145. Verify and Repair a DiskBEFORE YOU BEGIN 21 Add a Newly Installed Hard Disk to the System 143 Back Up Your Information SEE ALSO 146 Restore or Duplicate a Disk Hard disks have a bad habit of deteriorating over timeperhaps more so than any other component in a computer. This is especially problematic in that your hard disk isn't just a component that you can replace; it's the permanent memory for your computer, the place where all your accumulated data and important documents are stored. If you haven't done a backup (and why haven't you?), and your hard disk goes bad, you will likely be willing to do just about anything to get that data back. The Disk Utility application, located in the Utilities folder inside Applications , provides a handy way to perform quick repair operations on your hard diskoperations that have a surprisingly high success rate in many cases. Disk Utility can examine the Unix permissions on your hard disk and detect discrepancies that might cause instabilities in your system; it can also correct those errors for you. What's more, Disk Utility can scan your disk for surface defects (the most common cause of data loss from deterioration over time), and even "repair" these errors by recovering the data in the defective regions and copying it to a healthy part of the disk. NOTE You must be logged in as an Admin user to verify or repair a hard disk. 145. Verify and Repair a Disk
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