Disks & Storage

Read SMART health for a drive (defaults to the internal disk): temperature, wear level, power-on hours, healthy/failing.

Report total, used, and free disk space on the startup drive.

Analyse where disk space is going and report the biggest folders in the user's home with their sizes. Read-only.

Inspect an external/removable drive, USB stick, or SD card for counterfeit-capacity red flags (read-only). Returns its claimed capacity, brand/media name, bus, and any risk factors, plus a verdict. Counterfeit flash claims a huge size but actually holds far less — the controller lies.

Run the definitive counterfeit test on an external/removable drive, USB stick, or SD card: it writes temporary files into the drive's free space (existing files are never touched) then reads them back to prove the drive really holds its claimed capacity — a fake fails the read-back. Opens a progress panel and can take several minutes.

Report how the counterfeit write-and-verify test is going, and what it found once it finishes: stage, percent complete, GB written and remaining, files checked and how many read back intact, throughput and time left — plus how much of the drive's CLAIMED size the run actually covers, since the test can only fill free space.

List every disk on this Mac with its partitions/volumes (name, filesystem, size) and which is the boot disk.

Detailed info for one disk/volume: name, filesystem, size, internal/external, removable, bus, mount point, SMART status, and whether it's the boot disk.

Report a disk's partition scheme (gpt/mbr/apm) and filesystem, with plain-English guidance.

Run a read-only First Aid check on a volume and report whether its structure is healthy or needs repair.

Mount a volume so it appears in Finder.

Unmount a volume (won't unmount the boot volume).

Eject an external/removable disk so it's safe to unplug (refuses the internal/boot disk).

Check whether a drive is private to one account or can be opened by every account on this Mac. It reads the drive's "Ignore ownership on this volume" setting first (when that is on, every account sees itself as the owner, so the drive is open to everyone even though its permissions look private), then who owns the drive's top folder and who else is allowed in. It also says plainly that unlocking an encrypted drive opens it for the whole Mac, and that administrators can still get in.

Make one external drive private to your account: you become the owner of everything on it, its top folder is locked to you, and macOS ownership is switched on, so other accounts on this Mac can no longer open it. Needs your admin password. It re-checks the result before saying it worked, and tells you if macOS needs Cyclone to have Full Disk Access first. It will not touch your startup disk, internal disks, Time Machine backups, read-only drives, or exFAT/FAT/NTFS drives (those have no owners to set).

Run First Aid repair on a non-boot volume (needs admin). The boot disk must be repaired from macOS Recovery instead.

Repair the partition map/table of a whole external disk (diskutil repairDisk, needs admin) — for a drive that suddenly stopped mounting because its partition table was damaged (unplugged mid-copy, an interrupted clone, power loss during a write) while the hardware itself is healthy. Refuses internal/boot disks. If the map can't be rebuilt, the recovery path is: recover files first, then reformat in Disk Manager.

Format/erase an external or removable drive (USB stick, SD card, external SSD). The agent verifies the target is safe (never the internal/boot disk) then opens Cyclone's Disk Manager for you to choose the filesystem and confirm — formatting erases everything on the drive.

Repartition an external or removable drive. The agent verifies the target is safe (never the internal/boot disk) then opens Cyclone's Disk Manager to set up partitions/volumes. Can erase data — back up first.

Estimate a free-space wipe WITHOUT starting anything (read-only): reports the target volume's free/total space and, for each erase method (1-pass zero, 1-pass random, DoD 3-pass, DoD 7-pass, Gutmann 35-pass), how much data would be written (free space × passes). Wiping free space overwrites already-deleted data so old files are much harder to read back — best-effort, not a guarantee (on an SSD the controller may keep old data in spare blocks no wipe reaches; snapshots and backups are outside any wipe) — and it never touches existing files.

Wipe the FREE disk space on a drive so previously-deleted files are much harder to recover — best-effort, not a guarantee (on an SSD the controller may keep old data in spare blocks no wipe reaches; snapshots and backups are outside any wipe). It overwrites only free/unused space and NEVER touches your existing files. The agent opens Cyclone's Free Space panel with that drive selected, for you to pick the erase method and confirm; a live progress bar shows the passes.

DESTROY an entire EXTERNAL or removable drive (USB stick, SD card, external SSD) — erases every file and partition, IRREVERSIBLY (on flash media an overwrite can't be guaranteed to reach the controller's spare blocks). The agent verifies the target is safe (never the internal/boot disk) then opens Cyclone's Full Drive Wipe panel for you to choose the erase method and confirm.

Make a bit-for-bit clone of one drive onto another (e.g. copy a disk to a spare, or image a failing drive). The agent opens Cyclone's Drive Cloner panel for you to pick the SOURCE and DESTINATION drives and confirm — cloning OVERWRITES everything on the destination, and the copy is SHA-256 verified when it finishes.

Benchmark this Mac's startup-disk read and write speed by writing a temporary test file into free space and reading it back (the temp file is deleted afterwards — your files are never touched), then report the write MB/s, read MB/s, and detected drive interface. External-drive benchmarking is done in the Free Space panel.