How to Boot Mac into Disk Utility?

Disk Utility is an inbuilt app of macOS that not only helps you manage different aspects of Mac but also assists in fixing most of the errors that commonly occur on the internal and external drives.

Uses of Disk Utility on Mac

Let’s see the uses of Disk Utility on Mac:

  • Inspect and repair errors on your Mac's entire disk or individual volumes.
  • Manage and format volumes on Mac.
  • You can move multiple files from one Mac to another by creating a single disk image using Disk Utility.
  • Disk Utility can combine multiple hard drives into a RAID set that acts as a single drive and helps you improve your Mac's performance and data storage capacity.

Methods to Boot Mac into Disk Utility

You can have two situations on your Mac system. Accordingly, you can choose the suitable method to access the Disk Utility.

Situation 1: Access Disk Utility on Mac with Normal Startup

When your Mac system is booting up in the usual manner, accessing Disk Utility is just similar to accessing any other app on your Mac.

You can launch Spotlight from the Dock and search Disk Utility. Or, you can click on Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Situation 2: Access Disk Utility when Mac won’t Boot Up

If your Mac freezes or gets stuck on the startup screen, apple logo, or spinning wheel, Disk Utility can help you fix the issue.

First, shut down your Mac and then boot it in Recovery Mode by following the steps below (see image), according to your system's processor chip.

Boot-to-recovery-mode_Image-1

When your Mac boots up in Recovery Mode, you will see the macOS Utilities or OS X Utilities window on your screen, depending on the OS of your Mac. Then, select Disk Utility and click Continue.

Depending on the issue with your startup disk, you need to repair it or reformat it.

Repair Mac Startup Disk using Disk Utility

If you find some errors on your Mac startup disk, follow the steps below to repair the disk:

Step 1: Select the startup disk (Macintosh HD or Apple SSD) from the left panel of the Disk Utility window.

Step 2: Click the First Aid tab on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 3: Click Run to confirm the repair.

Boot-Mac-into-Disk-Utility-first-aid_Image-2

Step 4: Once the First Aid repair of the startup disk is complete, check if your Mac boots normally.

Reformatting Mac Startup Disk using Disk Utility

First Aid will not work if the startup disk is corrupted or has errors beyond repair. However, you can still use Disk Utility to resolve the problem by reformatting the internal hard drive or SSD.

Although, before proceeding to reformat your hard drive or SSD, you must understand that reformatting will erase all the data on your drive.

If you do not have any backup of your data, it is better to recover it using Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac.

This recovery software comes with a bootable recovery feature that allows you to recover data even from a non-booting Mac system.

stellar-data-recovery-professional-for-mac_Image-3

You can use the Disk Utility to reformat your Mac’s internal drive by following the steps below:

Step 1: Boot your Mac into Recovery Mode.

Step 2: Open Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities or Mac OS X Utilities window.

macos-monterey-recovery-mode-disk-utility_Image-4

Step 3: Select your Mac's corrupted/failed internal drive (Macintosh HD or Apple SSD) from the left pane and click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 4: Choose a format and rename the drive as Macintosh HD in the pop-up window that appears.

macos-utilities-recovery-mode-disk-utility-erase-volume_Image-5

Step 5: Now click the Erase button to confirm the action.

Reboot your Mac in Recovery mode once the reformatting by Disk Utility is done. This time choose the Reinstall macOS option to boot from the startup disk again.

Conclusion

We all want to keep our Mac systems well-organized to achieve optimum productivity. However, we tend to search for a good third-party app to do this job for us.

Seldom do we realize that the best solution to manage our Mac is lying inside our Mac system in the form of Disk Utility.

By booting Mac into Disk Utility, you can perform a number of tasks to manage, secure, and repair your Mac's internal drive and external hard drive.



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FAQs
There are multiple options to boot your Mac into Recovery Mode. This article guides you on how to do it.
Although Disk Utility is an important in-built application of Mac used for hard disk management, it is not available under System Preferences. However, you can find the Disk Utility app by clicking Applications > Utilities. Alternatively, you can also search for it by typing Disk Utility in the Spotlight search bar.
About The Author
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Ashutosh Kumar

Tech Enthusiast and Senior Writer at Stellar®

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