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.

Similar Messages

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.

Various disk actions ask for the PW to my encrypted disk image, even though I'm not accessing this. Help

I have a small portion of hy hard drive set aside as an encrypted disk image. Since installing OSX Lion, various actions that dont require access to that disk image (printing to PDF, opening Aperture) ask for the password, and wont do anything til I provide that password. Has anyone else run into this, or more importantly, found a solution?
Thanks
Ted

See Here for Troubleshooting
Free Disc Space
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
See Here for Resolving Startup Issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417

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

Problem creating encrypted disk image

I have just moved from an Aluminium PB G4 with 10.3.9, on which I successfully created encrypted disk images and sparse images.
I now want to do the same on a brand new WD My Book attached to the new Macbook Pro. I open Disk Utility and click New Image. But when I do so, there are fewer options than there are on the old machine. I only have
Save As
Where
Image Format
Encryption
No option for specifying size, no sparse option.
Also, if I try and create a dmg on the My Book, I get 'Unable to create "myfilename.dmg". (Invalid argument)'
Any suggestions? Thanks

V.K.'s suggestion worked. Thank you. But now I've found that I get the full set of options in Disk Utility too. Baffled.
In the week I've been using my new Macbook Pro, I seem to be getting eerily similar experiences, i.e. apps don't work right, then I quit and next time they behave themselves. Yes, I know it sounds weird.
Is this an appropriate place for me to ask further questions. Namely, what's the best place to find out about 1. read/write v. sparse disk v. sparse bundle? 2. partitions - should I used them, whatever they are? and 3. why are the bigger disk images called CDs and DVDs? If I want a passworded place to put files on my external drive, bigger than 500MB, is there any reason not to use one of the CD/DVD size options?
Thanks

Disk Utility - Create encrypted disk images super sloooow

Trying to create encrypted disk images via Disk Utility on my iMac (i7 8GB) is super-slow in 10.8. It worked quite fast in 10.7, but now it's super-slow and doesn't even seem to ever finish.
I've tried re-installing 10.8 with no difference.
Anyone else having trouble with this? Even a small dmg (~200MB) doesn't seem to work.
Unencrypted images seem to work OK (if not a little slow).
I realize that the encryption process will be slower but something is definately wrong with 10.8 disk utility in this regard. I have 1TB+ free space. I have tried with another user account as well.
My task was: (new disk image, read-write, 128bit encryption)
2012-09-03 08:59:59 -0400: Initializing…
2012-09-03 09:00:00 -0400: Creating…
2012-09-03 09:03:28 -0400: Copying… <<< seems to be stuck here...

Good morning,
Have you tried using Disk Utility from within the recovery mode? (Hold down CMD and R when booting)
I used to have this problem but creating them this way really improved the time.
Give it a go...
Rob

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 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 sometimes mounts without password

I have an encrypted sparsebundle disk image containing sensitive information. On occasion (maybe one time out of ten), I'm able to mount it without being prompted for the password.
The password for the image is not stored in my keychain. Can anyone offer advice on this issue?

I was having exactly this same problem!
I keep a small encrypted disk image storing sensitive banking information. I do NOT have the option to store passwords in Keychain checked, and I verified that the password is not being stored in Keychain.
Yet, when I double-clicked the supposedly encrypted sparsebundle disk image, it opened right up and mounted - no password required! Unbelievable, right? So I started to investigate.
I first noticed this behaviour in Mountain Lion, I'm running 10.8.4 on a 2.7 GHz 15" MBPr.
In past versions of OS X I would mount the volume to work on it by double-clicking on the disk image, enter my passowrd, and then Eject the volume either by dragging to the trash or clicking the Eject button on the Sidebar. The next time I would try to access the disk image by double-clicking it, it would again prompt for a password. All good.
What seems to be happening in ML is, using the same workflow, even though the volume is disappearing from Finder, the disk image is not actually being unmounted!
When I go to Disk Utility, the disk image is still mounted, but the volume is grayed out. When I Eject the disk image in Disk Utility, it then reverts to the expected bahaviour, and double-clicking on the disk prompts for a password.
So the workaround seems to be when finished working on the volume, go to Disk Utility and manually Eject the disk image (as opposed to just the volume it mounts) to ensure it has unmounted and is thus again encrypted. The reason for it sometimes requiring a password, sometimes not is probably because after a restart of the computer it would unmount all disks, and then be unable to re-mount it until the password is entered. But in between, unless you were aware of this behaviour anyone with access to the disk image can view its contents.
What a terrible security flaw IMO, as there is no visual indication in Finder that the disk image is still unprotected after you unmount its volume and that icon disappears! I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention.
Incidentally brian_c, I tried to look at your linked videos but it returns the message that the videos violated the TOS of the site...?

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.

Backing up to encrypted disk image on an external usb drive

I'd like to use an encrypted disk image on an external USB drive as the target for my Time Machine backups, but it seems that Time Machine will only recognize physical external drives, and not mounted disk images in the "Change Disk..." window.
Is it possible to make Time Machine use disk images mounted from an external USB drive?
Thanks.

..."Is it possible to make Time Machine use disk images mounted from an external USB drive?"...
Actually, with a few caveats, it is possible.
Just follow one of the many tutorials on the web for creating an encrypted sparse bundle for use with "TimeMachine" on a network volume (i.e. MACaddress.sparsebundle naming convention, password stored to the system keychain, etc.), and then attach the drive locally and select the drive (not the mounted disk image) as the backup drive. As "Glen Carter" reported in another thread on this site, "TimeMachine" is smart enough to know to mount the disk image for backups when the drive is connected locally.
There are caveats for example, - while backups remain automatic, it appears that actually browsing the backups requires that the disk image be mounted manually first, then accessed via the "Browse Other Time Machine Disks…" option.
One caveat to pay particular attention to is what happens when the drive starts to fill up and space becomes limiting - the processes of deleting expired backups and sparse image compaction may not be well integrated, as discussed here:
http://www.flokru.org/2008/03/15/time-machine-backups-on-network-shares-2-possib le-problems/
The article implies that the end result could be deletion of all backups! The article is dated March 2008 but I have no idea whether the issue has been resolved.
Just be advised that it is an unsupported configuration so the extra security will come at the cost of some convenience and potential increase in the chance of data loss. Most users recommend using supplemental backup strategies since the intended purpose of TimeMachine is actually very limited and often misunderstood. Apart from that, it is a rule written in stone that whenever encryption is used, the encrypted items themselves must be backed up.

Can you resize a encrypted disk image on a sparsebundle disk image?

I created a 50GB encrypted sparsebundle disk image on my desktop. I named it BOB and also named the encrypted disk image BOB.
It's now full.
I've just made it 60GB with Disk Utility.
I opened it but on trying to copy a 4GB file into it, I got a message saying my sparsebundle disk image is too small.
Note: Disk Utility says the following:
BOB sparsebundle is 61.4GB
mounted volume BOB is 52.1GB
Hope that's clear.
Any help would be most appreciated.

I created a 50GB encrypted sparsebundle disk image on my desktop.
hdiutil resize -size 60g BOB.sparsebundle
Result: "resize failed. File or directory does not exist"
You need to tell hdiutil where to find the target BOB.sparsebundle file. You could either specify a relative or absolute file path in the command itself, or else you could first change the current working directory to the Desktop. So if you wanted to pursue using Terminal, the second way would be to enter this command:
cd ~/Desktop
and then try the same hdiutil command again.
I'm not familiar with the hdiutil command, and I don't know if the above would work. My own feeling is that trying to manipulate an image file by experimenting with hdiutil entails a risk of corrupting the image file and losing its contents, and it is therefore essential to back up the image file first. But if you are going take the time and space needed for a backup, you might as well instead just create a new, empty 60GB (or larger!) sparsebundle disk image, and copy the contents of your old disk image into the new one. This would not involve any risks, and you'd end up with the larger disk image that you wanted. You could then delete the original, if you wished.

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

Encrypted Disk Image Seems Full But Is Not 10.5.6

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