Ok to use computer while restoring a drive with Disk Utility?

Hey everyone,
I'm backing up my HD onto an external by using Disk Utility's restore function. I was wondering if it was ok for me to use my computer during this process or if it'll screw up the process. I know it'll make it go slower, but I was wondering if that was the only draw back.
Thanks alot!
Message was edited by: ewanog

No, not is not wise. Run the program and than continue. I know this takes a while, yet wait until you go to Leopard, in which the average time is over 10 minutes. But, please do not interrupt Disk Utility.
Ray

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By the way, the disk used to formatted as a windows disk. I suspect it has something to do with it but have no idea what. Any help is greatly appreciated!

HI - i do not think this is purely metadata. (though it could be with your windows disk with such small used memory) i have a 1TB macbook pro drive that i have tried to reformat
METHOD 1 (recommended by advanced Apple Techy) - select hard drive (not partition) select mac os (journalled) and press 'apply' - "this will format drive removing all data. it is always best to work with the drive and not partition, if you are formatting an entire drive."
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED
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result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED

Can't use or fix external hard drive in Disk Utility or Terminal

I have a 1TB Toshiba external USB drive that I was using for Time Machine and other storage. A couple of weeks ago I accidentally unplugged it when it was in the "Preparing Backup" stage of Time Machine.
Since then, when I plug it in, the light on the drive goes on and it spins, but it doesn't show up on the desktop or according to Time Machine. It DOES show up in Disk Utility with the correct partition showing. However, I have tried to erase and partition the drive and I keep getting the message that Disk Utility can not unmount the drive. I tried using Terminal to force unmount the drive and it also failed.
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No using the drive, no repairing, no unmounting, no partitioning, nothing works.
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Thanks!

Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and try to partition the drive. If you can't, it's not working (or perhaps the cable is damaged.)

Cant restore my macbook with Disk utility and my .dmg image

My macbook would not boot anymore. Stuck on gray screen with apple logo, spinning wheel and a loading bar for a while after shutting off.
I was able to get to Disk Utility in the recovery mode and, after a while, was able to make an image of my filesin an attempt to back them up.
The .dmg was put on an external and i checked it on my imac, i could open the .dmg file and browse all my files from my macbook, so those are safe!
After that i tried to wipe the SSD of my macbook and put the image back but that didn't work, also some resource is busy errors.
After trying this a few times without succes i figured i'd try to do a clean install. This worked.
My macbook air is working again but if Iuse Disk Utility in the recovery now and try and restore my image (.dmg file) it gives me Restore Failure; An error (-16) occured (resource busy) as well. I also tried to copy the dmg onto my macbook and run disc utility when booted into OSX. I open up the back up .dmg with Disk utility, then i go to my macbooks partition (Macontiosh HD) and use that as a destination and drag the mounted image as the source as shown on the image below. Am I doing something wrong here?
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I considered just transferring the files after opening the .dmg file but this works only for documents and not for programs and settings of the default apps.
I've looked all over the Internet and it seems more people have had this error but then with making the image, they also suggest unmounting the destination disk before trying to restore but my destination is Macintosh HD, i cant really unmount that can i?
Thanks in advance!

To make a clone, in the future you need to use a program like superduper or carbon copy cloner.
Either program makes an identical clone while preserving certain system files and marking/indicating to OS X that the clone is bootable.
Using Disk Utility to make a DMG was a good idea, but this will not yield a bootable image.
If Disk Utility could do a 1:1 copy of everything, then people would be using it to rip/duplicate DVDs.
But Disk Utility does not (it leaves out certain invisible/system files), hence it cannot duplicate/clone a hard drive or DVD.

Copying a drive with Disk Utility

I have a USB drive used for Time Machine that is failing. Disk Utility says it can't fix it, but says I can copy files from it.
I attached a new drive and am using Disk Utility's "Restore" function to clone the new drive from the failing one (both are 1TB drives).
Disk Utility says on the screen that it is "copying blocks". Does this mean it's doing an image copy rather than a file-by-file copy? It seems to me an image copy in this case might be bad, because it could cause any file or directory corruption on the old drive to be copied to the new drive.
Are my worries justified? Would I be better off just using the Finder to copy files? Are there third-party programs that might be better? (DiskWarrior says it can't fix the old drive because of insufficient memory.)

I have SuperDuper! but didn't have it installed on that machine and thought I would give the Disk Utility process a try.
I'm fairly sure SuperDuper! must use file copying, not image copying, and I suspect Disk Utility does too. But that "copying blocks" message made me wonder.
BTW, Disk Utility is telling me it's going to take over 24 hours to copy the terabyte. Both drives are connected via USB 2.0.

Can I create a raid drive with disk utility

I recently bought a 2TB seat gate external drive.
I want to use this drive with time machieve as well as set it up as a raid drive to strode photos.
Is this possible to do with disk utility?

Hello
you can not make any kind on RAID type with only one hard drive you need at least tow drive to perform a RAID volume
then , hard drive utility can be use to perform software raid ( Level 0 an Level 1 only )
for more info about RAID technologie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Pierre

Problem Erasing external drive with Disk Utility

I've just purchased some Western Digital My Book Pro 1Tb firewire drives. They come pre-formatted for Windows. When I try to initialize them, Disk Utility returns a failed message & the drive then disappears from the desktop. It is still visible in Disk Utility. I can reformat as a FAT partition but not as a Mac partition. I tried connecting the drive to machine running Tiger and was able to format as a Mac partition. Is there a problem with Disk Utility in Leopard?

I have seen some behavior like this a few times before. When this happens I go to my Linux box and dd a bunch of zeros to the beginning of the drive, this will blow away any partition tables and such.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=100k
This writes 50MB of zeros to the raw device "sdb" (this may be different depending on your system)
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How to Solve Problem Restoring Hard Drive on Disk Utility?

Hi everyone, my hard drive recently crashed. I got a new one placed in my computer, and I'm trying to recover data off of the one that crashed and transfer it onto my existing hard drive (which is larger in capacity than the one that crashed). I got this crashed hard drive tested, and the data is still intact; I was told that it will be possible to recovery data off of it. I bought an enclosure to place my crashed hard drive in, and I connected it to my MacBook Pro using a USB cable. Disk Utility then automatically opened. Upon going to the restore window in Disk Utility, I'm unable to drag down the name of the crashed hard drive into the source window, nor my existing hard drive into the destination window. No error message comes up; Disk Utility simply won't let me drag the names of these drives into these respective fields. Does anyone know how I can get Disk Utility to let me drag each respective drive into the source and destination fields? Thanks.

I don't know if Disk Utility is going to be of much help - you may want to try rescuing your data using Data Rescue 3 or some other data recovery application. I've tested Data Rescue 3 and found that I had excellent results.
Good luck,
Clinton

Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
Hello
Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder. The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears.
1. It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out.
2. I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok. I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
3. So I clicked repair, "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk..restore as many as your backed-up files...etc."
4. No problem (the data on the hard drive is used for my Time Machine back ups and my current internal hard drive is working fine with all the data intact)
5. Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
6. Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks. I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup). I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew. How else would I go about this?
(pictures for reference)
Thank you all

If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

Unable to verify or repair my external hard drive with disk utility, reason being ...

Hello there,
I have been facing this problem: After I started getting an error 50 error while trying to view in Quicktime player a movie which I had exported from FCPX today, I found that I was not even able to trash the movie [this was a test movie used for export and I had no need for the same]. A little while later when I opened FCPX, I found this message pop up:
Got a little worried and then tried to verify and repair my hard drives using disk utility, but I could neither verify nor repair the disk. What should I do now?

Hello Klaus,
I think I have been able to overcome the problem/s.
I have been using my Seagate 2 TB drive [2 USB] with a FW adapter and was using FW connectivity for the past several months without any problems. About 2 months ago I added a 2 TB Lacie, FW, to my workflow and this EHD was daisychained to the Seagate. Had been facing no problem with this arrangement until today.
Now let me try to tell you what I had done:
I ejected the Seagate drive with the intention of reconnecting it again. But, no, when I tried to reconnect, this message came up:
After several attempts, I did this, connected the Lacie by FW to the FW port on the Mac and connected the Seagate by 2 USB. Was I glad to see my Seagate HD icons shining in all their glory on my desktop! I utilised the services of disk utility and was informed that these prodigal sons were absolutely fine.
I also tried to do this: empty the trash. Was I happy to hear the sound of files being cast out?
Well, well, at least I will be able to get some peaceful sleep now! I have not yet opened FCPX, but I trust it will also be reading the Seagate HD once again.
Good night and thanks for being helpful.

Restore mirrored set with disk utility

It is possible to create mirrored set of 2 arrays without destroying the data stored in one of the arrays?

I don't think you'll need another computer or eight hours of downtime. You didn't mention the size of your internal drive but I'd assume the 300gb external will hold it all. I'll also assume the external is a firewire drive, if it's not none of this will work.
This is what I would do:
1. Download Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone your remaining raid slice to the external 300gb drive, and make sure to check the "make bootable" box.
2. In System Preferences set your startup disk to the external.
3. Restart from the external.
4. Run disk Utility to reformat your internal drive. At this point you're going to need to decide wether or not to set it up as a raid again. I don't think I would.
5. Use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone the external back onto your internal drive.
6. System Prefs again to reset the startup drive to your internal.
7. Restart and you should be good to go, and you've got your first backup done on your external.
8. Devise and impliment a backup strategy. Do you need daily/weekly/monthly backups? You'll have to decide how much you can afford to lose if your main drive goes belly up. There are several programs that are easy to set up a backup schedule on, the above mentioned CCC and SuperDuper and a little app called Deja Vu which runs as a system preference pane, is very easy to set up and if I remember is free.
Now, I say all of this not knowing what you do with your external drive to begin with. I am guessing that the raid was set up as a mirror to be a backup if the drive had problems....which is exactly where you are. Personally I would just format it as one drive and backup to the external. If the internal does actually fail you'll still have all your stuff and can run from the external until you replace the internal.
Make sense? I know I rambled a bit but it's really easy.
Dual 2.0, 4 GB, 2x160 GB , SuperDrive, 9800 SE, 20 Aluminum - 15 1.5 PB, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

HT1553 How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
- Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted?
- Could it be because the external hard drive is encrypted?
Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
Any clue?

I always advise Mac users to never:
encrypt a disk
set a firmware password
In my experience they cause more loss of data than they are worth.
On Leopard I always use the latest free Carbon Copy Cloner to backup and clone disks - it is so simple to clone to either a disk or disk image. The free version may not be compatible with later OSs.
As you appear to be on the wrong forum I will follow this with my standard message.
Whilst it may not be your fault I am afraid it appears that your post is on a forum which is not the best for your OS. It will save the time of the unpaid volunteers here, and may resolve your issue faster, if you could examine the list below and see if there is a more appropriate forum to which you could direct your question.
OS X 10.9 Mavericks
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
OS X 10.7 Lion
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
OS X 10.5 Leopard
OS X 10.4 Tiger
OS X 10.3 and earlier
OS 9, OS 8 & System 7
OS X Technologies
OS X Server
iPad
iPhone
iPod
Other

How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
- Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted?
- Could it be because the external hard drive is encrypted?
Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
Any clue?

forget about that and just use the free APP Superduper
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)

Problem partitioning external hard drive with Disk Utility

I'm trying to create a new partition in disk utility in an external hard drive using disk utility and every time I click Apply it says that "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and can't continue. Quit and relaunch Disk Utility". It is a 3TB hard disk and I already created the first partition of 2 TB, and when I click the + symbol to add a 1 TB partition and click Apply is when the error shows up. I have restart the mac, unplugged the hard disk but the error still shows up. Anyone has any idea??? Thanks for your help in advance
David

I solved this issue. I was able to create the partition with the format MS-DOS and then I erased it to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
Now it is working OK. Hope this help someone

Format External Drive with Disk Utility, Make it Windows Compatible

I have formatted my external drive using disk utility, and it works great on my Mac. But no Windows PC can read it, and I need to use it on Windows PCs. I tried formatting as MS-DOS FAT but that didn't work either. What can I do?
Thanks so much in advance.

I've run into the problem fairly regularly were I format a drive as FAT32 on the Mac, but Windows won't read it. I just reformat it from the Windows machine as FAT32. My Mac always reads and writes to it just fine, so it has never been a problem, just a minor mystery.
Francine
Francine
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Ok to use computer while restoring a drive with Disk Utility?

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