Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Do you still Do DU for Computer Freeze ups?

Question: Today, The computer froze up while in Firefox. I had to force quit the whole computer.

Would you recommend doing disc utility afterwards from another hardrive or in 2016 is the OS robust enough to not worry about that? Thanks

I certainly wouldn't hurt to run DU. Do you have a more robust utility such as Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro or Drive Genius?

I assume that, after you forced a shutdown (that is what you meant, right?), you were able to restart normally.

Thanks Jon, I rebooted ok, and don't want to do any checks I don't have to as they are a PITA to do. That's why I'm posting.

In that case, forget about it unless you get recurring or persistent problems, kevs.

(In your situation, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to reboot to run DU.)

If you have OS X/MacOS 10.10, 10.11, or 10.12 you do not have to boot from another drive to run Disk Utility. Just reboot from the Recovery Drive by holding Command R while booting or rebooting your Mac. It is perfectly safe to run Disk Utility against the normal boot volume from there.

Joe, thanks for reminding me how much easier it is these days than for years past.

That said, should I even bother in 2016? It's like maintenance. You remember how much maintenance we all did once. Maybe it's not even necessary now.

I've had several of these force quits in the last year, and have not done the disk check, and I've been ok.

Ok, thans ARtie too.

With all my installing and experimentation with beta versions of El Capitan and Sierra I have had more than my share of application crashes, force quits, and once or twice I ended up having to power down. To make my long story short — during all that, I have run volume checks a few times while testing some beta apps, and there has never been a problem.

Changes in the way disk I/O are managed by OS X have continued to evolve and the possibility of volume or file damage from an unexpected shut down has gotten smaller and smaller but a finite possibility still exists. Personally I probably would not bother unless there were other indications of a problem. However, booting from the Recovery Drive and running Disk Utility is easy to do and does not take much time. Even though Disk Utility is not the best at repairing problems it is not bad at all at finding them.

Excellent Joe, thanks....

Yes, this is about having the beachball, and you have to force quit the whole computer. Which happens about every 4 months or so.

"booting from the Recovery Drive and running Disk Utility is easy to do and does not take much time."

I agree, but it is a minor PITA, and if I don't have to do it I wont.

That was my guess, that years ago you would run a check..but the OS, gets more robust as time passes.