Creating FAT32 Encrypted Disk Image

I have a 2TB WD external hard drive and am looking to have half of the space used in such a way that it is password-protected and also can be accessed by both Macs and PCs.
I have tried the following:
Disk Utility
New Blank Disk Image
Size: 1TB
Format: MS-DOS (FAT)
Encryption: 128-bit AES encryption
Partitions: Single partition - Apple Partition Map
Image Format: read/write disk image
Received this error message:
"Unable to create "testname.dmg." (File too large)
ALSO:
Disk Utility
New Blank Disk Image
Size: 1TB
Format: MS-DOS (FAT)
Encryption: 128-bit AES encryption
Partitions: Single partition - Apple Partition Map
Image Format: sparse disk image
Received this error message:
"Unable to create "testname.sparseimage." (Invalid argument)
Thank you. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!
AppleCare was unable to provide a solution.

FAT file system has partition and file size limits, which apparently you exceeded. I think the file size limit for a FAT32 file system is (2^32) - 1 byte.
See here for more info.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=FATFile+SizeLimit

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Unable to create an encrypted disk image in Lion

disk utility gives the error Unable to create "Volume.dmg." (error - 60008) when creating an encrypted disk image. I am using the following steps:
    1.    Open disk utility
    2.    Select the disk (internal or external) to create the image on
    3.    Select File>New>Blank Disk Image…
    4.    Save As: 'Volume'
    5.    Name: Volume
    6.    Size: 50GB
    7.    Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    8.    Encryption: 128-bit AES encryption
    9.    Image Format: read/write disk image
    10.    Click the Create button
    11.    Password dialog appears
    12.    When I enter a password the dialog closes after entering only a few characters i.e. before I've finished typing, and the following error message displays:
Unable to create "Volume.dmg." (error - 60008)
I have previously, successfully, created encrypted disk images in Snow Leopard, and I don't know why I can't in Lion
Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for this Thomas.
I've tried naming the image differently, but still received the error, I did however try different permutations for the password.
The error seems to happen if I use a purely numerical password string and occurs on input of the 10th numerical character, if I start with numerical character but use an alpha before the 9th number I can continue and create a password, and I can create a password if I start with an alpha and switch to numerals after the first alpha character, purely alphabetical passwords are fine too.
It seems that Lion doesn't like purely numerical passwords greater than 9 characters, whereas Snow Leopard wasn't so fussy. Seems it's a bit of a bug.
Thanks for your help

Unable to create an encrypted disk image with Disk Utility

Hi:
With our upgrade to Lion a few weeks ago, we're now unable to create an encrypted disk image of any type using Disk Utility any more. This problem occurs on 3 different machines, and is reproducible whether one is using an internal HD or an external FW HD. We can successfully create nonencrypted disk images.
This is a duplicate post with all the details here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18469359#18469359
We haven't had any luck with a solution trying various permissions fixes as helpfully suggested by other readers in response to the error message # (-60008 error), so I'm hoping that someone else has run across a solution from the encrypted disk image perspective and that this tag line will generate some help.
Thank you!

Save As: 01 (on Desktop)
Name: 01
Size: 100 MB
Format: Mac OS Encrypted (Journaled)
Encryption: 256-bit AES
Partitions: Single partition- Apple Partition Map
Image Format: read/write disk image
At the password window that pops up I enter: 1234567890
This says password strength is "Weak"
All works fine
Then I repeated this using:
Save As: 02 (on Desktop)
Name: 02
Size: 100 MB
Format: Mac OS Encypted (Journaled)
Encryption: 256-bit AES
Partitions: Single partition- Apple Partition Map
Image Format: read/write disk image
At the password window that pops up I enter: 1234567890 and when I start to enter the next "1" I get the "Unable to create "02.dmg." (error -60008)
OS 10.7.4
Disk Utility Version 12.1.1 (353)

Creating an Encrypted Disk Image on an External (USB) Drive

I have an external 600 GB drive (2x 300 GB SATA 3.5" disks in a Thecus N2050 RAID0 external enclosure connected to iMac by USB2) onto which I would like to backup a large amount of data (500 GB).
I store this external drive away from my home (in the office) and since I cannot guarantee physically locking away the drive I would like to logically lock the drive by placing all the backup data into an encrypted disk image created on that volume.
I have tried creating an encrypted disk image on my USB volume in Disk Utility (Apple's instructions here) but I experience a number of issues not documented in the Apple article:
1) I am not presented with a drop-down option for the size of the disk image.
2) When I go ahead and try to creat the image I am told that the creation was impossible "file or folder does not exist".
Is it possible to create disk images on USB volumes (I cannot create such a large disk image on my iMac HDD as I do not have sufficient space).
thanks in advance
Raf

I realised that in Disk Utility you must not have any of your mounted drives highlighted in the left hand pane.

Creating a LARGE Encrypted Disk Image

Hello,
I have to encrypt a LARGE external Hard Drive for my work (a 1 Terabyte external drive, which comes to about 930 gigs to encrypt).
I have to do one of the regular encrypted disk images, not one of those expandable ones.
I know that encrypted disk images take a long time to create, as I’ve created smaller ones in the past and they take hours.
Does anyone know how long it will take to create an encrypted disk image of this size?
AND, since it will probably take quite a while, I was wondering if it is BAD for my MacBook Pro or the external drive itself to write information for this long of a period. I just want to make sure I don’t damage anything.
Thanks for any help.

I did a 400 GB one and it must have taken an hour to get the password prompt, a couple more for the creation, and another for formatting and mounting.
If you have a bed and sleep daily, as I suspect you do, start an hour before bed, enter the password and it should be done by morning.
You don't need a 900 GB image unless you have one 900 GB file which I doubt. Make one smaller one say 300, then copy it twice. The password will be the same in all 3 copies.
If you look at activity monitor not much is going on during all this so don't think the house will burn down (or your pants - see other question posted today).

HT1578 Labels (Mavericks) not working in encrypted disk image?

I created an encrypted disk image with Disk Utility.
I placed a file in the opened encrypted disk image, and labeled it with "test".
If I open a finder window and look for files labelled "test" the file doesn't appear.
This message is placed under the wrong OS, because it is not possible to choose Mevericks from the popup list!!!!

Where I used the word label I did mean tag

Encrypted Disk Image creation slow?

I just got a new MBP with Leopard. I have created a number of encrypted disk images in the past using Tiger and a MBP and have not had any trouble. This weekend I tried a few times to create a 50 gig encrypted disk image (128 AES) on an external drive and after going through the process of setting it up and waiting for it to be created, (and watching the progress bar as it was being created), after about 45 minutes NO progress was showing on the progress bar. I ended up having to cancel the creation a few times because I thought something was going wrong. I’m not sure if there is a problem creating the disk image, or leopard is slow, or what.
Does anyone know how long, on average, it would take to create an encrypted disk image of this size using leopard? I just want to know if there is a problem doing this on my MBP. Thanks for the help.

A regular 50 GB disk image takes 50GB of space, no matter if it is full of files or empty.
A 50 GB sparse disk image only takes up the amount of space equivalent to that of its enclosed files. So if the 50GB sparse image only has 1 GB of files inside, the image won't be much bigger than 1GB.
A sparse bundle is similar to a sparse image, but instead of a single file it is a folder package with many, many enclosed files called bands. A new file added to the sparse bundle will tend to modify only a few bands. This makes incremental backups of a sparse bundle more efficient because only the changed bands need to be backed up again. Any change to a sparse or regular disk image will mean that the entire image will need to be backed up again.
If you regularly add/remove files to a disk image, and you intend to back up that disk image with Time Machine, a sparse bundle is definitely the way to go. The other types will fill up your TM volume very quickly.

Encrypted disk image creation very slow-

I just got a new MBP with Leopard. I have created a number of encrypted disk images in the past using Tiger and a MBP and have not had any trouble. This weekend I tried a few times to create a 50 gig encrypted disk image (128 AES) on an external drive and after going through the process of setting it up and waiting for it to be created, (and watching the progress bar as it was being created), after about 45 minutes NO progress was showing on the progress bar. I ended up having to cancel the creation a few times because I thought something was going wrong. I’m not sure if there is a problem creating the disk image, or leopard is slow, or what.
Does anyone know how long, on average, it would take to create an encrypted disk image of this size using leopard? I just want to know if there is a problem doing this on my MBP. Thanks for the help.

A regular 50 GB disk image takes 50GB of space, no matter if it is full of files or empty.
A 50 GB sparse disk image only takes up the amount of space equivalent to that of its enclosed files. So if the 50GB sparse image only has 1 GB of files inside, the image won't be much bigger than 1GB.
A sparse bundle is similar to a sparse image, but instead of a single file it is a folder package with many, many enclosed files called bands. A new file added to the sparse bundle will tend to modify only a few bands. This makes incremental backups of a sparse bundle more efficient because only the changed bands need to be backed up again. Any change to a sparse or regular disk image will mean that the entire image will need to be backed up again.
If you regularly add/remove files to a disk image, and you intend to back up that disk image with Time Machine, a sparse bundle is definitely the way to go. The other types will fill up your TM volume very quickly.

Lost password for encrypted disk image

i created a encrypted disk image to store some personal files and now i can not remember my password and its not in my key chain is there a way to reset the password or at least recover the files.

If you could access the files on an encrypted disk image without knowing the password, there wouldn't be much point in encrypting it.
Do you remember anything at all about the password? Was it a name, or a dictionary word? If so, there might be hope of cracking it before the Earth passes away. You'd need the help of a consultant to do that.

Encrypted disk image no longer demands password

Some time ago I created an encrypted disk image for storing sensitive data. It has been working fine for months, everytime I clicked on it it demanded that I enter the password before it mounted. But suddenly yesterday it stopped demanding he password and would just mount upon clicking. Tried restart, no change. Tried repairing the disk permisssions, no change. In the meantime, I have created a new encrypted disk, moved all the info to that, and secure-trashed the old one. But this gives me pause for thought. Not terribly secure! Anybody know what might have happened? How can an encrypted disk suddenly become unencrypted?

No, there's no other explanation, unless someone tampered with your account. Launch the Keychain Access application and look for a password item in your login keychain with the name of the image file.

Encrypted Disk Image to Password Protect Folder Not Working!

I have followed the instructions exactly for creating a Disk Image in order to password protect a folder. Folder contains multiple types of files including images, pdfs, etc. Here is what I've done and what happens:
In Disk Utility I created a New Disk Image from Folder. I chose the folder, which I have on my Desktop, and clicked Image. I gave the Disk Image a new name, placed in on my Desktop, indicated the image format as read/write and chose the 128-bit encryption. I chose a very strong password and unchecked the remember password box. At this point, all seems to have gone well.
Now, back to my Desktop. I have two things going on.
1. The initial folder that I wanted password protected is still present. Am I supposed to just send this to the Trash?
2. When I double click on the the new .dmg file that I've created, I am asked for my password, which I put in. Then, nothing. I mean, nothing happens. It doesn't open, it doesn't do anything. I can click on it and choose Open with DickImageMounter, and nothing happens. I can open with Disk Utility, but this just gives me the normal options to eject, burn, restore, etc.
I don't know why I can't get this to work properly, and I'm a little annoyed that Apple can't make it as simple as selecting a folder and having the option to password protect it, just like you can a normal file. PLEASE HELP!
Thanks.

As of OS X 10.7.4, Disk Utility had a bug that prevented it from creating an encrypted disk image with a password of more than 10 characters. I haven't checked recently to see whether that bug has been fixed, but from your report it seems not to have been. There is a workaround, but it's complicated.

Cannot see encrypted disk image in ML

I created an encrypted disk image (password protected folder) through Disk Utility in Snow Leopard. However, now that I have upgraded to Mountain Lion, that folder appears to have vanished or is invisible. All my other file are intact but I just cannot see this encrypted folder anymore.
Anyone else having the same experience or able to offer some pointers?
Thanks,
Peter

There would be no reason for Mountain Lion to hide it. That's not normal behavior. Mountain Lion follows the same rules in this regard that Snow Leopard did. But, you can certainly check to see if it has somehow become accidentally hidden by entering the following command into the Terminal (but don't press return yet):
ls -al
Make sure there's a space at the end, and then drag the folder in which the .dmg file used to reside onto the Terminal window. This will enter the path to that folder in the command. Now switch back to the Terminal and press return. Do you see the .dmg file in the listing? If so, copy and paste the Terminal output into a message here, and I can give you a command that will show that file again.
If it's not there, it must have been accidentally deleted. (Again, not normal behavior, so most likely either it was accidentally deleted by you or someone else who uses that machine or the hard drive is badly corrupt and files are going missing.) Do you have a backup of that file?

Alias to open a file in an encrypted disk image

Deleted.

There is a quick and simple test, could someone with Lion installed be so kind as to do this:
1. Use Disk Utility (or Knox if they own the app) to create an encrypted disk image on the Desktop called Test
2. Mount the image, open TextEdit and paste a page of text into the window, then save the file in the mounted disk image
3. Paste another page of text into the TextEdit window
Open Terminal, navigate to /Volumes/Test, view the hidden files in the directory & post the results here.
All you need to do to clean up is eject the disk image then drag the .sparsebundle file to the Trash.
Cheers

Any gotchas for encrypted disk images?

I am about to set up e-bills and e-statements at various banks and credit cards and wanted to check a couple of things before doing something that may end up being bad
The assumption I am going with, is I will create an encrypted disk image to store all the PDF's.
1. Is that the right thing to do? Or is there a better way to keep the data secure?
2. If I do so, what is the backup impact? Can I simply set up a task to copy and paste the entire disk image to my external drive?
3. If I want to open the disk image on another computer, can I? How will it authenticate the user/pass on a different computer?
4. I can backup an encrypted disk image to a FAT-formatted external drive?
5. And finally, I have read disclaimers that if I forget the password the data is lost irretrievably. But also, that the password is stored in keychain. So if the password is stored in keychain, the worst-case scenario can only happen if I forget the master password, right? I don't need to truly remember the password to the disk image necessarily, right?

baltwo wrote:
Your profile info indicates that you're running Tiger. If so, post to those forums. If you're running Leopard, update your profile info. What are you trying to protect and from who? Is your computer secure?
IIRC, encrypted disk image passwords are independent from Keychain Access. So if you forget it, then you're hosed. BTW, that's the major failing with encrypted anything. If you forget the password, you're hosed. If the disk image gets corrupted, it's useless with or without the password. Anything stored in an encrypted disk image needs to be backed up in an unencrypted state and stored in some kind of physical thing like a safe. Methinks your a bit paranoid. Disable auto-login, use high-level passwords (that you remember), don't enable the root user account or activate a master password, and you should be secured enough.
I updated the profile. I am running Leopard. So this is the correct forum.
What am I trying to protect? I thought I put it in the first line - statements from banks and credit cards.
From whom? From unwanted entities who may get access to my computer, in any way.
I didn't get the part about the safe. Can I or can I not back up an encrypted disk image to an external drive "as is"? What about possibly opening it up on another computer? And how about putting it on a FAT-formatted disk? I repeat my original questions, but for a reason - they seem to have not been answered.
I do not have auto-login, and I remember my strong login password. I don't have my root account enabled. Under this scenario you think my data is going to be secure? What about if someone were to get control of my computer? Forgive me on this one, I am a switcher so there is a general paranoia about such things which I would like to clarify before reorganizing my life.

Making encrypted disk image takes hours?!

Before I made a Time Machine backup, I wanted to use Disk Utility to create an encrypted disk image on an external hard drive. This way, my computer backup is password protected.
So I set the file for 200G at 128 bit encryption.
That was 12 hours ago. According to the progress bar, Disk Utility is still only one-quarter done with creating the disk image.
Is it normal for Disk Utility to take a full day (possibly two) to create a disk image of this size? Is there any way to create a password-protected disk image quicker? (And, for what it's worth, the external drive is formatted for Mac OS Extended, Journaled.)
Thanks for any advice on this...

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
I'm not quite sure just what you're trying to do.
Are you planning to have Time Machine back-up to that encrypted disk image? If so, that's not going to work. When you start Time Machine, it will create a Backups.backupdb folder on whatever drive or partition you select, then place it's backups in that folder, not in a disk image.
If you want to encrypt your whole home folder, you can use File Vault (System Preferences > Security > File Vault). That will encrypt your entire home folder. But that's almost certainly vast overkill, and has many complications of it's own. Read up on it thoroughly before deciding to do it.
If you have a few files that you want to encrypt, create a (smaller) encrypted disk image on your internal HD, in your home folder. Then copy the documents into it, and securely-delete the originals.
Then TM can back-up your entire system "as is" -- without the overhead of encrypting OSX, your apps, configuration, and everything else in your home folder, but the disk image (and it's backup copy) will still be encrypted.

Creating FAT32 Encrypted Disk Image

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