Utilities are programs to fix your computer or work on it under the hood. Think of them like the tools you keep in the garage for household repair or to work on your bike or your car. Software utilities are the same, to fix or make things on your computer. Some examples from Microsoft Windows would be Norton Utilities or the fdisk command to partition a hard disk.
Some of the best of the following programs are free or they ask for a donation using PayPal. The commercial utilities that you have to buy through a store are generally easier to use and have more polish to them. They also come with a nice manual or telephone you can call for support if you have problems or questions. That's the essential difference if you're wondering whether to buy or download free tools (and maybe donate them a few $$ later).
AppleJack is a free program to you should install. AppleJack lets you check & fix the hard drive inside your Mac for problems without needing the Install CD or DVDs the computer came with. If you've lost your install discs or find booting from disc a hassle, AppleJack is much quicker. AppleJack is the tool many Mac techs use to quickly check their customer's machines too. Instructions are at the AppleJack Project Page at http://applejack.sourceforge.net/, this article at MacFixIt, and this article from xlr8yourmac.
Please note the AppleJack home page is wierd: it doesn't work right in Safari
2, but in any other browser like Firefox
it works fine. So if their website looks wierd, it's not you or anything you
did; it's how they set up their website.
BatChmod lets you fix permissions
on a folder and all the files in it. If you don't understand what permissions
are, don't muck with them; you can mess up your OS by playing with them. Normally,
you use Disk Utility's "Repair Permissions" button or AppleJack to
fix your Mac's permissions if they get messed up. However, this only repairs
permissions for packages you have installed, which in English means OS
and application software you've installed. "Repair Permissions" may
not fix permissions for documents in you Home directory or saved on an external
hard drive, because those have nothing to do with any software packages you've
installed. Long story short, BatChmod helps you fix permissions on your documents
and files in one fell swoop, rather than fixing them 1-at-a-time with the Finder's
Get Info... command.
CarbonCopyCloner clones hard drives. It's free, and it makes complete bootable backup copy of your hard disk. CCC, as it is nicknamed, is intended for IT departments, computer repairshops, and university computer labs. CCC does fast block level copies and can clone to a disk image.
DasBoot is a free tool from Subrosasoft to copy bootable CDs or DVDs to a Firewire device and make it bootable. Firewire flash drives and iPods come to mind.
Pacifist installs OS X packages manually, one package or file at a time. If, say, Calculator were put in the Trash and the Trash were emptied, Pacifist could reinstall Calculator.app from your install disc(s) without requiring an Archive & Install or other needlessly drastic measures.
PatchBurn lets OS X recognize non-Apple CD-burners and DVD-burners. If you have external burner (or you replaced your internal) and OS X doesn't recognize it as a "burn-able" drive, PatchBurn might fix the problem. It add device definitions for many common types of CD- and DVD- burners, informing OS X how to identify them and what commands (what bits and bytes) to send them to burn, verify, eject, etc.
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