NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Mac community

How to check the health of your hard drive

Written by
Most disk drives include S.M.A.R.T. hardware developed by IBM that allows hard disks to test themselves for potential problems. You can check the health of your hard disk in Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities.

To check the status of a disk, go into your Applications folder, into the Utilities folder and double-click on the Disk Utility application. Click on your hard drive disk in the left-hand column (make sure you click on the disk name and not a partition). Look at the bottom of the window to see the S.M.A.R.T. status (as shown in the example below).

If your disk is "verified," it's a valid disk with nothing wrong at this time. If you see "About to Fail" in red letters, back up your disk immediately and have the disk replaced. It will fail.

Taken from this page at Apple that includes more information.

Last Updated Monday, 10 March 2008

How to I install software from a .dmg file?

Written by
A ".dmg" file is a disk image file. This is a series of files, an application or an application installer that is in a compressed format (to help with downloading off the net) that you can then 'mount' (load a temporary virtual disk) on your Mac to get the software from the disk image and onto your Mac permanently.

Let's take a look at installing the OmniWeb web browser. When you go to the Omni Group site, you'll download a ".dmg" file like the one you see here.

Variation 1 - An application that needs installing

Variation 2 - Clever dragging and dropping

• Some people mount a disk image and then try to use the application on the disk image from there, rather than dragging a copy of the application to their "Applications" folder. In most instances this is not a good idea.
  
  
• Some people forget they haven't made a copy of the application in their "Applications" folder, then find it hard to eject the disk image or wonder why the application has disappeared next time they start their computer. If you're having this problem, you probably didn't install correctly the first time.

Last Updated Tuesday, 30 November 1999

Deleting files that won't delete

Written by
Sometimes Mac OS X just doesn't want to delete files, this is away which you can delete files that normally wont delete through the trash can.

• Open up the Terminal
• type "rm -r" (Without the speechmarks. DO NOT PRESS RETURN)
• now find the file drag it into the Terminal and press return.

This instantly deletes the file. You can also use it for folders.
Last Updated Tuesday, 30 November 1999

How do I access other drives in FrontRow ?

Written by

You can use iTunes and have that pointed to another drive, but sometimes you don't want to, especially if you've ripped a DVD and don't want to convert it into an iTunes file.

There is a very very simple workaround and it uses one of Mac OS X's most powerful UNIX features... Aliases.

• Open a Finder window and browse to the Movies folder under your profile
• Click and hold the left mouse button down on the drive you wish to add
• With the mouse button still held down press Option and Command together and drag the drive into the Movies folder
• Release the mouse button

Alternatively, right-click the folder you want to use and click "make alias" in the pop-up menu that appears.

If you've done it right you should see a black arrow curving to the right on the icon as you can see below. This indicates that it is an alias.

Now when you go into FrontRow there should be a menu entry for it under Movies/Movies Folder for the drive as though it was a folder.

 

 

Last Updated Tuesday, 30 November 1999

How do I repair Disk Permissions?

Written by

Some suggest doing at Disk permissions repair on a regular basis, especially when installing new software.

• For Mac OS X 10.2 or later, open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/).
• Select your Mac OS X startup volume in the column on the left of the Disk Utility window
• Click the First Aid tab.
• Click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

Users are advised to read Apple pages on the use of Disk Permissions:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712

Some also advocate regular disk permission repairs (such as weekly) as a way to improve performance, although there isn't a consensus on this approach. The following is an excellent article worth reading and looking at the Pros and Cons of using disk permission repair...http://www.macworld.com/article/52220/2006/08/repairpermissions.html

Last Updated Friday, 25 April 2008