Disk Image/CD-R Confusion

I'm trying to figure out how to do one simple thing, or at least I hope it's more simple than what I know so far. I want to burn a copy of my Quicken data file to the same CD-R two or three times a month as backup. I've created a disk image of the folder where I put a copy of the latest file for backup. Do I have to create a disk image of that folder every time I want to add the latest file, or can I use the exising image? If I have to create a new image each time, then I end up with a bunch of images on the CD, and they all show up in the Finder when I insert the CD. Is there a way to add the files to the CD using the same image?
Thanks,
Dave

Just to clarify. While you will be able to add recent files to the Disk Image if you save it as a CD/DVD Master, you will not be able to keep burning again and again to the CD-R unless you make it appendable. Even with this, after the CD-R is filled you can't erase it and reuse.
An easier solution is to buy a CD-RW, which can be erased and reused. You wouldn't even have to worry about Disk Images -unless you're using them for security protection. You could just burn the files to the CD-RW and then erase before burning new files to it.
However, the easiest by far, is to buy a USB Drive. You can find these at BestBuy, Comp USA, etc. They are extremely easy for backups like you are talking about. I'm not familiar with Quicken, so I don't know how big the files are, but you can get a 1GB USB Drives. It great for other things too. An almost necesity for todays living...especially as a high school student like myself.

Similar Messages

How do i find or replace the missing disk image for my HD

How do i find or replace the missing disk image? for my HD ........as it is missing when i try to back up with time machine,
i asked for assistance the other day with time machine
now i have worked out this is the reason i can not back up with TM, due to no disk image in my portable hard drive
I saw a post on youtube where it explains you can copy a your HD disk imag from your time machine back ups enabeling, time machine to back up
But i can not find where the TM Back up driver is situated in my TM Back up's
Some advice would be greatly appreceate as i am rather new to Mackintosh
Thank you
Aiden

Hi again.
Just re-reading your first post, I wonder if you're confusing a disk image backup with Time Machine?
It's certainly possible to create a disc image of your Macintosh HD and copy it to an external drive.
However, as a backup that method has a drawback; you can't boot from a disc image directly. It needs to be mounted on a bootable system before it can be used. So it's not really much use if the internal HD fails, at least as far as allowing you to carry on working while the repair is carried out.
Much better (and simpler) is to clone the whole drive to the external using CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (there are plenty of others, but those appear to be the most popular).
That will give you a bootable backup which can be kept up to date by incremental backups using the same applications.
In the event of total internal HD failure all you need to do is replace the drive then boot from the clone and reverse clone to the internal to get up and running again.
Many of us use both a bootable clone and Time Machine (on seperate drives) as each has it's different uses.

Disk Images do not mount - Update to Lion on New MacBook Pro

Hi,
Just got my new MacBook Pro 2011 13 inch higher spec with 750GB hard drive today. Updated immediately to OS X lion via the up to date programme for free. Am in the process of restoring my applications that I had on my old computer that are on my external hard drive, however the .dmg disk images will not load properly. They go through the regular process of verifying then mounting the disk image, then the image appears for a split second on my desktop before disappearing again.
This happens even if i copy the disk image off of my external hard drive to my macintosh HD and try to mount from there.
This is really really scaring me as if I can't load all my old applications my new computer is absolutely useless. Please please could someone tell me what is going on!?!?!??!?!
Many thanks in advance,
Sam

Woke up this morning and tried again and now they all mount fine... Don't know how this happened but the only things I have done differently are trying to mount a dmg that was on my old computer over the network, and it mounted fine, then mounted other dmgs that were previously not working, and they are all fine too. I'm halfway through downloading software updates but all its done so far is download updates for iweb and itunes, and they haven't started running yet anyway.
With love from,
Confused.

Disk Image of unmounted Macintosh HD

So I was using my Mac and it suddenly shut down. When I went to restart it, it got stuck on the grey screen and the Apple logo turned into a no access symbol (circle with horizontal line through it). I booted into Recovery, and used the Disk Utility only to find that "Macintosh HD" is unmounted and greyed out. In addition to this, I cannot verify or repair the disk because all of those options are also greyed out. However, I noticed that "500.11 GB Toshiba MK5065GSXF" wasn't greyed out, so I tried to verify and repair that - which failed.
Before I take it into an Apple store I want to create a disk image of Macintosh HD so I can restore all my current data (I already have a time machine back up but its a bit old). Anyway, my main question is, will creating a "new image" of 500.11 GB Toshiba MK5065GSXF and saving it onto an external hardrive work? Or does the image have to be specifically from the Macintosh HD partition? I can't even create a "new image" from Macintosh HD, all options are greyed out!! I'm really confused. I've already read through a few other posts already but I'm still unsure of what to do. Any help would be really appreciated!
My computer is running Mac OS X Lion and has File Vault enabled.

Is there a solution to this at all?

I just created a disk image of my Snow Leopard

I am hoping to install Lion on a disk image of my Mac Pro. This disk image is currently on my desktop. The image seems to function well, and I'm now whittling down it's size. I haven't yet created a partition on my Mac Pro, in part because I'm hopeful that the disk image is all I'll need.
My goal is to install Lion onto the disk image ONLY, because I do not want to use it except in relation to my new iPad 2. (And I need to install Lion if I want to keep my dot mac email address after June 2011.)
Does anyone know of any reason why this planned upgrade to Lion will not work--I'm hoping that when I start the download of Lion, that I'll be asked "where do I want it installed? and that I'll be able to opt for ONLY the disk image.
Thanks for any input (especially that which is not too technical for non-techy me.)

Alinde Omalley wrote:
Thanks, Pondini. Your answer is probably correct, but it is a bit over my head. I found, today, that Lion said it was installed on my external hard drive; but I see no evidence of it being there. (I had installed Lion to an external hard drive, to which I'd already downloaded a bootable copy of my Mac Pro Snow Leopard.)
So it should have updated the Snow Leopard installation?
Does it appear as a possible startup drive in System Prefs > Startup Disk?
I might add--all my macs met the requirements for an upgrade. They were upgraded to the latest Snow Leopard; had enough disk space, memory, and such.
Then as long as they're all Core 2 Duos, the drive should start them.
I'm not sure what you find confusing -- let me try it this way:
When you install OSX on an external HD, that will be a complete installation -- at least one user account, all the default Apple applications, etc., as if it's a separate computer.
When you connect it to another Mac and start up from it, you'll be running that separate installation, not the installation of OSX that's on the Mac. You'll log on with the user account that's on the external, regardless of what's on the internal.
You can access the data on the Mac's internal HD (if the user on the external has permission to it), but only by selecting the HD, as if it's an external.

Disk Image Fails

Hi everyone, I am currently trying to back up some discs that I have, and the first 2 did so with no problem. I am saving them to a 1tb external hd. However now every time I try to create a new disk image it starts and goes for around 10 minutes then I get this message "Unable to create "Disk5.cdr" (file too large)"
I am using disk utility and do not understand what is going on. My external hd has more than enough room, but I keep getting this message with every disk I try. The discs themselves are only 3-4gb so I'm really confused and frustrated.
Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

FMiron wrote:
I am doing the cd/dvd option because I intend to back them up to dvd's, I referenced this website for info on how to do it.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/making_dvdcopies.html
If I create a .dmg file can I still burn to a disc later for play in all dvd players?
I missed the point about the original content already being on optical discs. Some questions:
- Are they commercial DVDs? Many of those are protected from being copied.
- If they are on DVD-R or DVD+R media, how old are those discs? Optical discs can go bad, which could cause problems trying to copy them.
- Are they in good condition (no scratches or fingerprints)? If not, I'd try cleaning them. Here's some advice on how to do that:
http://www.howtocleanstuff.net/things/electronics/how-to-clean-cd’s-and-dvd’s/

Migration Asssitant w/Disk Image - Fails with a network error?

I'm currently trying to restore an iMac G4 with a disk image that was made before its hard drive was replaced. I've mounted the drive and it successfully copies over the user folders, but when it comes to copying the Library and Applications folders it fails after a long pause with the error indicating "There might be a problem with your network". As a disk image mounted on the desktop, I don't see this being a terribly helpful error, so I checked the console, but I don't see any errors being thrown there. Is there something that I can adjust so that it doesn't "lose contact" with the disk image?

Sorry, I guess I made some poor word choices there. I'm not technically restoring the iMac from an image in the ASR sense. The iMac is already set up with a brand new hard drive and OS install (the old drive was failing and was recovered using Disk Warrior and then imaged before it totally failed). All I'm trying to accomplish now is migrate the user data, apps, and library stuff over to the new drive from the image of the old drive.
The image now lives on the desktop of the new drive. There's no MBP involved (that's my computer and doesn't factor in to this issue). There's no network involved either (hence my confusion with the error message). This is all taking place on just the iMac, nothing more.
So I mount the image on the desktop. I fire up Migration Assistant, do the admin login, select "From a Time Machine backup or other disk", select the volume mounted from the image, in this case I turn off migration of the user folders as that has already completed successfully, Then turn on all the rest (Apps, Files & Folders, Library, Network Settings, etc.) Once it hit transfer it will sit and wait for a long period of time, then produces the error "There might be a problem with your network", but as there is no network involved here, that error only suggests to me that it's having trouble reading from the image.
However, referring to the console, there are apparently no errors reading the image (I've verified the image twice and even rebuilt it as a writable image in case it wanted to write the migration cash to the source volume), in fact I can see it cataloging all of the files that it wants to transfer. If I try to manually drag and drop any of the stuff in the Applications folder on the image of the old drive, it copies without a hitch.
For some reason, it just appears to lose the ablility to communicate with the image even though there are no apparent problems with it.
Any suggestions?

Firefox has said verifying the disk image for over 30 minutes while i am trying to download

I am downloading Firefox 3.6.3 dmg onto my Mac and it has said verifying the disk image for the last 30 minutes and won't let me access it
== upon downloading ==
== User Agent ==
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_2; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Safari/531.21.10

See:
*Firefox/Tools > Options > Advanced > General : Accessibility : [ ] "Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page"
The setting in "Tools > Options > Advanced > General" is meant as an accessibility feature, as you can see by the label of that section, so that people with disabilities or people who use screen readers do not get confused and is not meant as a safety protection to stop redirecting.
See also:
*https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Options+window+-+Advanced+panel#General_tab
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/accessibility.blockautorefresh
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Accessibility_features_of_Firefox

Password Protect folders (non sparse disk image)

So there are a collection of files I have protected on my computer using the disk utility method that everyone asking this question uses. I am curious to know if there is any other way of doing it. I want to password protect a folder within this protected disk image just becuase i feel like being extra sneaky and careful at the moment. I mean I could just use another sparse disk image inside the original and use two different passwords but I'm trying to be creative and that could get confusing. Does anyone know of a way to password protect a folder or file without using the disk utility method in Lion? Even if it requires third party stuff

nails:
From your earlier posts I gather that you would like to have a high level of security for your data. If an encrypted folder does not do the job for you, you may want to consider FileVault. However, if you use FileVault there are to very important measures you must take: 1) You must remember your password. If you lose or forget your password you will lose aceess to your data permanently. There is no way around it. 2) You must leave adequate space to be able to disable FileVault, should you every need to do so. The encrypted sparseimage requires almost double the size of the image to be able to be expanded.
Here are a few articles that might be of interest to you:
A Word about FileVault
About Encrypted Disk Images
How to create a password-protected (encrypted) disk image
Please do post back with further questions or comments.
Happy Holidays.
cornelius

Trouble with encryted disk image

OK.. here it goes. I'll start with expected "I'm new to Macs". I recently purchased my first Mac. Its an iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6.2. In the interest of securing my personal files I wanted to create an encrypted disk image to store them. So I opened up Disk Utility and with Macintosh HD highlighted in the left column I selected the "New Image" button. I think that was my first mistake, selecting the "New Image" button when Macintosh HD was highlighted because the resulting dialog only offered me Save As, Image Format and Encryption. It did not offer me Size, Format or Partitions. I selected to save the image as "Vault" in my Documents directory, and I chose compressed and 128 bit encryption.
Next I hit create and entered my administrator password and provided a password for encryption. It started chugging along and I noticed it was reading my entire Macintosh HD. The process took a good while. Finally it completed and as a result there was a (roughly) 150 GB .dmg image in my documents directory with the name I provided (Vault.dmg). FYI.. I had about 150GB of data on my HD when I started this little adventure.
Moving right along, when I tried to mount the disk I get an error saying "..(no mountable file systems". Here is the log output from disk utility:
===== Saturday, February 6, 2010 7:34:24 AM MST =====
2010-02-06 07:34:26 -0700: Attach Image “Vault.dmg”
2010-02-06 07:34:26 -0700: Initializing…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Verifying…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Verification completed…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: expected CRC32 $31E027DA
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Attaching…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Mounting…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Attaching…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Finishing…
2010-02-06 07:34:29 -0700: Unable to attach “Vault.dmg.” (no mountable file systems)
2010-02-06 07:34:29 -0700:
FYI.. after I tried to mount the disk image via the disk utility I see a ghosted "Macintosh HD" appear under my Vault.dmg. To make matter worse I can't erase either of these because everything on the Erase tab is disabled (grayed out). So at this point I'm pretty sure I created a compressed disk image that has a copy of all my data which is not what I wanted.
At this point I just want to erase this ridiculously large and unmountable disk image, and start over. Can any of you fine people help me?
Thanks.
Message was edited by: docdee24

Some systems will auto open. With my settings, I right click and mount the disc image, then play. When I'm finished, I eject the "disc." If you're not ejecting the mounted image, perhaps the Mac is confused about which disc to play.
John

Problem creating an iDVD disk image

I am trying to create a disk image of an iDVD project which I can burn to an external DVD drive. I am using iDVD 5. I go to file, and select Save as Disk Image. The movie renders for several hours, but when it gets to Burn, nothing. Burn is selcted in the iDVD window and says: Current Operation: Writing, but the progress bar for Burn remains empty for hours until I cancel. iDVD can't be selected in the menu bar after Burn is selected in iDVD. If I go to Force Quit, it says "iDVD (not reponding)".
Can anyone tell me what the problem is?
Thanks.
Ken
G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Well, I have my first movie. This being my first time I'm not sure if I can give anyone advice, but I was finally successful creating an image and then burning it to a DVD.
One piece of advice I am sure of. If this is your first time making a movie with iMovie and iDVD, do NOT start with a long movie as your first movie. Do a short movie and find out how things are supposed to work first. I did a long movie which caused a lot of confusion and frustration because I didn't have a successful experience first.
My movie is of a school show. I was finally successful when I deleted some numbers. Apparently the problem I posted was because my movie was too long for Best Performance. I did upgrade to iLife 6 in the process of figuring out what was wrong. I'm not sure if this is the reason, but I was able to get 72 minutes of video on my DVD with Best Performance (everything I've seen said the maximum is 60 minutes). The Status menu in Project Info of iDVD 6 says I have 72 minutes of video which takes up 3.9 GB of a 4.2 GB DVD. Once again, this being my first time, I'm not sure if this is because I'm using iLive 06.
One word of caution about iLive 06 (and I am speculating here). I think it is created to work optimally with the newly released Macs with the Intel processor. They run twice as fast as G4s. I found my iMovie and iDVD to be clunky when I edited after the upgrade. Many edits would have up to a five second pause before you got (what I call) the spinning beach ball and then the beach ball would spin for five to ten seconds before you could do the edit. I think I am going to move up my Mac upgrade schedule.
Thank you to those who gave me advice. It was frustrating because of the time involved, but I am amazed with what we are able to do with video today.
Ken

Unsuccessful in creating simple Disk Image action - please help

I am new to Automator and thought I was getting the hang of it. I am trying to create a simple action that will take my selected files, then put them into a .dmg. I want it to ask for a name and location each time. I thought I had it but every time it creates the image it self deletes. Now I am totally confused.
I searched for "disk image" in the forum but didn't find anything.
Thanks for any help.
CHris

It sounds like you are unmounting the dmg when done - what actions are in your current workflow? You can use the option to show the action when it runs to get a dialog with the selected items for you to put in the names and location.
1) Get Selected Finder Items
2) New Disk Image { Options:
Show this action when the workflow runs;
Show only the selected items (check Volume name, Save as, in) }

Can't create disk image of non-commercial DVD

I am trying to create a disk image of a 3.7 Gb non-commercial DVD instructional video using disk utility.
I can only get about 70 per cent of the way through before the reading/writing of the DVD content freezes for a few minutes, and then I get the message:
"unable to create -- copy.cdr - input/output error."
I have tried repeatedly on both my MacBook and desktop Imac with no ability to clone an image of this DVD. (Same results when I try to do the same thing with Roxio Toast 8.)
Are there any workarounds or perhaps a method of determining definitively if the source DVD is copy-protected ? Otherwise, what is causing these repeated input/output errors ? ? ?

I'm giving up on this particular DVD, not worth any more time tryin different permutations that al seem to fail.
I would have thought someone would have been able to write a software program that will copy ANY DVD --even one with errors in file names etc, since that's what copying routines are supposed to do. This DVD I am trying to copy plays just fine on the Mac, auto-starting DVD player when it is inserted and there are no problems wth either audio or video thru multiple chapters. So the disk can't be THAT bad if it is supposedly error-prone. and yet I get errors when trying to make a simple mirror image of this dame DVD. Go figure ????
If it has such terrible errors, why does it play fine on the Mac and on our living room DVD player as well ??
How do I copy it ??? - "errors" and all . Is there software that will ignore "errors" and just copy the darn thing errors and all ?
this is a very confusing business of too many conflicting standards I guess.

Disk image on desktop

What does it mean, and what did I do wrong, if every time I click on a program, it mounts to the desktop like it did when I first installed it, thereby leaving the image on the desktop until I eject it?

Jargra,
A Disk Image is like a "virtual disk" contained in a single file. This is the "disk image file." When the file is opened, the "volume" it represents is mounted on your Desktop just like a physical disk. Once mounted, it behaves like a physical disk.
Many OS X applications come in disk images. You are supposed to either 1) run the installer that is stored in the disk image, or 2) drag the application that is stored in the disk image to your "Applications" folder.
I think your confusion comes from the idea that dragging the application, still located in the disk image, to your Dock will "install" it. In fact, all this does is create a shortcut to the application that is still located in the disk image.
Mount the disk image on your Desktop. Open it up, and find the application that is stored there. Open your hard drive, then open the "Applications" folder. Drag the application from the disk image to the "Applications" folder. You can now eject the disk image, find the disk image file, drag it to the trash and empty it. Once you have done this, drag the current icon for that application out of your Dock. Locate the copy of the application that is now in your "Applications" folder and drag it to your Dock.
Scott

Problems with ecrypted disk image

I'm trying to restore my laptop (Titanium DVI) from an encrypted disk image, and am having no luck. I have my laptop in target disk mode hooked up to a Mac Pro with the backup disk image.
When I use Disk Utility and attempt a restore, it prompts me for the disk image password, and it starts copying (and apparently succeeds in copying some items). But then after only a few seconds, it prompts me for the disk image password again, and I enter it again, and then I get an error 2, no such file or directory and it dies. After this subsequent attempts without rebooting result in error 16, Resource busy. Finder shows no disks mounted, but a ls of /Volumes shows that there are in fact copies mounted there. unmounting them from the command line does not clear the resource busy problem, but rebooting does.
I thought maybe the encryption is confusing things -- support for this seems sketchy. There seems to be no provision with command-line asr to deal with encrypted disk images. Also, hdiutil can do some things, but for instance I can't use convert to read the old disk image and create a new one, because it tries to apply the -stdinpass option to the new image, not the old one. I'd like to try making an unencrypted image to see if that is causing the problem.
edited to add that I'm doing an erase restore.
tom

You choice. Since the immediate problem's was solved, you might want to start a new thread on the diskutil issue in the Unix forum: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735 and start a new one in the Using Mac OS X Tiger forum on any Disk Utility issues.

Disk Image/CD-R Confusion

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