Disk utility does not load disks...

Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:

1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the

COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears.

3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the

indented Macintosh HDentry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid button in the toolbar. Wait until the operation

completes, then quit Disk Utility and returnto the main menu.

4. Reinstall OS X: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Sometimes if an attached hard drive is faulty and either doesn't mount properly is isn't properly dismounted a "ghost" of the hard drive can remain in the system and Disk Utility is trying to load it. Simply restarting the Mac clears this issue. So try that first before zapping PRAM and NVRAM etc.

I had this problem under macos 10.12.1(Sierra), after some research, this might be caused by a long-running fsck process that preventing the disk utils from loading the content, you might want to do this:

in terminal

ps -ef | grep fsck

$ ps -ef|grep fs

0 55 1 0 3:39PM ?? 0:03.45 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/FSEvent s.framework/Versions/A/Support/fseventsd

0 110 1 0 3:39PM ?? 0:00.02 autofsd

0 126 1 0 3:39PM ?? 0:01.44 /usr/sbin/cfprefsd daemon

501 326 1 0 3:39PM ?? 0:01.47 /usr/sbin/cfprefsd agent

0 14893 86 0 4:45PM ?? 1:41.64 /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/./fsck_hfs -y /dev/disk2s2

501 18726 3828 0 5:02PM ttys000 0:00.00 grep fs

Then you can sudo kill that process, 14893 in my case. Once the fsck process is killed, the disk utils should load correctly.

This might signal that your volume might be corrupted, so it's better run fsck manually, or re-format the volume.

This process worked for me, my disk showed up just fine after killing FSCK process

Thanks yqan! This worked perfectly for me! I'll add here my slightly different scenario (but your solution still helped):

>>>$ ps -ef|grep fs

0 54 1 0 3Nov16 ?? 10:12.30 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/FSEvents.framework/fseventsd

0 94 1 0 3Nov16 ?? 0:00.11 autofsd

0 114 1 0 3Nov16 ?? 4:25.10 /usr/sbin/cfprefsd daemon

502 461 1 0 3Nov16 ?? 2:57.38 /usr/sbin/cfprefsd agent

504 769 1 0 3Nov16 ?? 0:12.46 /usr/sbin/cfprefsd agent

0 60824 75 0 3:48AM ?? 0:00.01 /System/Library/Filesystems/cd9660.fs/Contents/Resources/./cd9660.util -k disk2s0

502 60855 60847 0 3:53AM ttys003 0:00.00 grep fs

>>>$ sudo kill 60824

Note to others: The "layman's" explanation for what happened was that I inserted a CD into the drive. It seemed to want to read it but then the disk never showed up in Finder. So, I launched Disk Utility and had the same "Loading Disks" problem you all had, which brought me here.

When I ran yqan's command, I saw one line (in red above - my emphasis) contained "disk2s0", which is my machine's name for the DVD drive (your machine may be different). So, I decided to try killing that process first with the sudo command ("super user do"). As soon as I did, the drive re-started itself and voila, everything started working as expected.

Kappy wrote:

Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:

1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the

COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears.

3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the

indented Macintosh HDentry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid button in the toolbar. Wait until the operation

completes, then quit Disk Utility and returnto the main menu.

4. Reinstall OS X: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

I've tried this and none of them seemed to help, I still get stuck with the loading whenever I click on "disk utilities" when in OS X Recovery mode. Any other suggestions? For the record I'm working with a 2008 desktop with the exact same El Capitan system as the OP.

Resetting the PRAM also did the trick for me. I was afraid my whole Time Machine drive was corrupted. Thanks!

All of the suggestions are work-arounds NOT solutions for some failure within the Disk Utility or some supporting operation within OS X. This should be considered a BUG and Apple should deal with it.

Obviously anytime you reboot a system to clear a problem implies a failure within the program or operating system.

I encountered this problem (or a very similar one) with an external USB hard drive that was corrupted by a yet-unacknowledged OS X bug in which ENCRYPTED external USB hard drives (particularly those accessed through a hub and/or used for repetitive access like automatic backup) become first unwriteable and later unreadable. (Fortunately, I had CrashPlan.) While I spent about 10 minutes researching THIS problem, Disk Utility finally recognized the external USB drive.

Booting into Safe Mode solved it for me. Anything more complicated than zapping PRAM or Safe Mode seems like a nuclear option to me.

This was helpful! Used it to solve my problem! Thanks so much!

Resetting NVRAM worked for me, too.