an unresponsive application... [Force Quit discussion]...
While one application is unresponsive, typically other applications are usable in the meantime.
I get this most often when I use an app that accumulates RAM til it starts using Virtual memory in abundance - like a very long media rich browser session, for instance. If I use up my available RAM and my VM eats into too little available disk space - you see the problem = maybe BBoD !!
ÇÇÇ

Spinning Beach Ball, Disk Utility

I have had to reinstall my Mac desktop numerous times. Just recently I have been experiencing a problem with teh disk utility window, I keep getting the spinning beach ball and it won't let me reinstall my computer. Please help me

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I want to wipe my HD clean. Command R won't bring up disk utility, it just keeps spinning on the Apple logo. I'm running 10.9.3 on a macbook pro.

I want to wipe my HD clean. Command R won't bring up disk utility, it just keeps spinning on the Apple logo. I'm running 10.9.3 on a macbook pro.

Select the Recovery partition. It should boot to a screen like this:
Select Disk Utility and reformat your boot drive, formatting with a single GUID partition as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Once the partition is erased go back to Reinstall Mac OS X and install the OS on your newly formatted partition. It may take a while and if you downloaded Mavericks from the Mac App Store (duh!) you may need your Apple ID and password handy.
Installing the OS may take quite some time as it will necessitate downloading the 5GB+ OS file.
Now you'll be able to make a clean installation of everything.
Clinton

Ibook G4 - won't start up, spins, and shuts down... disk utility repair...

ibook G4 - won't start up, spins, and shuts down... disk utility repair quits. says "invalid sibling link" "volume check failed" "1 volume could not be repaired because of an error" "the underlying task reported failure on exit"
any ideas about how to start and/or recover data ??
thanks

Hi chesterday, and a warm welcome to the forums!
You must repair the HD, your best bet is DiskWarrior from Alsoft...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
You'll need the CD though.
Unfortunately, Disk Utility can't fix all that much, and the only other Apple Options are erasing the HD, or installing OSX to a second drive, then using Migration Assistant to move stuff over to the new HD.

Disk Utility says "drive can't be repaired, disk and restore your backed up files."

My Mac Book Pro froze yesterday and I had to force restart it. It had been showing me messages that my hard drive disk was full for a while and I was in the middle of transferring files to my external hard drive and I accidentally put a huge large file from my external hard drive into the trash on my laptop which makes me wonder if that means I added more GB to a computer that was already very full. Anyway, after freezing I restarted it and the desktop wouldn't load properly. The desktop picture was there, but folders on desktop did not appear, finder bar was missing and the dock was acting super slow and nothing worked when clicked on. Then the next few attempts were around the same result and eventually became stuck on the apple logo, spinning gear and a progress bar that was not loading at all.
Here's what I've tried so far:
Safe mode- nothing happens
Command + R - I am unsure how to work this since I can't seem to find an internet connection when it prompts for one. None of the internet connections have much signal and my own information doesn't seem to load since the gear spins to find the internet connection name and password I typed to load it but can't seem to find it. Perhaps I have the wrong internet information, but I don't think so.
I tried Command + S to use in single user mode and type in a command to help fix the drive, BUT, even though the black screen and white lettering mode did show up, it remained in a place where I was not allowed to type anything and the last thing written at the bottom of the screen was something about set up for bluetooth, I think. I tried this twice and both times it stopped in the same place and I could not type a command.
Disk Utility using installation dvd to verify and repair disk. Verify says disk needs repair and then repair has some red colored phrases: Invalid volume file count. (It should be 786374 instead of 786274) Incorrect number of thread records. And there was another problem listed but I do not remember it. Then, near the end of repairing it says: "Disk Utility stopped repairing Macintosh HD." It tells me it couldn't repair the disk and that I should back up as many of my files as possible, reformat the disk and restore backed up files.
That would be fine and dandy, but I have no idea how to back up my files and do all this. I have no idea how to exactly get the data off my hard drive. If someone does, please list a step by step guide for me on how to do so.
I have an external hard drive and I tried plugging in and selecting the hard drive and making a "New Image" to copy to the external hard drive destination, but it just stops a few seconds into it and tells me there is an input/output error. I tried read only, read/write only, compressed options for making a copy and all yield the same result.
In Disk Utility, I believe I have a partition -the Macintosh HD. I have listed on the left hand side: 320.07 GB Hitachi HTSS45.....etc. and below it in non-bolded, grey lettering it says "Macintosh HD."
The Hitachi, when clicked upon, shows the S.M.A.R.T. status as Verified and the Macintosh HD doesn't show much in details except for "Not mounted."
At one point, the Macintosh HD was in bold lettering and seemed to be mounted for a few minutes. When that happened, I was able to see the details reading: Mount Point: /Volumes/Macintosh HD, Capacity: 319.73 GB, Available: 11.92 GB, Used: 307.81 GB, etc.
I'm getting nervous to keep turning on and off the computer on force start and shut downs, especially since I have been reading up that the longer the computer is on, the more the hard drive is in use and the more chance for it to start deleting or overwriting my files. Is this true?
It's not mounted anymore since it was momentarily mounted. I just want to get my files off the disk and save them to my external hard drive. That is my main goal right now. What can I do?
Thank you in advance for your help!

If you want to preserve the data on the boot drive, 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 unable to fully boot. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Boot into Recovery (command-R at startup) or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in the support article linked below, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”
How to back up and restore your files
2. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode by holding down the key combination command-T at the startup chime. Connect the two Macs with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable. The internal drive of the machine running in target mode will mount as an external drive on the other machine. Copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode
3. 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.

Wife about to give birth and Disk Utility failing to repair HD.

Good morning. Starting last night I began having serious issues with my 2007 20" 2.4ghz iMac. I hope someone can help before I employ the "nuke" option.
First a little background. My wife is about to give birth to our second child. I have several in-laws in town and my house is a wreck. So, last night I thought it would be a great time to upgrade my iPhone 3G to iOS 4. I am not implying that updating my phone caused the problems with my iMac but they started about 30 seconds after pushing the "Update" button in iTunes.
The phone did update to iOS 4 after about 3 hours of backing up but immediately the iMac started "hanging up" and the spinning beach ball appeared for minutes at a time. late last night after my iPhone was functioning again, I went to bed.
This morning, the iMac was still responding very slowly and I was getting the spinning beach ball for even longer periods of time. So, I rebooted the machine and upon reboot the iMac would get stuck on the grey screen with the Apple logo and a spinning gear.
I tried all of the methods on this support document.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570
It would not boot into Safe Mode.
I reset the NVRAM/PRAM.
I checked the power cables.
I removed all USB and perpherial attachments. (Including even trying to boot without the keyboard or mouse plugged in.)
After booting from the Install DVD and running Disk Utility, Disk Utility was telling me that almost the entire HD is available and that it could not repair the disk. I was receiving "Invalid Node Structure" and "Volume Check Failed" error messages.
So the last thing the support document suggested was a complete erase and re-install. I have been running Time Machine, but have never actually used it to recover anything, much less the 1000s of photos and 1000s of songs on the iMac.
Is there anything else I can or should try before pulling the plug and erasing the hard drive and praying that Time Machine has worked?
My very pregnant wife will have a heart attack if we lost everything on the computer. (I really am not joking that she might go into labor any second, her due date was last week.)
Thanks for the help and advice. I need it.

I know that I am a bother and asking alot of questions in quick succession, but I am hoping to take care of this before the baby makes its appearance.
I'm getting you have a lot on your mind right now, try not to not worry about it. Might be time to take a few deep breaths and try to relax.
If you have had your machine connected to Time Machine and it has been doing backups (I'm sure it has been) you have done everything necessary.
You can attempt an erase and restore however if your disk is dodgy or has failed at best it's a temporary solution. As I stated I would recommend taking it into an AASP and have it looked at.

Disk Utility erase tab for hard disk is missing after accidental OS deletion when installing Win 8.1 (BootCamp)

Hi there everyone,
This is my first post and I hope I can get this issue resolved with your help .
So the issue that I am having is that my Disk Utility is not showing giving me the option to reformat my entire hard drive.
The reason I want to this is because my Boot Camp Assistant won't partition my drive. This error comes up:
So after looking through the internet and forums i couldn't resolve this Boot Camp issue. So I decided to try and just wipe out my whole disk but as you can see I am unable to do that.
Prior to this issue, I had tried to download Windows 8.1 using a bootable USB stick and have accidentally deleted my Macintosh HD partition from the Windows install menu by opening up a terminal (fn+option+F10 was the key used to open up this terminal if I remember correctly). I was pretty upset about that, thankfully I have a backup around. Not knowing what to do I proceeded to installing Windows 8.1 anyway. Half way through the installation there was an error which I did not record. I simply exited the installer and proceeded to the Recovery System start up menu and it installed a version of OS X Lion from the internet. Then I installed Yosemite thinking everything is OK.
I decided to try to install Windows 7 now and the issue mentioned at the beginning ensued. Previously there was a disk0s1 and disk0s2 that can be seen from the Disk Utility but I could delete one of them. The other one I could only erase but could not delete the partition itself. From terminal i determined these two partitions were from the previous Windows installation attempt. The size was relatively small for both.
I ran a disk repair for the Macintosh HD volume and this error pops up:
I am using MacBook Pro (15-inch, early 2011) with:
2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphic 3000
750.16 GB TOSHIBA MK7559GSXF (SATA)
Yosemite V10.10.1
Below are the drive info from terminal:
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                  Apple_HFS disk0s1                 314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s2
   3:          Apple_CoreStorage                         748.7 GB   disk0s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *748.4 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s3
                                 C0E588EC-8B91-43D2-8493-392DB9911387
                                 Unencrypted
and
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group CF5FCF1D-64F3-4F5C-8A32-583BDF73FA2A
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         748741939200 B (748.7 GB)
    Free Space:   18960384 B (19.0 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 79D6A32D-71A9-479B-82AF-E287ABF820E9
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s3
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     748741939200 B (748.7 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 5A69641B-025B-438B-A572-AE008B8138B0
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume C0E588EC-8B91-43D2-8493-392DB9911387
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          748370657280 B (748.4 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
I hope someone out there can help me out here. I have tried all I could to no avail. Looking forward to your replies
Cheers

Please boot into Internet Recovery (Command+Opt+R) and ensure you see the spinning globe. If you do, you can use diskutil cs commands to initialize your disk and re-install/restore from a TM backup.

Disk Utility - No Drives & No Shutdown

I've upgraded a Power Mac G5 2ghz machine:
Original Config: 1.5 gig memory, 2 x 160 gb HD, Tiger OS.
New Config: 3.5 gig memory, 1 x 320 gb HD, 3 x 500 gb HD, 1 x Sonnet Tempo SATA PCI Expansion Card , 1 x Sonnet G5 Jive Internal SATA Mounting.
The 2 additional 500 gb Baracuda HDs are mounted in the Sonnet Jive Mounting,( connected to the PCI card in slot 3), and powered with the supplied cable and plug from the optical drive, as per the sonnet instructions. The 2 remaining HDs are in the original slots A & B in the G5. Total of 7 volumes on 4 drives - 2 on drive 1, 3 on drive 2, one each on Drives 3 & 4
Problem: Computer suddenly is unable to locate any discs with Disk Utility - just get a spinning wheel. Can force quit Disk Utility, but then computer fails to shutdown, again the dreaded spinning wheel. Only means of shut down is by FORCE QUITTING (holding power button in).
Went back to square one. Refitted 2 original HDs slots A & B - complete with the OS already on HD (Tiger). Removed PCI card and mounting kit plus extra drives.
Result - all systems working normally. Went through a test sequence on this and all subsequent modifications:
All disks verified by Disk Utility, Images on other disc accessed via Bridge & Photoshop, start up and shutdown times logged.
Then added PCI card, tested as above - OK
Then added 3rd drive via mounting kit, tested as above - OK
Then added 4th drive via mounting kit, tested as above - OK
Removed mounting kit, PCI card, all drives and installed one new drive with Leopard in G5 position A. (Partitioned into 2 volumes)
Tested as above - OK
Then added 2nd new disk with images, position B, tested as above - OK
Then added PCI card, tested as above - OK
Then added 3rd drive via mounting kit, tested as above - OK
Then added 4th drive via mounting kit, tested as above - OK
Used this set up with Bridge & CS2 for an hour or so without a problem. The I re- partitioned Disk 2 (500 gb Seagate Baracuda) into 3 volumes, but disk still empty of data.
Then went through my test sequence and SAME PROBLEM RECURRED - Disk Utility (which I'd just used to partition disk) was unable to locate ANY drives - just the spinning wheel again. Sure enough the G5 refused to shutdown, spinning wheel again. I FORCE QUIT and left it alone!
I've phoned Sonnet and the card is compatible, firm ware is updated. Computer recognizes all discs and memory, until this problem appears. It seems that something in the system may not like more than 5 volumes being present. Additionally when I did a Leopard re-installation it failed to complete and just stopped installing before the software installation was complete. When I switched from "Erase & Install" to "Update" on the install menu it went in OK. I've successfully installed using this Leopard disk on a Quad Pro, so I don't think it's corrupted.
I'm now at a loss as what to do next to find and cure the problem - any advice would be appreciated
Regards
Max Dutton

Being a new Mac Mini the system is attempting to create a Fusion Drive setup out of your SSD. Do you have dual drives in the system, the built-in one in addition to the new one you installed?
This is an issue with the new Mac Mini and iMac systems (see here: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57584237-263/disk-utility-may-combine-custo m-drive-setups-on-some-macs/) as these systems ship with Fusion Drive setups and Disk Utility assumes this is the desired setup when you use it to "fix" the drives.
You can see that when you select "Internal Drive" the type is "Logical Volume Group." Since this group is greater than the 840GB, my guess is this is the combined space from your SSD and the built-in one.
To clear this issue, open the Terminal (from the Utilities menu in the OS X installer), and run the following command:
diskutil cs list
You will see a tree of information, with one grouping showing a UUID for the Logical Volume Group (the UUID will be a string of numbers and letters, separated by several dashes).
With this UUID, run the following command to destroy the logical volume group (you can try copying and pasting the UUID, though I"m not sure if the services in the Recovery HD partition support copy and paste--otherwise just type it in manually):
diskutil cs delete UUID
When finished, follow the instructions in the artifcle I linked to above to install OS X to an external drive (if available) and use Disk Utility there to fix and manage the drives, as opposed to the version in the Recovery HD partition.

How do I access Disk Utility for 10.7.1?

How do I access Disk Utility for 10.7.1? I found it in the forums a few weeks ago, used it, then lost the directions. This is a last ditch attempt
to use OS Lion. I parted my hair incorrectly when I installed and have been plagued by the dread rainbow spinning ball in EVERY application. Yes, every. Name one, Safari, Firefox, Text Edit, Mail, Excel, Word, iTunes, Garage Band, Calculator, Calender, iPhoto....yes, every, and I cannot
find a solution that works. I have back up files on two different hard drives 500 gig and 1 terrabyte with all my music, photo and writing files.
I am a writer and a musician so imagine the frustration. OS 10.6 is an option of course. My dedication to Apple and each new OS is deep so
I am hoping that somehow there will a fix, an upgrade, something that does not require me to go bac to the much more endangered species named OS.
hahhaa! Just stalled waiting for the ball to finish with it's random spinning.... SO, this is like a last desperate .... it just did two more stalls.
NO OTHER apps running, just little Firefox holding on for dear life, last desperate request for a fix.
MacKeeper has been great in sending helpful directions for getting the Antivirus to work after it mysteriously decided to stop working, Quite MacKeeper, go to Activity Monitor, force quit helper, start up MacKeeper and run program. It works!
SO before my third stall stops me, please post directions to open disk utility in administration mode so that I can do any further repairs that have not worked by using it from the open system. Also keychain synching stopped working with Lion.
Thanks to any and all who can help.

Press and hold Command-R keys and reboot. You'll then start up in the Lion Recovery HD. You'll find Disk Utility there.
Command-R to the rescue.
Just hold down Command-R during startup and Lion Recovery springs into action. It lets you choose from common utilities: You can run Disk Utility to check or repair your hard drive, erase your hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of Lion, or restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup. You can even use Safari to get help from Apple Support online. And if Lion Recovery encounters problems, it will automatically connect to Apple over the Internet.

Disk Utility taking long time to open directory with disk images

Hi and thanks in advance.
I have a couple of CD and DVD disk images stored in a folder (and organized into several sub-folders) on a FAT32 volume.
The problem is that recently, Disk Utility takes forever to display the content of any of these folders when I select Open Disk Image from the File menu. The Select an Image to Attach dialog remains empty and the beach ball spins. After a very long time (10-15minutes? I've never had the patience to time it.), the contents will display, if at all. During this period of virtual inactivity, the program is unresponsive.
Since the FAT32 volume is also accessible from my Bootcamped Windows XP OS, I tried doing a disk check and a defragment but it hasn't improved my problem.
Any ideas?

HI,
Make sure your MacBookPro has sufficient free disk space to read the disk images.
Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you always have a minimum of 10% to 15% free disk space at all times.
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

'No Spin' Disk Utility

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