When I spoke with OWC yesterday, the tech said he thought my HD was probably just fine, just cluttered. I ran the disk utility, and I have an appointment to take my computer in to Best Buy on Monday. I have Black Tie coverage, so they can run their diagnosis and tell me if anything needs work.OK, the external drive is fine. But, I would not yet go out and purchase a new one to replace the internal drive. Given that you have a backup, via Time Machine, you actually can 1) still download and run Onyx, and 2) you can proceed boot to the hidden Recovery Partition on your internal drive. This link describes that partition:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
As you can see, you can launch Disk Utility from there. The reason for either of these approaches is that you will be running Disk Utility to perform first aid on your internal drive, and you need to be doing that via an "isolated" environment.
I would recommend doing those two tasks first. But, SuperDuper! will still be a good investment, as will either purchasing TechTool Pro or Disk Warrior. It will be wise to proceed with those purchases, whether you can fix your current drive, or buy a new one.
O.K., I just don't remember exactly, I'm not sure, so I will have to look for that. This morning I ran "verify disk" and the "repair" button was enabled, but when I clicked, nothing changed. The "permissions" button was grayed, so now I need to figure out how to access the Recovery HD function.I would not necessarily trust the folks at Best Buy, as most of them are "Windows oriented". You should still download Onyx and run its useful tasks. Also, how did you use Disk Utility to check out your drive? Did you just boot it after you booted up your machine nor,ally, or did you boot to the Recovery HD partition and run it from there? Doing it the first way does not allow the drive to be repaired at all, but booting it via the Recovery HD partition is much preferred.
Oh. This is all new to me, but I will try it. Thanks.
Hello Designer. I would just like to confirm that the info you have been receiving from 'honestone' is pretty much dead on. Although I have no experience with Onyx, or SuperDuper, Apple's recovery disc, TechTool Pro and DiscWarrior have saved my bacon many times. I have also found that when my drives get sluggish - or slow - optimizing the drives via DiscWarrior and/or TechTool Pro makes a substantial difference to their performance - at least on non-SSD drivers. That being said, I recently replaced my 350GB HD on my 2008 iMac (24") running OSX 10.10.5 with a new OWC 959GB SSD, and have had a substantial improvement in performance. I still use TTP & DW for my non-SSD drives however and find that periodically running these applications certainly make a big difference, as does running Disc Utility from Apple's Recovery Disc. Good luck.
Thanks, everybody!
I was unsure how exactly to run any diagnostic software, and my computer was still covered under Best Buy's Black Tie tech coverage, so I took it in and they ran the diagnostics and pronounced my HD was in perfect health (after a good flush). So it works fast, and no malware.
Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?
You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.