HOW TO CHECK A DRIVE’S HEALTH WITH DISK UTILITY
FILES AND BACKUP
Get your drives and documents sorted
Emptying the Trash
(Ctrl–click it for the
option) erases any files
in it forever, freeing disk
space. However, if a
process has marked a file
as in use, it won’t be
able to remove it. Get
information on the file
(Cmd-I) and ensure Locked
is unchecked. Hold Opt
while emptying, or press
Shift+Opt+Cmd+left key. If
this fails to work, you will
need to try a restart of
your machine.This Mac). Too many results
returned? Set the options
below to filter by kind, date, or
other criteria.I’VE DELETED A FILE
THAT I NEEDED — CAN
I GET IT BACK?
Usually, yes — that’s why we
have the Trash (aka Bin). Click
its icon at the right–hand end
of the Dock to open it as a
folder, Ctrl–click the file you
want and select Put Back. If it’s
not there, try Time Machine.And if you’re not using Time
Machine, you should start now!
See bit.ly/apple-buwtm for
more information.I’VE SAVED OVER A FILE.
HOW DO I REVERT TO THE
OLD VERSION?
If you’ve just saved and still
have the document open, try
repeating Undo to get the file
back to the state you want.
Save this, or Save As to keep
both versions.
If you have closed the file,
open it again and check the
File menu for a Revert To
command: if macOS’ version
control system is supported
by the app, you’ll be able to
choose from previous saves.
Other apps may have their
own system, or may store
temporary files that can
be used to restore data atI CREATED A FILE, BUT
WHERE DID I PUT IT?
When you lose track of
something, just press
Cmd+Space Bar to launch
Spotlight and type all or
part of the sensible file name
you gave it... or failing that,
any text that you think would
be in the document. Scroll
through the results and
double–click the one you want,
or press the Down Arrow key
down to it and hit return.WHAT IF I STILL CAN’T
SEEM TO FIND THAT
PESKY FILE?
In a Finder window, go to the
drive the file should be on, or
ideally the folder it should be
in. In the search box (Cmd+F),
enter part of the file name or
content. In the bar below,
select the drive or folder (notWHY CAN’T I EMPTY
THE TRASH? IT
KEEPS GIVING ME
AN ERROR20 MAR 2020 maclife.com
1
Launch Disk Utility
Like Activity Monitor, the Disk Utility
app can be found in Applications/
Utilities, but it’s easiest to open it via
Spotlight (Cmd+Space Bar). It opens
showing you all the drives inside or
attached to your Mac on the left.2
Volumes and devices
By default, Disk Utility shows
“volumes”, partitions within drives that
are visible to macOS. To see which drives
they’re on, choose Show All Devices from
the View menu (or press Cmd+2; Cmd+
shows volumes).3
Startup drive
You can select any drive or volume,
but if it’s the one where macOS lives,
Erase, Restore and Unmount are greyed
out. You can run First Aid to check the
drive, but repairs may need Recovery
mode (see page 22).Image rights from: Apple.
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