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How can I disable journaling in El Capitan?

In OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), "Disable Journaling" does not appear under "File" in Disk Utility, even when pressing Option. Running "sudo diskutil disableJournal" in Terminal doesn't work either. When, or how, can this capability be restored for El Capitan users?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Oct 31, 2015 3:39 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 1, 2015 10:56 AM

I just tried it on 10.11.1. I didn't have any problems disabling and enabling journaling on a flash drive and on a mounted and active Macintosh HD of a test system. I was logged in with an admin account and didn't have to use sudo. A simple "diskutil disableJournal /dev/disk0s2" worked as expected.


Have you specified a volume? It won't work with a disk.

Are you receiving an error message when trying to perform the task?

Have you checked that the volume is actually using journaling?

Have you tried the force option of diskutil disableJournal?

29 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 1, 2015 10:56 AM in response to [GoldenDrake]

I just tried it on 10.11.1. I didn't have any problems disabling and enabling journaling on a flash drive and on a mounted and active Macintosh HD of a test system. I was logged in with an admin account and didn't have to use sudo. A simple "diskutil disableJournal /dev/disk0s2" worked as expected.


Have you specified a volume? It won't work with a disk.

Are you receiving an error message when trying to perform the task?

Have you checked that the volume is actually using journaling?

Have you tried the force option of diskutil disableJournal?

Nov 18, 2015 3:05 PM in response to Andrew9813

Andrew9813 wrote:

I Only do temporarily to scan my computer for viruses with product called fixmestick. Enable when done scanning.

From http://support.fixmestick.com/hc/en-us/articles/203456925-How-to-disable-and-re- enable-filesystem-journaling-on-Mac you do not need to disable journaling to scan them, just to "clean" them. Also note the following from that support article:

On the newest Mac OS X El Capitan, the option to disable journaling is unavailable. You will still be to run a scan on El Capitan, but you won't be able to clean your Mac. We are sorry about this and our engineers are currently working on a solution.

So more to the point, why even consider using a product like that when the maker tells you it can't "clean" a Mac running El Capitan?


To begin with, El Capitan has robust anti-malware capabilities built into it, including the new System Integrity Protection feature (SIP, for short), which make it very unlikely any malware could find its way onto your Mac or do any damage to it (unless you do something foolish like installing software from untrusted sources). Beyond that, there is some danger that booting your Mac from what is in effect a third party operating system that may not be designed for SIP compatibility could compromise that if it could "clean" the Mac.

Dec 27, 2015 6:30 AM in response to Barney-15E

Does it ever really find anything that needs to be cleaned?

Fixmestick found three files in /library/Mail/.../Messages/:


  1. Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Updatre.eii
  2. Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Updatre.eii
  3. HEUR:Trojan.Win32.Generic


If fixmestick is still unable to clean user library, i will fix it manually. Hopefully it works. Are you sure that these files don't have an impact on my mac?

Nov 1, 2015 10:35 AM in response to BobHarris

Linux can READ from a journaled HFS+ file system, but can only WRITE to non-journaled HFS+ (I don't know if Linux has the same limitation with respect to other journaled file systems). So, because I was once again experimenting with a triple boot setup on my Macbook, I was interested in allowing my Linux partition to have read/write access on my Macintosh HD. I have since abandoned that project: triple boots are risky and delicate, difficult to set up and difficult to maintain through OS updates, etc., so I've decided to stop playing around with that idea...for now. 😉

Nov 1, 2015 10:50 AM in response to bigschwabbel

Thanks for the feedback, bigschwabbel! Now that I'm trying again, the Terminal command is working for me (without requiring sudo). I wish I had copied and pasted the error message I was getting before, but anyway, it is working now, although the option to "Disable Journaling" still doesn't appear for me while pressing Option in the Disk Utility GUI.

As mentioned in my response to BobHarris's comment, I was in the midst of the messy, risky business of setting up a triple boot (OS X, Windows, and Linux on separate partitions), so that could be why I was seeing unusual behavior. I've decided not to continue with that plan, so my hard disk is now (more or less) back to its original state and thus may be more willing to put up with my request to disable journaling (which I then promptly re-enabled, of course, since I'm no longer interested in disabling it). Anyway, thanks for letting me know the problem wasn't due to the El Capitan update!

Nov 17, 2015 8:01 PM in response to [GoldenDrake]

Im having a similar issue with not able to disable journaling with clicking file & option key. I have tried through terminal diskutil disablejournal also with sudo as well. This is the message i get when using terminal.

Usage: diskutil disableJournal [force] MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode

Disable journaling on an HFS Extended volume. The volume will be

temporarily mounted if necessary, so normally this works whether or not the

volume is mounted. The force option, however, causes a direct write to the

on-disk volume data, and requires that the volume not be mounted.


I want to disable it temporary to scan computer with fixmestick.

I Appreciate The Support.

Nov 18, 2015 4:18 AM in response to Andrew9813

Andrew9813 wrote:


…This is the message i get when using terminal. …

A message like that indicates that you have mistyped the arguments to the command. You got the command itself correct, but you didn't supply the information it expected in the arguments.

You didn't indicate what your command was, but I'm not sure I could readily figure out what was wrong with your arguments.

Nov 18, 2015 12:27 PM in response to BobHarris

I tried what you suggested diskutil disableJournal /dev/disk0s2 + [Enter] and the is the message that i get.

Usage: diskutil disableJournal [force] MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode

Disable journaling on an HFS Extended volume. The volume will be

temporarily mounted if necessary, so normally this works whether or not the

volume is mounted. The force option, however, causes a direct write to the

on-disk volume data, and requires that the volume not be mounted.

Ownership of the affected disk is required.


Also do you know a way to reenable so i can just enable and disable journal with the disk utility app instead of terminal.

Nov 18, 2015 1:05 PM in response to Andrew9813

Ok, you're not supposed to type the words, "+ [Enter]"

He just meant to hit the return (or enter) key on the keyboard.

And, you don't even need the /dev/ part. Just this:

diskutil disableJournal disk0s2

In the future, don't bother trying to type in what you entered and what the response was. Just copy the whole thing from the line where you enter the command until the end of the response. Then, just paste that text into a reply here. We then don't have to guess at what you really typed as we'll be able to see it.

As you can see, this is why playing in the Terminal can be hazardous. If any of those partial commands you tried would have done something disastrous, you would have been SOL.

Nov 18, 2015 1:30 PM in response to Andrew9813

Once again, stop typing in what you did and what came back and instead copy and paste it from the terminal. You don't have to take a screen shot. Just select the text, copy, and paste into a reply.

If you really used disk0s2, that is an odd reply as that is what you would have gotten from using just disk0.

Volume disk0s2 is the startup volume which cannot be disabled, at least while booted that drive. I don't know if it is possible at all.

Given that the volume is CoreStorage, it also may not be possible to disable. I'm trying to determine that, now.

do you no how to reenable disable journaling with the disk utility app.

There isn't a way in the current Disk Utility.

How can I disable journaling in El Capitan?

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