For instance, if you enter the command ' diskutil list' in the Terminal, the system will show you an output of each drive device along with all partitions that are on the device, which can be convenient for sizing up and checking out any hidden partitions. The diskutil command, on the other hand, is far more robust and can display and manage much more detail about a hard-drive device. The Disk Utility application is built to be relatively straightforward and allow you to see each device and add, resize, or remove user-accessible disk partitions as is needed for a particular drive.
Disk Utility showing hidden drive partitions.
Disk Utility comes both in the form of the Disk Utility application, but also as the 'diskutil' terminal command. One of the most commonly used utilities is Disk Utility, which allows you to create disk images, burn DVDs and CDs, as well as manage the partitions and formatting of your hard drives. OS X comes with a variety of tools and utilities for managing your system (available in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder), including those for observing OS activity, network and disk activity, and also those for managing some aspects of the hardware in your system.
