Free practical tips for Mac users

We’re celebrating the Mac Tips 7th birthday all through August, so watch out for news to come…

The 06 August 2008 issue marks yet another 50th Tip — #350. I don’t ask for payment for these Tips and don’t intend to in the future either. However, each Tip takes me quite some time to prepare — generally several hours — and that represents a huge amount of work. What would make me ubelievably happy would be for you to do two things:

1. Encourage friends and others to subscribe to the Tips — by email, RSS feed or just by visiting the Mac Tips website. Please bookmark the Tips on sites such as Delicious or Reddit, add posts to Digg, mention us on Facebook… But remember, don’t spam anyone.
2. Donate some time or money to a charity of your own choosing. You don’t need to tell me about it (but it encourages me more than I can say when I do hear about it). I currently favour a site called Kiva: you lend money to entrepreneurs in impoverished countries where even a $25 loan can change a life. Entrepreneurs use the loan to build their business, letting them send their kids to school or just pay for basic living costs.

I always welcome suggestions for Tips and am open to guest writers too.

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Clean up a Thumb Drive
Mac Tip #350, 06 August 2008

Many people use thumb drives — those tiny ’sticks’ you plug into a USB port — for storing backups of important documents, and they’re great for that purpose: quick, easy, convenient. Copy files to the drive, drag files from the drive, add, delete — it all takes but a moment. In the screenshot my No Name thumb drive has a bunch of files on it.

Until, maybe, something goes wrong, as friend found recently when one file claimed to be corrupted, and the daily backups wouldn’t complete. This problem isn’t unique to thumb drives, by the way — it can happen any time to any storage medium.

In my friend’s case we did some troubleshooting and then decided to reformat the thumb drive. Here’s how to do that.

Start up Disk Utility. You should find it in the Applications - Utilities folder. The Disk Utility window opens and displays a list of disks in the left-hand column.

Plug in the thumb drive you’d like to reformat. It should also show up in the list of drives.

In the screenshot you can see a list of the internal hard drive and DVD drive on my Mac. My No Name thumb drive is listed, and I’ve selected it in the list. Click on the thumbnail images in this post to see larger versions.

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Click on the thumb drive in the list to select it.

Now take great care in the next step. When you reformat a drive it completely erases everything that’s on it. Make sure you select the correct disk and also make sure you have copies of any files on the thumb drive that you wish to keep.

After selecting the thumb drive in the list click on the Erase tab on the right hand side of the window.

Choose a Volume Format from the pop-up — try Mac OS extended (Journaled), and if you wish, give the thumb drive disk a name.

Double check that you will be erasing the correct disk and then click the Erase… button. An alert appears reminding you that all data will be erased and asking you to confirm that you wish to erase the drive. Click Erase to wipe everything or Cancel to abandon what you’re doing.

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My screenshot shows that I’ve selected a thumb drive called 964 MB Ut165 USB2FlashStorage Media and am about to click the Erase button on the alert.

After a few moments the disk is wiped clean. When I look at the disk in the Finder I see that no files remain. In my screenshot you can see the thumb drive now shows up in the left-hand column of Disk utility with the name I assigned it.

Security Options…

If you wish, click the Security Options… button before you erase the thumb drive. Choose from the different methods for erasing, depending on your purpose. If all you want to do is wipe a drive you’ve been using so you can start fresh choose Don’t Erase Data, or Zero Out Data. If you’re cleaning up a drive someone else gave you, to be sure there’s nothing nasty on it, or to give the drive to someone else, choose a more secure option such as 7-Pass or 5-Pass Erase. The more secure the option you choose the longer it will take to erase the drive.

By the way: if you want to reformat a memory card to be used in a cellphone or camera first check the manual and help files for that device. You may be best to reformat the card in the camera or cellphone itself so it uses the correct formatting options.

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List Applications and More
Mac Tip #349, 30 July 2008

A colleague recently mentioned he was making a list of all his software — his computer had been in the shop for repair and he felt he needed a backup list of software in case something else went wrong.

Such a list is a handy thing to have, so I thought I’d mention 3 separate ways you can easily compile a list like that. Note: I’m using Mac OS X 10.5.4, Leopard. It’s possible older versions of Mac OS X may behave differently.

Method 1: Copy and Paste

This is the easiest way. Open your Applications folder in the Finder. Select All (Command A, or Edit > Select All) and choose Copy (Command C or Edit > Copy). Now open a text document and choose Paste (Command V or Edit > Paste). A list of all your Applications appears.

Tweaks

• before the Copy and Paste operation sort the list by Name — the pasted list will also be alphabetical.
• also use the disclosure triangle to open the Utilities folder. Items from within that folder will appear within the pasted list.
• Use this technique on any folder that’s open in the Finder.

Note: you have a text editor on your Mac — look for TextEdit in the Applications folder.

Method 2: System Profiler

This is also very easy. Open Applications > Utilities > System Profiler. A window opens, displaying a list of Contents on the left. Select Software > Applications in that list. The right-hand pane displays a list of all your software, including version numbers.

Tweaks

Choose File > Save As from the System Profiler menu, and for File Format choose either Rich Text Format or Plain Text, then save the profile. Open the saved file with your text editor to see a full profile of your computer. Scroll down to find the Applications section.

Click the thumbnail images here for larger versions.

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Method 3: Command Line

This isn’t entirely hard, but it does require some finicky typing and a moment’s thought. Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal. A Terminal window opens showing a prompt that may say something like ‘Macintosh HD:~ yourname$ ‘. Mine says ‘pluto:~ miraz$ ‘ because my computer is named Pluto and my username on that machine is miraz.

Now you need to type a command that lists the files in the Applications folder and then saves it into a text file, perhaps in your Documents folder. Type the following exactly (including spaces), but replace ‘miraz‘ with your username:

ls /Applications > /Users/miraz/Documents/apps.txt

Then press the Return key.

It will seem as though nothing has happened, but look in your Documents folder where you should see a file called apps.txt. Open that file into your text editor and you will see a list of your Applications.

Tweaks

List the contents of any folder by changing the command above. Remember to replace ‘miraz’ with your username. This one lists the Applications > Utilities:

ls /Applications/Utilities > /Users/miraz/Documents/utilities.txt

This one lists the Documents folder:

ls /Users/miraz/Documents > /Users/miraz/Documents/docs.txt

Some explanation

ls - (ell ess) is a command to list things. It’s followed by a Space

/Users/miraz/Documents - refers to the user miraz’s Documents folder

> - is a command to save the information in a file. It has a Space in front and afterwards.

docs.txt - is the name for the file the command saves.

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