Basic Mac Maintenance 101 / Self-Help Procedures

Some of my clients ask me if theres basic Mac Maintenance they can do themselves. The answer is “Yes” – and its EASY!

Regularly perform “Repair Permissions” (via Disk Utility). Doing this It will help keep your computer healthier 

It takes only 3 Easy Steps:

1. Locate Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities). It may be easier to find with Spotlight.  Then Double-click Disk Utility to run the program.
2. On the left side of the window, select your hard drive – it is usually called “Macintosh HD”.
3. Click the button Repair Disk Permissions. Disk Utility will reset any files and folders with incorrect settings. Wait till it finishes (it generally takes 2-5 minutes) When DONE, you can Quit the program.

Thats it!  “Repair Permissions” should be done especially before or after you have done any Software Updates or software installations. To sum up:

• Basic Maintenance Task #1 – Perform Repair Permissions every few weeks.

(REVISED – THIS IS ONLY IF YOUR COMPUTER CAME WITH DISKS – THEY NO LONGER DO*) — Another thing seems to be many of my clients don’t realize that those disks that came with their Mac in the white package .Hang onto these disks and keep them accessible in case ever needed in an emergency. One of the disks is called “MAC OS X Install”;  Its a Boot Disk meaning it has a System on it and you can boot up from this when you have a serious problem (especially useful in an emergency when your computer won’t boot). If you read it, its says “To start up from Mac OS X hold down the C key while the computer is starting up”; which is exactly what you do. If used; relax and wait as it takes much longer to boot this way. This disk also the same Disk Utility application as well as some other utilities. This can be done both for Repair AND Maintenance. Running Disk Utility’s “Repair Disk”on your System drive can be something to try if you ever have a startup problem. Its also a good as a maintenance procedure that will check your drive for minor problems and repair them, hopefully before they can become major problems. It is not bad practice to run Repair Disk on your system drive once a month or every two. It checks your Directory structure and other things that should keep your drive healthy. So…

• Basic Maintenance Task 2 – Periodically boot from MAC OS X DISK (DVD). Run REPAIR DISK (Disk Utility) on your main hard drive. *

So get into the habit of doing these simple Maintenance 101 procedures – doing so will keep your Mac healthier and running more smoothly. Put them in your Calendar every first of the month) Oh yeah, I hate to sound like a broken record but did I mention how important doing regular (proper) BACKUP is? What? You don’t do that…. or don’t even own an external backup drive?! Man, you are asking for trouble. ‘Nuff said!?

* (update 2013: Starting with  Lion, Apple no longer gives you a physical disks with Macs (like a Boot disk) However Lion and Mountain Lion include a ‘secret’ recovery disk partition which you can access by holding down certain keys (Control-R) during Startup. Details see:   http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 )

Tags: Backup, can’t boot, disk, disk utility, errors, external Hard drive, hard drive problems, Mac, Mac OS X, OS X, permissions, Problems, repair, software, Software Updates, system, Troubleshooting, up, utility, won’t boot