Disk Utility Alternatives

Disk Utility

Disk Utility is the name of a utility created by Apple for performing disk-related tasks in Mac OS X. These tasks include:

the creation, conversion, compression and encryption of disk images from a wide range of formats read by Disk Utility to .dmg or, for CD/DVD images, .cdr;
mounting, unmounting, and ejecting disks (including both hard disks, removable media and disk images);
enabling or disabling journaling;
verifying a disk's integrity, and repairing it if the disk is damaged (this will work for both Mac compatible format partitions, and FAT32 partitions with Microsoft Windows installed);
verifying and repairing permissions;
disk erasing, formatting, partitioning and cloning;
secure deletion of free space or disk using a "zero out" data, a 7-pass DOD 5220-22 M standard, or a 35-pass Gutmann algorithm
adding or changing partition table between Apple Partition Table, GUID Partition Table, and master boot record (MBR);
creating, destroying, merging, and repairing RAID sets;
restoring volumes from Apple Software Restore (ASR) images;
burning disk images to CD or DVD in HFS+ format;
erasing CD-RWs and DVD-RWs;
checking the S.M.A.R.T status of a hard disk.

Disk Utility functions may also be accessed from the Mac OS X command line with the diskutil and hdiutil commands.