Alternative to Disk Utility?

El Cap's Disk Utility is severely crippled. So many things are either missing and/or not user friendly. I am talking about the GUI Disk Utility. I know you can still do things from the Command Line (terminal).


I'm not talking about being able to Verify & Fix permissions. That was convenient, but it's not the only thing missing. A lot of basics are messed up. You can't resize the window or the column. It makes you think maybe you can, because you can put the cursor there and try, but it does nothing! You're stuck with a column where you can't see the full name of drives and if you have a long list, you have to continue to scroll down. This is so frustrating. You need to be able to resize these things.


When I initially upgraded, I made the mistake of trying to partition my hard drive (which I had done lots of times in Mavericks all the way back to Snow on another machine). Well, after that debacle, which yes - was "green" user error, I had to get a Fusion Drive education! Without the debug menu, you can't see all the partitions on your drive either! The partition area was easier to understand than the circle which bounces around and is difficult to even type a number in the box. It also makes those of us with CD/DVD drives work harder to do basic things. Thank goodness for some good 3rd party apps that make it easier/ simpler.


I've searched around and it seems some people re-install Yosemite's Disk Utility. I'm not one to experiment quite that far.


So okay another Apple included program basically useless that they probably will let die instead of fixing.


So my question: Is there an alternative GUI type Disk Utility program out there that one can use?? Most importantly, one that functions similar to the old Disk Utility. Just a simple little utility app? Any recommendations?


Please, I understand that I can get a lot of the functions using Terminal. But, I don't want to do that for things that I used to be able to do in GUI. Thank goodness I can learn to do that, but some people shouldn't have to use Terminal. This isn't a post about how to do a certain function. I just want to know if anyone has found an alternate GUI disk utility.


Thanks!

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), 2 GHz Intel Core i7

Posted on Feb 5, 2016 7:33 AM

Reply
72 replies

Apr 11, 2016 11:04 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Luis, I prefer a simple third party app for disk burning; I still use DVDs and even CDs sometimes. I know they're trying to phase them out, but I still find them very useful.


As far as the partitioning, the El Cap GUI and the pie chart are very unfriendly. I prefer the "Mavericks" rectangle GUI for partitioning. It was so EASY and so easy to change your mind or undo. The new one is clumsy! And, you can't change the sidebar size, so most of my drive names get cut off. If I have two that start the same, I can't make the sidebar bigger (like in Finder, you can move it to wherever you want).


I still have not found a good third party Disk Utility. I got Drive Genius on sale and it's not too bad, but still no cigar! It's partitioning GUI is very similar to El Cap's. It has some other features that are interesting, and I'm still testing it out.


I think it can just be a matter of what you use and personal preference, but the old GUI was superior in my opinion!!


Still keeping my eye out for good disk utility app.

Apr 20, 2016 4:32 PM in response to dialabrain

"Like i said, new buyers don't care about the inner workings. They want them to just work"


Then why not get rid of Disk Utility at all? After all, we "don't care about the inner workings", right?


But ALL my drivers are RAID drives, and I know other Profesional also use RAIDS in their macs that are made with the "old" Disk Utility. Now, I can't make one, I can't even check or repairs the drives because the new Disk Utility wont check the RAID drives anymore.

Sep 7, 2016 7:19 AM in response to linda2009

Hello linda2009, if you'are looking for a replacement of disk utility and noticed "a simple utility" i would say keep the el capitan one as it's simpliest than the older version.


Now if you're looking for a replacement because the builtin elcapitan missed features...
... i would say without any doubt PARAGON Hard Disk manager PRO (MAC) is serious replacement. You can resize partition, wipe disk, and back up & restore + few other advanced user tools. But one thing to notice is to restore backup and because of the El Capitan SIP (kind of protection) you probably need a USK stick to boot on it to restore or performing some protected actions. But it's ok make your USB bootup key with Paragon Hard Disk manager PRO, restart, old option select USK stick, perform the tasks and DONE !


Hope it's help few people there who are looking for more control on harddrive and partitioning 🙂


cheers

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Alternative to Disk Utility?

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