Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
10.5
If the hard drive's S.M.A.R.T. Status value shows Failing, back up your data and then replace the hard drive.
Verifying the Hard Drive
The S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics (discussed in the previous section) look for catastrophic errors — those that might
cause the entire hard drive to go belly up. However, hard drives can also fall prey to smaller maladies that, al-
though they won't cause it to push up daisies, could cause it to behave erratically or even damage files.
For example, MacBook Air maintains what it calls a Catalog file that stores the overall structure of the hard
drive, including all the folders and files. If that file gets corrupted, it might mean that you, or an application, can
no longer access a folder or file.
You should check MacBook Air's hard drive for these types of errors every month or so. Here's how:
1. Click Finder in the Dock.
2. Choose Applications
→
Utilities
→
Disk Utility.
The Disk Utility window appears.
3. Click Macintosh HD in the list of drives.
4. Click Verify Disk.
Disk Utility warns you that your Mac may slow down or appear to hang during the
verification.
5. Click Verify Disk.
Disk Utility begins the verification check, which takes several minutes.
