A failing storage drive is always a cause of concern and rightfully so. If we do not hurry up and take appropriate steps, we may end up in a very bad situation. In the worst case scenario, we might lose some of the very important documents that we have saved on the hard drives in question. And if nothing else, a failing hard drive or solid state drive can lead to an unbootable computer.
Fortunately every Mac comes with a set of tools for diagnosing the problems that a storage device could be having. These tools are called First Aid tools and can be used to find and fix problems for all kinds of internal and external storage devices.
Here is how you can run First Aid on any storage device on Mac:
- First of all attach any storage devices to your Mac that you want to scan for problems.
- Select Go → Utilities from the Finder bar. Alternatively, you can also use Shift–Command–U hotkey.
- Double-click on Disk Utility in the Utilities window.
- Choose one of the storage devices from the list that you want to be diagnosed. After selecting the right storage drive click on the First Aid icon in the Disk Utility window.
- It will ask for confirmation for running First Aid on the selected storage drive. You can click on the Run button to proceed.
- If it finds any errors in the storage drive, then it will attempt to fix them. During this process, you may have to reboot the system. After the scanning and fixing is complete, an informative message is displayed.
This is how, we can fix and repair any problems with the storage devices on Mac. It can be used to diagnose and repair problems with hard disk drives, solid state drives, USB mass storage devices, pen drives and more.