Delete encrypted disk image - how to ?

Folks,
I need to delete an ecrypted disk image I created some time ago. I frankly don't know what is in there and have not checked it in some time. Furthermore, I have forgotten the password, which I must have changed - because the one that is in my keychain does not open it.
So how best to do this ? I am reluctant to just drag it into the trash. In addition it is 40 meg I would like to get back. Can anyone help ?
Thanks

Just trash the disk image file (.dmg).

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How does one save new files to an encrypted disk image?

I encrypted a particular folder, and used a sparse image to leave plenty of room, as well as using read/write permissions, but I don't see how to save new files to the encrypted folder.

So, I guess you have to save the file to the desktop and then drag it to the mounted disk?
No, you should be able to save directly to a mounted disk image via a dialogue box. There is no need for an intermediate step. As long as the encrypted disk image is mounted, it is open and appears to be just another folder.
As an experiment, open a Textedit document and save it to the mounted (open) disk image via Save As in Textedit. It should be able to do that.

Using Encrypted Disk Images

When I create an encrypted sparse bundle disk image it starts small an grows when I add files. When I create a sparse disk image it starts at the size I set and never grows. I understand all this however, what I don't understand is gaining FREE space again. When I delete a file I don't get back the free space on the mounted virtual drive but the disk image is still the same size! I know that filevault (which basically just places your home folder in an encrypted Sparse bundle image) some how recovers space, is this possible with other ENCRYPTED disk images as well?
Thanks in advance,
Macguy3000

A sparse image file can expand but it does not automatically contract as data is removed. I believe I remember reading a hint at MacOSXHints.com about how to resize a sparse image file.

Encrypted Disk Image Seems Full But Is Not 10.5.6

I've created a 20 gig encrypted Read/Write disk image (not a sparse image) using Disk Utility. The image resides on an external hard drive. I back up a 900 mb file each day to the encrypted disk image. There are six such files on the encrypted disk image, but the folder shows only 526 MB of free space left. Does someone know why this is happening and how to avoid it? (It happens as well when I back up the same file to an encrypted disk on a flash drive. I delete and replace the file and this process seems to eat up space on the disk image.) Thanks.

when you delete a file you have to empty trash while the disk image is mounted. that should free up the space on the image. I would also recommend using sparse image instead of a regular one. it will take less space on the hard drive and you can make it bigger if you have to.

DIsk Utility, encrypted disk image

I cannot create an encrypted disk image. I have searched through the discussion forums here but have not found an answer. After I select the name, location, image format, encryption and I hit save, I get an error that says "Unable to create '[file name].dmg'. (Resource busy)". I've tried different locations, image format and encryption, but I keep getting the same message. Any ideas what the problem is and how I can fix it? Thanks.
NB: I want to create the disk image so that I can encrypt a few files with sensitive information. I do not want to use filevault, as I understand that it has downsides (e.g., free space needed to turn on and off, and backup with TM).

1. Open the Disk Utility application. (If you don't know where it is, search for it in the spotlight.)
2. At the top of the Disk Utility window, you will see several icons. Click on the one labeled "New Image". Before you do this, make sure that none of the drives on the left column (including "Macintosh HD") are selected.
3. A new window opens. It asks you for the name you want to give the new disk, and where you want to save it to (you can choose to save it on the desktop). It will also ask you for the volume size of the new disk (the default setting is 100MB, but you can give it any size you want). It also asks you for the volume format, encryption (128- or 256-bit; 128 should be enough, unless you want to make it more secure, but compromise a bit of speed), partition (there is no need to partition; in fact, many recommend no partition at all), and image format (if you plan to frequently add and delete files on your encrypted disk, "sparse bundle disk image" is recommended".
4. Click "create". It will ask you to create a password for your disk image.
5. The new disk image should appear on your desktop (or other destination you chose). Double-click on the image to open it. It will ask you for your password. Enter the password you selected. You can choose to save the password on your keychain. That defeats the purpose of encrypting the disk image, since anyone who gains access to your computer will not have to enter the password to open the disk image and see its contents.
I hope this step-by-step guide helps you. Let me know if something is not clear or if I got something wrong.

Create encrypted disk image with OS install disk utility.

I thought to make a full backup of Macintosh HD, and followed instructions in /kb/ht1553. However, every time I tried to creae an encrypted disk image, it barfed with "Failed - User interaction required". I assume it needed the encryption password, but for some reason was unable to display a prompt for this. Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks, Stephen.

Create an encrypted sparse disk image instead of from folder, mount it, and then drag & drop your files into ii.

Corrupted files within encrypted disk images

Greetings Apple Hivemind:
I've run across a repeatable problem when using encrypted disk images from Disk Utility. Essentially, I'll create an image using settings like are shown below:
The disk image is then used for storing data. In my case, this is usually data for Adobe Lightroom.
At first, this worked very well, and I housed the disk images on my household NAS, connecting via samba (smb) to it on my Mac. Over time, however, something odd started happening: Files on those encrypted images began getting corrupted whenever I tried writing new data to them.
My first incident was where Lightroom informed me that the catalog it was trying to open was corrupted. I tried to create a new one on the same encrypted volume, and it too was instantly flagged as corrupted. I opened the individual image files on the volume with no problem, so I wasn't thinking that the volume was the culprit. That is, until I tried dragging new image files to it manually. The new files were immediately either completely unreadable, or a mish-mash of the content of random OTHER files on the volume!
The result was that all old data seemed intact, but I could no longer write new data to the volumes without major data corruption issues. I thought that this was isolated to one volume in particular, but it soon started happening on ALL of my encrypted volumes eventually. Including those which were not, and never had been, housed on my NAS, but were on my local hard drives.
I've since "evacuated" all my data from these images, since the ones created by Disk Utility appear to be useless, and am seeking an alternative.
Is this something that anyone else has encountered when using encrypted disk images? It seems like this is something I should really open a support ticket for, but I can't say I've ever tried it, so I don't know how successful it would be to do so.

bbonn wrote:
I should add that I've tried using the "Repair" and "Verify" functions of Disk Utility on the volumes, and despite the obvious issues that exist in them, the utility doesn't find (or fix) any inconsistencies.
Are you repairing/verifying the actual disk images, or just the partition they're on? If the partition, it won't look inside them.
Drag one to Disk Utility's sidebar, select it, then use Verify or Repair. Note: the usual messages may not appear on the DU window. Click the Log icon in the toolbar or select Window > Show Log from the menubar to see them.

Encrypted Disk Image

Is there any way to have an encrypted disk image warn other users, upon mounting, that it has already been opened or is currently open by someone else? If not, then anything comparable?
This whole situation arose based upon the need of having a password protected folder on the network. Someone then chose as a solution to have an encrypted disk image.
Wouldn't several people mounting and writing to such an image simultaneously cause corruption?
Any workarounds?

Hi flimps,
A couple of things...
1. How did you create the disk image? Did you do it through Disk Utility or a 3rd party program?
2. Are you checking the box "remember this password in my keychain" when you're creating the password or authenticating? If so, your keychain will automatically store that information and "auto fill" each time you want to access the image.

Encrypted Disk Image Won't Partition After Resize

Hi,
I have a 10 GB encrypted disk image on my macbook (type OS Extended (journaled)). I've pretty much filled up the space so I want to resize. I go into disk utility with the disk unmounted and 'Resized' it to 20GB. Then I mount it and go into the Partition tab. I drag the corner all the way down to fill up the space and hit Apply. It goes through the motions without error but it does not actually extend the partition to the resize. On the right next it then says something to the effect that the disk is read only and cannot resize the partition. The write status is read/write until I click apple....then it switches to 'Unmounted, read-only'. Any ideas on how to fix this? It's driving me crazy. I can provide screenshots when I'm home from work if necessary.
Thanks
Nick

Here are some screenshots of before and after I try to partition (after the resize):
After attempting to resize the partition it says 'The disk is not writable and can't be partitioned' and 'The disk is too small to contain partitions'. The disk write status also changed to read only. Doesn't make sense to me...anyone know how to fix this?
Thanks

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.

Encrypted Disk Image - Eject on Sleep?

Is it possible to setup my computer so that an "open" password-protected Encrypted Disk Image will automatically eject itself on shutdown, sleep or logout. If so,how?

Disk image files are dismounted when the computer shuts down or restarts. In the "Security" system preference, you can set the computer to require a password to wake from sleep or screensaver.

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 mounts without Password

I've created a new encrypted disk image so that I can store sensitive documents and did it carefully, step by step,(per instructions from www.macworld.com/2425) but after I unmounted, then remount, it doesn't ask me for a password. It just mounts as if it were a regular file. Am I suppose to unmount the volume and drag the disk image to the trash? I don't know what else to try.

The Mac uses and encrypted database of keys called the "Keychain". When you login, it opens the "login" keychain using your login password. That keychain can be used to provide passwords for applications and services, and form data for web sites. In this particular case, the password for your encrypted disk image is being stored in the keychain and automatically provided.
If another user attempted to open the disk image, the disk image mounter would first look in his keychain and then the system keychain for a key to open it with. Finding none, it would prompt the user to specify the key (password). If the user supplies the correct password, the system would put it in his keychain for safe keeping, and the user would then be able to open the image again without supplying the password.
You can remove the key from your keychain by opening up /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access, selecting the "login" keychain, and then looking for an entry with a name that matches the .dmg file in question. Highlight it, and then press the delete key to delete it. The next time you attempt to open it, it will prompt you for a password.

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?

Delete encrypted disk image - how to ?

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