Disk Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

TUAW's Daily Mac App: GrandPerspective

by Samuel Gibbs (Jul 26th, 2011)

Finding large space hogging files in a complex file system like that on your Mac can be difficult. GrandPerspective, a small open source program, aims to help you find and remove space wasters quickly and easily. GrandPerspective first scans a target folder, be it your entire disk or just ...

TUAW's Daily Mac App: Onyx

by Samuel Gibbs (Jul 11th, 2011)

Cleaning up a Mac is something many users never do, but if you want to squeeze all the performance and disk space you can out of your Mac, you need a tool like Onyx. A free multi-purpose utility, Onyx lets you run a myriad of system tasks such as disk maintenance, cache clean-up and index ...

Time Capsule disk corruption issues? Base station firmware may fix it

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Mar 20th, 2009)

If you've been having issues with corrupted Time Machine images either inside the Time Capsule or connected externally to your base station, the 7.4.1 firmware update (for all base stations from 2007 to today) plus the 10.5.6 update might help, according to TidBITS. Apple says this update will fix ...

Terminal Tip: Stop disk image verification

by Cory Bohon (Aug 18th, 2008)

Sure, we've all wanted to stop the pesky "Disk Image Verification" process that starts when you want to open that .iso, .dmg, or other disk image. While this process is a precaution against possibly installing/using corrupt files, sometimes it is completely unnecessary. To stop disk image ...

TUAW Tip: What to do when a disk goes bad

by Robert Palmer (Jun 25th, 2008)

We've all been there. The external disk you bought three or four years ago, which has been working great so far, starts to click. And it's not a good click ... it's the kind of click that gives you the spinning beach ball of death. Poopie. Sounds like it's time to get the data off that disk, and ...

Ars Technica reviews the new AirPort Extreme Base Station

by David Chartier (Feb 23rd, 2007)

Clint Ecker at Ars Technica has produced a four-page review of Apple's new AirPort Extreme Base Station, digging into every nook and cranny of what's new in both the software and hardware. Ultimately, Clint really likes the revamped base station, giving Apple strong marks for a broad, powerful ...

Microsoft announces "Live Drive" 2GB iDisk-like storage

by David Chartier (Aug 30th, 2006)

Continuing their new Live platform push, Microsoft has announced an iDisk-like service dubbed Live Drive. This bagillionth addition to the Live product family will boast 2GB of online storage, accessibly via any computer with a web browser (read: IE or possibly Firefox - if enough people bug them ...

Safari AppleScript to enable Private Browsing, mount temporary download disk image

by David Chartier (Aug 8th, 2006)

Now that we know how to enable the AppleScript menubar item, it's time to give Safari some AppleScript-enabled privacy features. For all those times when you need to enable Private Browsing and 'private downloading' in Safari, a macosxhints reader has posted an AppleScript with setup instructions ...

View a graphical chart of file and folder sizes with Disk Inventory X

by David Chartier (Jul 19th, 2006)

Disk Inventory X takes a unique approach to helping you analyze your disk space usage by visualizing it as a graphical chart. You can see a breakdown of which types of files are hogging the most space, and clicking on a graphical portion will display the file's location in your Mac's system. Let's ...

AppleScripts to set startup disk between Windows and Mac OS X

by David Chartier (Jun 19th, 2006)

If you're living in a Boot Camp world and have a need for changing your startup disk from time to time, enterprising TUAW reader David B. has written a couple of AppleScript apps with your name on them. Boot (Camp) Sargent beta 0.1 is actually two scripts: the first to set your startup disk to ...

Mount a Box.net account on a Mac

by David Chartier (Jun 6th, 2006)

Box.net is an iDisk-like service that allows you to mount an 'internet hard drive' on your desktop (they offer both free and paid accounts). Great for easily and securely backing up, syncing and sharing files between computers. Previously, they apparently only offered a client for PCs, but ...

Apple's 'Quick Assist' support document edited, drops permissions repair and 'restart just because' tips

by David Chartier (May 31st, 2006)

Remember that 'Mac Maintenance Quick Assist' Apple Support document we found that seemed to be aimed at those new to Macs and computers in general? You know, the one that recommended fundamentals like dusting your computer and using file names that actually mean something? Well, John Gruber today ...

TUAW Tip: Mac OS X can verify itself now

by David Chartier (May 31st, 2006)

Disk Utility is a great maintenance and troubleshooting tool for those times when your Mac starts acting up. Repairing permissions can sometimes be handy (even though its true validity is in question as of late), but using the Verify and Repair Disk operations is often a more useful tactic. However, ...

JungleDisk offers a far cheaper, cross-platform, encrypted iDisk

by David Chartier (May 19th, 2006)

JungleDisk is quite possibly the first serious, easy to set up alternative I've seen to Apple's .Mac iDisk. Using the power of WebDAV, JungleDisk allows you to mount an online, syncing hard drive (with various size options available) on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, and save and access data to and ...

Interactive display of iPod commands

by David Chartier (Apr 2nd, 2006)

Command-Tab has put together a really handy interactive display of button sequences for the 5 major generations of iPod models. The available sequences are Hard Reset, Diagnostic Mode and Disk Mode, so if you've ever wondered how to partake in some of those iPod troubleshooting tutorials or you're ...