"First Aid" in Mac Disk Utility is Blank!

Without purchasing new disc burning software, there are actually 3 ways to burn CDs & DVDs in your Mac OS X system (Mac OS X 10.3-10.6)

There are methods using Finder and Disk Utility.

Both are easy to do and when set up to use will have you burning music, video, data, and image files (ISO) to CDs or DVDs in no time at all.

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BURNING DISKS WITH FINDER

1.) Create a Burn folder and burn a CD/DVD

* The easiest way to burn a disc with Finder is to create a Burn folder with Finder. Here's how you do that:

* Click on any blank space on your desktop and in an instant, Finder will appear on the Apple menu bar next to the Apple menu icon.
• Click on File and select from the drop down menu



* This distinctive folder will now appear on your Desktop




* Now insert a blank CD or DVD and in moments, you will see this window pop up:



• Just click the OK button.


* In a few more moments
on your desktop, you will see this Untitled DVD (or "CD: for CD-ROM Disks) icon:




• Now you can either drag and drop files into the folder, or just double-click the folder and also drag and drop files into the open Burn Folder window

* If you notice, each file you drag (or copy and paste) into the Burn Folder window will have a small curved arrow at the bottom left corner of the file.
That is merely a designation that the file is a image of the actual file and ready to be burned to the CD or DVD you use.



* Notice the Burn button (highlighted in the red box). This is the button you will press, to commence the burn (or copying) of the data you have placed in the burn folder to be copied to disk.

• Click the Burn button, name your disk and that is all it takes. When the process is complete, you will now see a formerly Untitled Disk icon on your desktop replaced with a "Your_new_disc_name" DVD.

(Additional Note: If you wish, you can also simply bypass creating a Burn folder, insert a blank CD or DVD and simply drag and drop or copy and paste files into the open window of the Untitled CD as well.)

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BURNING A DISC WITH DISK UTILITY

There are actually two ways to burn data to an DVD or CD with Disk Utility:

1.) Burn a disk in Disk Utility

* Simply open Disk Utility by either clicking anywhere on a blank space on your Desktop window and Finder will appear near your Apple menu, select Go >Utilities and that will take you to the Utilities Folder which is the default location of the Disk Utility application.




* Or you can click the Finder icon on your Dock, open a new Finder window, click on "Applications" listed in the side window and select the Utilities folder






* Either way, you will land here.




• Insert your CD or DVD.




* Once you open Disk Utility, you will see this main window




* Now all you need to do is click the "Burn" button located on the Disk Utility toolbar.




* For an example, I am striving to burn a copy of my Quicken .dmg file to CD.

* Once I have selected the file, then I click the Burn button located at the bottom right corner of the Finder window.



* Follow the onscreen instructions to start the burn process.

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2. Creating a multi-session disk using Disk Utility:
Now it is known, that one cannot burn more than once with a single CD-R disc, but it can be done as provide from the knowledge base of Apple support:

• In the Finder, create a folder for the session and drag the items you want to burn into the folder.

• In Disk Utility, choose File > New > "Disk Image fromFolder." Then select the folder you created in the dialog and clickOpen.

• Type a name for the image, choose a disk format, and click Save. Mac OS Extended allows burning the disc more than once. Formats such as ISO allow burning the disc only once.
  

• When the disk image is complete, select it in the Disk Utility list and choose images > Burn or click Burn in the toolbar.

• Insert a blank CD in the optical drive.

• Select the "Leave disc appendable" checkbox. If you don't see this option, click the triangle in the top-right corner.

• Click Burn.

What is really nice about this CD/DVD burn feature of DIsk Utility, is that now you can come back later and add more files to the same CD without having to waste all the space on a new CD-R.

This especially useful, if the image file you are need to burn is small in capacity. Just pop the previously burned CD in your drive and add that file or files until that CD is filled to capacity- that is all it takes.

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So there you have it, a quick tip on how to use Finder and Disk Utility to burn any data to your CD and DVDs.

Thanks for viewing my Mac OS X tip from FixYa Support. Stay tuned for more tips for how to make the most of your Mac OS X systems!

Regards,

-Mactechtrainer

Formatting your new external hard drive is not as difficult as you may think. In fact, you don't even have to be a computer techie or uber-Mac geek to perform this procedure successfully.

The tool you would use, to format your drive within your Mac OS X system, is the built-in utility application called Disk Utility.

Disk Utility is Apple Inc.'s defacto utility application, for performing disk related tasks within the Mac OS X volume.



From creating new images, to burning CDs and DVDs to formatting hard drives, Disk Utility performs well enough to keep not only your Mac OS X volume on your hard drive error free, but keep your hard drive healthy and error-free as well.

I could go on in detail, admirably describing more features of this versatile Mac OS X tool, but the purpose of this FixYa tip, is to show you how to easily format your external hard drive. So that is where I will take you now.
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There are generally two formats in Disk Utility that you can use to effectively format your hard drive.

Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - if you want a Mac readable hard drive only

MS-DOS (FAT 32) - If you want your external hard drive to be read by both Mac and PC.

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--STEPS FOR FORMATTING YOUR HARD DRIVE WITH DISK UTILITY--
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• First, make sure your external hard drive is connected securely to your Mac and is turned on.

•Next, from your desktop, click anywhere on a blank space on your desktop. Now you should see Finder listed near the Apple menu icon.

• From the Finder menu, click on Go, then Utilities from the
drop-down menu. This will take you to your Utilities* folder.

(*You can also get to the Disk Utility application via Applications > Utilities folder)

• Now, locate and launch the Disk Utility application.

When Disk Utility opens you will see a left side window, which will show
all connected hard drives and optical drives. It is here that you
should see your external hard drive listed in that window.





• When you locate it, simply select it and then select Partition
from the tabs on the right hand side.



• Change the Volume Scheme from Current to 1 Partition

• Make sure to provide a name for your new external hard drive.

• Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the Format
drop down menu, for a bootable Mac only external hard drive.

• Or select MS-DOS from the Format drop down menu, for a bootable Mac & PC external hard drive.

From there, click the Options button, located toward the bottom of
your window.


This will open a partition scheme selection window as seen in this screen shot:




• Select GUID Partition Table for bootability on a Intel processor based
Mac.

• Or select the Apple Partition Map for bootability on a PowerPC based Mac.

• Click the OK button.

Finally, click the Partition button and allow Disk Utility to format your new external hard drive.

When this process is complete, you now have a newly formatted, ready to use hard drive.

Believe it or not, this process can be completed faster than you think.
Using this method with Disk Utility, I was able to format my new 1TB Iomega USB external in less than 20 minutes.
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Final Note:
I used the external hard drive as the focus for showing you how to format and prepare your hard drive for use on your Mac, but this feature can also work with internal hard drives as well.
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For more information about some of the disk repairing features of Disk Utility, here is a great support link for this nifty and quite effective Apple utility for the Mac OS X platforms:

Using Disk Utility to repair a disk

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Thanks for reviewing my Mac OS X Tip!

Regards,

-Mactechtrainer

Mac OS Repair

To run Disk Utility on apple macbook OS X 10.4.x, you must start the computer using an Apple Software Restore disc.

Insert the disc into the computer, restart.

After you hear the startup sound, press and hold the "C" key. Hold the key until you see the gray Apple logo.





Your computer will take longer to startup, be patient, this is completely normal. After the CD or DVD is loaded it will automatically start the OS installer, do not reinstall your OS system!

If you are requested to choose a language, just click the right arrow button (Next).





To open the Disk Utility Click on Utilities > Disk Utility.





Now the Disk Utility window should be open. Choose from the left side of the window the hard drive you wish to repair (in this case Macintosh HD).

Make sure that the First Aid tab is selected.

Click Repair Disk button (bottom right).




The tool will check your hard drive, if it encounters any problems it will list them in the middle of the window, otherwise you'll receive this message - "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK".

Once the scan is over if it found problems, click again on Repair Disk, this will try to repair the problems, if not successful you need a more advanced utility tool.