The easiest way to check your disk is to use the Disk Utility program. Use this method if your Mac can, indeed, start up. (See Method 2 if you can't even get that far.)
Disk Utility can't fix the disk it'son(except for permissions repairs, described at the beginning of this appendix).That's why you have to restart the computer from the Leopard installation disc (or another startup disk), and run Disk Utility from there. The process goes like this:
Start up the Mac from the Leopard DVD.
The best way to do that is to insert the disc and then restart the Mac while holding down the C key.
You wind up, after some time, at the Mac OS X Installer screen. Don't be fooled installing Mac OS X isnotwhat you want to do here. Don't click Continue!
Choose Utilities→Disk Utility.
That's the unexpected step. After a moment, the Disk Utility screen appears.
Tip
You could also skip steps 1 and 2 by starting up from an external hard drive, like an iPod onto which you've installed Mac OS X. Just run its own copy of Disk Utility to check your Mac'shard drive.
Click the disk or disk partition you want to fix, click the First Aid tab, and then click Repair Disk.
The Mac whirls into action, checking a list of very technical disk-formatting parameters.
If you see the message, "The volume 'Macintosh HD' appears to be OK, "that's meant to begoodnews. Believe it or not, that cautious statement is as definitive an affirmation as Disk Utility is capable of making about the health of your disk.
Disk Utility may also tell you that the disk is damaged, but that it can't help you. In that case, you need a more heavy-duty disk-repair program like Drive 10 (
www.micromat.com) or DiskWarrior (
www.alsoft.com).
