Restoring Partition Using Disk Utility....

I am trying to restore a partition as an emergency data recovery, and I need to restore the whole partition as-is, so I used Disk Image to create a .dmg. Now I keep running into the error "Could not validate source - Device not configured". The partition is not in an Apple format, but I need it restored none the less. Is there a way to disable the validate so it just simply copies the contents of the Disk Image to my other drive?

Yes i do as well as my old Mac using friends do this also. Having a bootable clone before big updates is a greatest way to save a state of OS X just before a big update! This way if something goes wrong you have a backup to boot or copy back over to your drive. This way you are always safe, bonus that in OS X you can boot from these "clones"!
Time Machine has it place to but to bring it back over you have to have the current install disk to do that.

Similar Messages

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or re

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or remove windows partition.

Hi, Ralph,
The problem is that I did erase the partition, using disk utility, but I can't go back to my original disk size pre-partition, as disk utility won't let me do it and gives the message "Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed." When I try to use Boot Camp Assistant it won't let me select the third option to remove windows.

Resized partition using Disk Utility and now Windows 7 will not boot

Hi,
Hopefully someone can help me!!
I had previously used Boot Camp to install Windows 7. However, I later realised I had not given myself anywhere near enough disk space as I started using Windows for things I hadn't originally planned on using it for.
Anyway, long story short, to solve the problem I uninstalled some applications on my Mac OSX and used Disk Utility to decrease the size of my Mac partition. My plan was then to reboot to Windows and use a Windows application to increase the size of the Windows partition. However - I coudln't even get that far.
Upon decreasing the size of my Mac partition (succesfully) I restarted my Mac in order to boot to Windows. However, I was greeted with a message along the lines of "unable to boot to Windows please insert boot disk and press any key" (I can't remember the exact message).
I was wondering if anyone knows of any way to restore my Windows partition, retaining all of my previously saved files on my Windows disk. It's probably a long shot, but the thought of losing everything I have been working on for the last few months is a sickening one.
What does give me a bit of hope is that, if I click Boot Camp it seems to recognise that Windows 7 is installed as the option that appears is to uninstall it.
Furthermore, if I view partitions in Disk Utility, a "DISK0S4" is listed. However, it's only at 20gb - if this WAS my BootCamp partition previously, it was originally at something around 60gb (I think - either way, definitely bigger than 20gb!).
On top of this, my current Macintosh HD parition is at 260gb and with the DISK0S4 partition at 20.21gb, there seems to be some space missing... I'm hoping this is the files I've been working on over the last few months!
Anyway, I've done some searching on the net and it *seems* that GPT fdisk *might* be my savour. I've downloaded it but have no idea how to use it and don't plan on playing about with it as I could no doubt do some real damage. If it is likely to solve my problem however, I'm certainly more than capable of being walked through what I need to do.
Please help!

Hi Christopher,
I also have problems with Windows rebooting after partition resize trying to reduce Mac side and increase Windows side. I do not see the BootCamp partition labelled as such while running disk utility. The Windows partition shows up when I boot up while pressing the ALT key. However, when I try to run Windows, it says " error loading operatig system".
I also followed instruction and went through to run gdisk successfully. Results towards the end.
What can be done? Windows still does not boot and It shows ? Suspicious MBR at sector 0.
Below is information based on typical questions you ask.
diskutil list
/dev/disk0   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE        IDENTIFIER
   0:              GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB     disk0
   1:                                           EFI                         209.7 MB     disk0s1
   2:                         Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            78.5 GB     disk0s2
   3:                       Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB     disk0s3
   4:                   Microsoft Basic Data                         31.7 GB      disk0s4
sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=120034123776; sectorsize=512; blocks=234441648
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 234441647
      start       size            index       contents
          0          1                             MBR
          1          1                             Pri GPT header
          2         32                            Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600           1            GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640 153240016      2            GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
153649656    1269544     3            GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
154919200   17628896
172548096   61892608    4            GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
234440704        911
234441615         32                       Sec GPT table
234441647          1                        Sec GPT header
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 14593/255/63 [234441648 sectors]Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 254 63 [         1 - 172548095] <Unknown ID>
*2: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 172548096 -   61892608] HPFS/QNX/AUX
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.7
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): r
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h
WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.
Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 4
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y
Creating entry for GPT partition #4 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07):
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y
Unused partition space(s) found. Use one to protect more partitions? (Y/N): n
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): o
Disk size is 234441648 sectors (111.8 GiB)
MBR disk identifier: "DELETED INFO"
MBR partitions:
Number Boot Start Sector   End Sector   Status      Code
   1                               1    172548095   primary     0xEE
   2           *     172548096    234440703   primary     0x07
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk2.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.

Partitioning using Disk Utility Gone Wrong

I have been attempting to partition my hard drive so that I can install windows 7 to my computer (Late 2010 Macbook Pro, 13inch, currently using Mavericks), but Bootcamp was not working for whatever reason. I instead tried to partition my hard drive using Disk Utility, and after getting about half way through the partition process, realized that I had not changed the size of the new partition to the size I wanted (automatically, the new partition takes up half of the hard drive, but I wanted it to take up much less than that). I closed out of Disk Utility in an attempt to cancel the partition process, and a pop up told me that I had "unsaved changes" to the partition that would be lost. Thinking that I wanted to lose the changes, I clicked accept, and exited out of the program. However, now, Disk Utility is claiming that I only have about 12 GB of space left on my hard drive, even though I had over 200GB left before. How do I get this space back?

Last login: Thu Apr 10 18:03:08 on console
wr-130-64-184-253:~ betsyk$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            319.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
wr-130-64-184-253:~ betsyk$ diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
wr-130-64-184-253:~ betsyk$ mount
/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
wr-130-64-184-253:~ betsyk$ df -m /
Filesystem   1M-blocks   Used Available Capacity iused   ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2    304425 274476     29698    91% 70329971 7602931   90%   /
wr-130-64-184-253:~ betsykirtland$

Cloning drive to external & partitioning using Disk Utility.....!

Hi,
I wonder if someone is able to answer my questions and offer some advice and help.....?
I am purchasing a new external drive and would like to know how to clone the internal drive of my Power Mac G4 using disk Utility to the external drive, so that it is also bootable. I have seen that there seems to be more then one way of doing this within disk utility, but would like to know which is the best way?
1. Please could you take me thorough the steps as I have never done this before?
2. Would it be wise to partition the external drive to keep the cloned bootable system seperate from the rest of the content that will be placed on the external drive or not? If so again please could you take me through the steps on how to do this (partition external drive)?
3. Prior to partitioning the drive is it necessary to delete the new external drive even though there is nothing on it? As I read someone that this need to be done, but didn't quite get that!
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Hello,
Hopefully it'll be an External Firewire drive, as USB cannit be booted from on PPC Macs.
I wouldn't use Disk Utility, there are easier ones for free.
I strongly recommend that you get a good Firewire drive to Clone your Internal drive to...
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/firewire+drives
Many of those come with Backup SW, or...
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
2. It depends how big the new drive is & how much space is used on the current drive.
OSX loves lots of free space on it's boot drive for VM & other temp files, I don't feel 50% is too much free space to leave.
3. Normally isn't needed to Zero the Drive, but you may have to foprmat it...
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html

How can I repair my OS X Boot Disk without a Recovery Partition (Using Disk Utility)

Hey there,
I recently found that my OS X boot partition is corrupt (using DU's "Verify Disk" function). I would like to repair it using Disk Utility, but that would require me to boot from the Recovery Partition, which is a problem...
I have Ubuntu installed on a separate partition on my internal hard drive (using a Hybrid GPT - MBR Setup). Because of this, the Mountain Lion Installer wasn't able to install the Recovery Partition.
What is the best way to get Disk Utility to repair the disk in this situation. I know that I could boot another OS X install from an external hard drive and use that to repair the disk. This is a bad option for me because I don't really have a spare external hard drive that I could use (or partition)... Other than that, I'm clueless
Thanks in advance

Unless you install Mountain Lion properly you'll not have a Recovery HD partition. Your options are to install Mountain Lion on another drive from which to boot the computer should you need to use Disk Utility. Or you can try this:
Boot into single-user mode. After startup is completed you will be in command line mode and should see a prompt with a cursor positioned after it. At the prompt enter the following then press RETURN:
/sbin/fsck -fy
If you receive a message that says "***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****" then re-run the command until you receive a message that says "** The volume (name_of_volume) appears to be OK." If you re-run the command more than seven times and do not get the OK message, then the drive cannot be repaired this way. If you were successful then enter:
reboot
and press RETURN to restart the computer.

To Shrink a filevault 2 partition using Disk Utility, decrypt it first

Just a tip for others: while trying to enlarge a bootcamp partition, I discovered that Disk Utility under Mountain Lion 10.8 will give you a strange (and misleading) error if you try to shrink a partition that's encrypted with filevault 2.
The solution is to turn off encryption, let the drive fully decrypt.
Then reboot (if you don't reboot, Disk Utility seems confused and shows a duplicate ghost version of your drive).
Then use DU to resize the partition.

Click the partioned disk > Hit Erase Tab >
Under "Format" Select "MAC OS Extended Journaled, Encrypted
Click "Erase"
Set Password ..
Done

If leopard won't boot from dvd, use disk utility mount to partition

wanted to share a way that i successfully installed os 9, tiger, and leopard on 1 hard drive. first of all, leopard was the only installation that i had difficulty with. it would not boot off the original dvd, no matter if i held down the 'c' key or the option key, so this is what i did after a lot of reading on the internet to try and troubleshoot this issue.
First thing i did was partition my internal hard drive in 3 partitions using disk utility. the 3rd partition was around 9gb. I installed os9 first on the 1st partition, i then installed tiger on that same partition. then i put in my leopard dvd, and opened up disk utility. and clicked on "restore", and dragged the dvd image as the "source", and chose the 9gb partition as the destination, and clicked on restore. then, i changed the "startup disk" to start from the 9gb where i just restored the image, and rebooted, and went through the leopard setup and chose the 2nd partition as the place to install. this should work with the dvd, or if you made an image from the dvd. I hope this helps someone else whose dvd won't boot, because it was very frustrating after you purchase a faster processor, and faster video card so that your system meets the requirements, and then the dvd won't boot.

Two ways. Use another computer to restore the install disc to one of those ext HD. Then, use it to boot the other machine. Get an ext CD/DVD reader and use it to read the install disc and boot the machine. However, if both the HD and optical reader are kaput, then a trip to an Apple repair station is in order.

Using Disk Utility to partition drive

After downloading a system update yesterday my mac mini hard drive is no longer bootable. The recovery HD is unbootable, too.
When I boot up using the install CD I can run Disk Utility and see that there are no problems reported with the hard drive, but I cannot repair permissions (No valid packages).
If I restore the operating system from the CD my only option is to erase the hard drive.
But what if ...
I create a new partition using Disk Utility?
There's loads of free space on the drive, but if I attempt to create a new partition will I wipe out existing data?
If I succeed in creating a new partition would I be able to restore the operating system there without erasing the hard drive?
Would it be possible then in some way to restore my user account data?
I'm just trying to avoid the hassle of re-installing my applications and recovering my data files from backup. It seems like the data is still all there on the hard drive except that something went wrong during the system update that renders the disk unusable.
Any help appreciated.

Yep, that is too old...
Mac mini
Mac OS X Install Disk 1
Mac OS X version 10.4.7
AHT version 3A102
Disc version 1.1
2Z691-5887-A
Mac OS X Install Disk 2
Disc version 1.0
ZZ691-5860-A

Can't create a 3rd partition in Disk Utility

Long story short I have used Boot Camp to get Windows, so I have 2 partitions. But, I need to create another partition to install another copy of Windows on it, but Disk Utility has grayed out the '+' to allow me to create a new partition. All I can do is delete the 'BOOTCAMP' partition which I don't want to do. I tried another way by going into Boot Camp Assistant and installing Windows through there. I have a bootable USB drive and I know how to install it, all that's stopping me is the partition issue.
Any ideas?
If it helps, I'm using a Late 2013 MacBook Pro with a 15" Retina Display, 2.5 GHz, 512 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM and a NVIDIA GT 750 M.
Thank you for your help

Good thing to mention that, I forgot to do that.
Unfortunately it did not help.. The screen to remove the existing Boot Camp partition does not pop up, it just tries to create the new Boot Camp partition.
The partition I'm trying to create it 150GB. The 50GB mentioned above was on the stock Fujitsu 250GB disk.
Edit:
I'm actually trying to avoid using Boot Camp Assistant.. I became to dislike the utility due to problems creating a partition on my previous HD.
I would like to create a partition using Disk Utility and then install Windows 7 by selecting that DVD to boot from.
Thank you for the tip though, I'll post it there as well!

How can you change the primary partition in Disk Utility?

I have made another partition using Disk Utility to install Snow Leopard. On my main partition Lion is installed but when i boot into Snow Leopard and try to delete the Lion partition it comes with an error "This operation requires a newer version of Mac OS X for this disk". I tried deleting the partition from Recovery HD but it says it couldn't unmount the disk.
Is this because Lion is the main partition, can you even delete the main partition?
And if I do delete the main partition will i be able to move the Snow Leopard partition "upwards" in Disk Utility?

ralphfromhome wrote:
1) First of all what is GUID.
It's the "partition map scheme" Apple uses so your firmware knows what is what on your boot drive, what partitions there are and what format they contain.
2) Secondly, would I just be able to make a new image in disk utility and use that instead of an external hard drive?
No, you need something to boot off of and remove all data off the internal drive that's going to be reformatted with a new parttion, that's why you use the free Carbon Copy Cloner, it does both in one shot and it "blesses" the drive to make it bootable.
3) When I use Carbon Copy cloner will it only copy Snow Leopard Installation or all of my files also?
It copies everything in your Snow Leopard partition to the external drive, files, programs the OS everything except whats in the Trash.
4) In your 8th step you mentioned repairing permissions on both. Both of what?
Both drives, the internal and the external clone in Disk Utility (ignore the long list that appears)
It's a safety check to make sure your permissions are set back to original settings, I think the newer version of CCC now does this, but I havent' checked, doesn't hurt to do it again.
5) If you still feel like typing can you tell me how long this whole process might take?
Formatting a external drive
You should Erase with Zero option first, that will take a hour per 500GB
Formatting shoud be rather fast, a few minutes.
Cloning Snow Leopard to the external drive should take about a hour per 500GB
Formatting the internal drive a zero erase first for safety should take another hour per 500GB
Reverse cloning Snow Leopard back onto the internal drive should take another hour per 500GB
Good thing about it, it's pretty much all ciick and go watch TV while it works.
I was actually planning to make a Genius Bar appointment to fix it, by the way does that cost much?
No idea, but you don't have to pay if you get a external drive for $70 or so, CCC is free.
You get to keep the external drive and use it later for cloning as hard drives die all the time, the clone would get you back to using the computer.

I need help with boot camp. "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."

This message appears every time I try to partition my disk:
"Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."
I verified my Macintosh HD disk on Disk utility and then tried to repair it, but I am unable to click the repair button.
It says it's not available because the startup disk is selected.
I don't know what to do or how to go about both these problems.
Please, any suggestions?

This message appears every time I try to partition my disk:
"Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."
I verified my Macintosh HD disk on Disk utility and then tried to repair it, but I am unable to click the repair button.
It says it's not available because the startup disk is selected.
I don't know what to do or how to go about both these problems.
Please, any suggestions?

Using Disk Utility to restore/copy disk - who is correct?

I had two long talks with two separate Apple Care people online today who both insisted what they were saying was right and the other person was wrong.
Hmm....
My question is this.
I have a MBP and the internal HD is currently empty. I've been running off of an external HD for about a year now.
I want to clone my external HD into my internal HD and use the internal HD as my system disk now.
One Apple Care person said to go into Disk Utility, select the source disk, from the tabs on the right hand side select Restore and then drag the source disk into the source field, drag the target disk into the target field and press restore. She said this will make a complete clone of the external HD in the internal HD.
The other Apple Care person said "No no no. You can't do that to clone a system disk that way." He said the best thing was to install a new system and then use the restore as a new system from Time Machine option (where I also have a backup.)
I believe the second method will work, but it's more cumbersome for me because I haven't been backing up everything in Time Machine. I have excluded items, such as podcasts and Parallels disk images.
If I could do this from the external system disk life would be easier.
But is the first Apple Support person right or wrong about this? Can I use Disk Utility to copy the system disk from one external HD to another that way?
Thanks,
doug
p.s. I am not in the market for 3rd party software to deal with this one-time issue, so if possible I would like to accomplish this using OS X included features...

The advantage is CCC has built in routines that "bless" (see the Terminal.app command "bless") the
os x installation so it will boot properly on the new volume it is being installed on.
Disk Utility simply copies (restores) files from one volume to another. Many times this works just fine.
Sometimes it won't boot afterwards. Most of the time (as long as there are no system files missing
or corrupted) a person may "bless" the drive and restore it to working condition.
CCC is not a "magical" application, it is in fact a front end to applications that already exist separately
in OS X (asr, hdiutil, diskutil, bless, etc.).
It doesn't matter to me how you do it. It's your time not mine. Everyone should spend some time
behind the command line in terminal. I do many tasks using the command line, including and not
limited to complete system restores, backing up data, disk partitioning, installing software, disk
repair, permissions repair, ACL management, restoring data, managing disk images, network
management, user management, file management, etc. Many people are fearful of the command
line. I feel just the opposite, I'm fearful without it.
Say Hello to my little friend.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/Command_Line_Adminv10.5.pdf
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unixopensource/clix.html
http://www.macobserver.com/tips/macosxcl101/index.html
http://www.matisse.net/OSX/darwin_commands.html
Kj

I accidently used Disk Utility to fix a partition. I cant boot in with any USB drive. Help.

I accidentally used Disk Utility to fix a partition. It erased it. I desperately need to restore it.
I have an imac without a cdrom. How do I create a bootable usb with testdisk as for some bizarre reason it seems impossible to create a bootable usb drive for osx. I tried GParted and the ultimate boot disk that both have test disk.
I am stumped. Why can't I boot into my imac with a usb? I have a mac air that I just cant seem to create a usb drive with testdrive thats bootable. I even tried rEFit but no luck.
Anyone have an idea? How do I fix my system ?

I have an imac OSX 10.8.
I tried creating a usb drive of testdisk on my mac air so that I could use it to boot into the iMAC and restore the partition table.
I created it using:
hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o target.img ~/Desktop/ubcd530.iso
dd if=./target.img.dmg of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m
It did not work. It would not boot. I also tried Gnome Partition tool and that did not boot either. I need my old system as it has important data
Any tips? Thanks!

Use Disk Utility "Restore" to clone system Drive

I have always recommended that everyone use the Restore function under Disk Utility to clone their drive before each update, just incase one needs to quickly fall back to a working release.
Well I decided to test my cloned drive, and to make a long story short, be sure that you boot from a different drive than the one you want to clone. A clone made from the current/active startup drive does NOT boot (well mine would not boot).
So, boot from a backup drive/partition, one that is Panther works best as you do not have to worry about spotlight, or dashboard, or any of the other "cool" Tiger auto running programs getting in the way, then go into Disk Utility, and Restore, and clone your main startup drive. It creates a drive that will actually boot.
Maybe this was obvious to everyone, but I had been making my backup clone drive for the past year right from my main active startup drive. I never received an error that indicated there would be any problem with the cloned drive. Thank goodness that I NEVER had to use the backup.
Now I sleep peacefully at night, knowing I have a bootable replacement startup drive ready to go at a moments notice.
bob

CCC has worked fine with 10.3.x but I have been having some issues getting the backup of 10.4 to be recognized.
I don't know if it is the disk (it's on a partition of a sloooow lacie) or the nature of the clone. In either case, it takes a couple of tries before the drive is found as a boot drive and it is a pain....
After a hugely painful and very, very expensive experience with failed backups (we lost the entire office's electronic records going back for 3 years), I have gotten in the habit of booting off the backups once every few weeks to verify they work.
In the immortal words of journalist and fiction writer Damon Runyon, "Trust, but verify."
Cheers,
x
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Restoring Partition Using Disk Utility....

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