.dmg backup file will not mount. Failure not an option.
Let me begin by saying that my lovely wife is, for good reason, currently not very happy with me. Allow me to explain...
I recently decided that it was time to upgrade her iBook G4 from Tiger (10.4.xx, not sure what it was exactly) to Leopard. Her system easily meets the requirements and she would benefit greatly from being able to use Time Machine as a backup solution.
I figured that the first step should be making sure that her existing data was properly backed up and could be selectively restored after the installation of Leopard was complete. I could have performed an Archive Installation of Leopard, but she had data files and folders all over the drive and I felt that a clean installation would be best. So anyway, I booted the system with the Leopard install disc and used Disk Utility to create a .dmg backup of the one and only partition on her hard drive. I used all of the default settings for the creation of this .dmg and saved it to my external USB hard drive which is formatted as a Mac OS Extended volume. Disk Utility gave me no errors at all and the image creation seemed to complete successfully.
With that first step complete, I shut the system down and disconnected the external drive (just to be safe ya know). I, once again, booted the system with the Leopard install disc and "Erase"d the hard drive, created a new Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition and proceeded with the Leopard installation. Once the installation completed, I ran Software Updates until no more updates were available and I was all the way up to 10.5.5. So far, so good.
With Leopard now installed and fully updated, I connected my external hard drive to the system, transferred my .dmg file to the desktop and attempted to mount the volume so that I could begin copying my wife's data to her Home folder. However, when I double-clicked the .dmg I received an error stating that the image failed to mount and gave a reason of "no mountable file systems".
Now before I go any further, I want to stress that my wife's entire digital life is contained in this disk image. She owns her own business and all of the critical data associated with her business is in there. Financial data, several years of tax information, business contacts, many months worth of email... everything. So needless to say, when I saw that error from DiskImageMounter pop up, I immediately felt a little sick to my stomach. Before anybody asks, I have no idea why I didn't test the image file before erasing the hard drive. I should've, I know that, I don't want to talk about it.
I spent the next 4 - 5 hours desperately trying anything I could think of to get access to the data within this .dmg file. I made a copy of it right away so that I wouldn't inadvertently make the situation even worse. I then tried to use Disk Utility to Restore the image, but received an error stating that the image contained an "Unrecognized Filesystem". I get the same error when I try to either verify or repair the volume with Disk Utility. I tried to attach the image using hdiutil in Terminal but got the same "no mountable file systems" error that I got from DiskImageMounter. I have tried to mount the image with Toast and Mount Me! as well with the same results.
Here's the hdiutil imageinfo that I get from the dmg:
Format: UDRW
Backing Store Information:
Name: Macintosh HD.dmg
URL: file ://localhost/Users/barkingshins/Desktop/Macintosh%20HD.dmg
Class Name: CBSDBackingStore
Format Description: raw read/write
Checksum Type: none
partitions:
appendable: false
partition-scheme: none
block-size: 512
burnable: false
partitions:
0:
partition-length: 53948417
partition-synthesized: true
partition-hint: unknown partition
partition-name: whole disk
partition-start: 0
Properties:
Partitioned: false
Software License Agreement: false
Compressed: no
Kernel Compatible: true
Encrypted: false
Checksummed: false
Checksum Value:
Size Information:
Total Bytes: 27621589504
Compressed Bytes: 27621589504
Total Non-Empty Bytes: 27621589504
Sector Count: 53948417
Total Empty Bytes: 0
Compressed Ratio: 1
Class Name: CRawDiskImage
Segments:
0: /Users/barkingshins/Desktop/Macintosh HD.dmg
Resize limits (per hdiutil resize -limits):
53948417 53948417 53948417
I'd be happy to provide any other information that anyone thinks might be useful. I'd also be willing to bring the image file to a professional data recovery center and would welcome any recommendations that you might have. As I state in the subject of this post, failure is not really an option and I owe it to my wife to do everything humanly possible to try and arrive at a favorable resolution to this situation.
The thing that's really prevented me from getting a proper nights sleep for the last two nights is the irony in blowing up her data while trying to get her set up with a decent data backup solution.
Thank you to anyone who is able to help.
I recently decided that it was time to upgrade her iBook G4 from Tiger (10.4.xx, not sure what it was exactly) to Leopard. Her system easily meets the requirements and she would benefit greatly from being able to use Time Machine as a backup solution.
I figured that the first step should be making sure that her existing data was properly backed up and could be selectively restored after the installation of Leopard was complete. I could have performed an Archive Installation of Leopard, but she had data files and folders all over the drive and I felt that a clean installation would be best. So anyway, I booted the system with the Leopard install disc and used Disk Utility to create a .dmg backup of the one and only partition on her hard drive. I used all of the default settings for the creation of this .dmg and saved it to my external USB hard drive which is formatted as a Mac OS Extended volume. Disk Utility gave me no errors at all and the image creation seemed to complete successfully.
With that first step complete, I shut the system down and disconnected the external drive (just to be safe ya know). I, once again, booted the system with the Leopard install disc and "Erase"d the hard drive, created a new Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition and proceeded with the Leopard installation. Once the installation completed, I ran Software Updates until no more updates were available and I was all the way up to 10.5.5. So far, so good.
With Leopard now installed and fully updated, I connected my external hard drive to the system, transferred my .dmg file to the desktop and attempted to mount the volume so that I could begin copying my wife's data to her Home folder. However, when I double-clicked the .dmg I received an error stating that the image failed to mount and gave a reason of "no mountable file systems".
Now before I go any further, I want to stress that my wife's entire digital life is contained in this disk image. She owns her own business and all of the critical data associated with her business is in there. Financial data, several years of tax information, business contacts, many months worth of email... everything. So needless to say, when I saw that error from DiskImageMounter pop up, I immediately felt a little sick to my stomach. Before anybody asks, I have no idea why I didn't test the image file before erasing the hard drive. I should've, I know that, I don't want to talk about it.
I spent the next 4 - 5 hours desperately trying anything I could think of to get access to the data within this .dmg file. I made a copy of it right away so that I wouldn't inadvertently make the situation even worse. I then tried to use Disk Utility to Restore the image, but received an error stating that the image contained an "Unrecognized Filesystem". I get the same error when I try to either verify or repair the volume with Disk Utility. I tried to attach the image using hdiutil in Terminal but got the same "no mountable file systems" error that I got from DiskImageMounter. I have tried to mount the image with Toast and Mount Me! as well with the same results.
Here's the hdiutil imageinfo that I get from the dmg:
Format: UDRW
Backing Store Information:
Name: Macintosh HD.dmg
URL: file ://localhost/Users/barkingshins/Desktop/Macintosh%20HD.dmg
Class Name: CBSDBackingStore
Format Description: raw read/write
Checksum Type: none
partitions:
appendable: false
partition-scheme: none
block-size: 512
burnable: false
partitions:
0:
partition-length: 53948417
partition-synthesized: true
partition-hint: unknown partition
partition-name: whole disk
partition-start: 0
Properties:
Partitioned: false
Software License Agreement: false
Compressed: no
Kernel Compatible: true
Encrypted: false
Checksummed: false
Checksum Value:
Size Information:
Total Bytes: 27621589504
Compressed Bytes: 27621589504
Total Non-Empty Bytes: 27621589504
Sector Count: 53948417
Total Empty Bytes: 0
Compressed Ratio: 1
Class Name: CRawDiskImage
Segments:
0: /Users/barkingshins/Desktop/Macintosh HD.dmg
Resize limits (per hdiutil resize -limits):
53948417 53948417 53948417
I'd be happy to provide any other information that anyone thinks might be useful. I'd also be willing to bring the image file to a professional data recovery center and would welcome any recommendations that you might have. As I state in the subject of this post, failure is not really an option and I owe it to my wife to do everything humanly possible to try and arrive at a favorable resolution to this situation.
The thing that's really prevented me from getting a proper nights sleep for the last two nights is the irony in blowing up her data while trying to get her set up with a decent data backup solution.
Thank you to anyone who is able to help.
iBook G4 (Mid 2005), Mac OS X (10.5.5)
