"No mountable file systems" DMG restore failure

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"No mountable file systems" DMG restore failure

*Firstly, I'm very thankful to anyone who replies to this topic and particularly to anyone on behalf of Apple.*

Upon inserting the Snow Leopard DVD, I followed Apple's recommend procedure to backup my data as outlined in the following knowledge base article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553

I did this because my disk wasn't a GUID partition, and my understanding was that a GUID partition was necessary to upgrading to Snow Leopard.

After this backup was saved and written to my external FireWire drive, I partitioned my internal drive to the GUID format and then continued to restore my data from the DMG that was created on the backup drive when the following error was given:

"No mountable file systems"

All the above was carried out upon boot up of the Snow Leopard DVD, using the supplied latest version of Disk Utility included with the DVD before the installation process.

Seeing as I could not access my data, I've since proceeded with the installation of Snow Leopard so that at least I have a system running to be able to login and post this topic you're reading now.

I have tried numerous third-party applications on this DMG - after making a copy of it, of course - but I keep getting the same error message. I've tried mounting it in the Finder, in Disk Utility, carrying out a verify/repair in Disk Utility, using the "Rebuid a Disk Image" option in the latest version of DiskWarrior, running Data Rescue II, FileSalvage, TechTool Pro - all to no avail.

And because I chose the default option (following carefully the knowledge base article above), the DMG file is a "compressed" one - I tried converting it to a "read/write" DMG and running the exact same tests - all with no luck whatsoever.

The compressed DMG file now sits on my external FireWire drive untouched, as a ~70Gb file. This is CRITICAL information: my entire company's data of 9 years is in this DMG and so business has unfortunately come to a halt because of this problem. As one of our clients for instance, we do the online marketing for Bentley - so as you may imagine, it's absolutely vital that I get this data back.

I've since spoken with AppleCare, and they unfortunately could not help me. We even tried mounting the image via a normal Leopard system, instead of a Snow Leopard system in chance that this may solve the problem - again, with no such luck I'm afraid.

I've since also spoken with my nearest "official" Apple Store in Bristol here in the UK, and whilst the soonest appointment for me is only this Saturday, the manager there did say to me that he's unsure that they'll even be able to fix it and quite honestly - because they don't specialise in data loss - would not be able to assist further.

Whilst I appreciate his honesty, I find this completely unacceptable. This is +definitely not+ a case of "data loss", it's an error that Apple's own utility created whilst processing this DMG file - and I know for certain that it can be fixed. I've followed a gentleman without a similar problem here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1218394&start=45&tstart=0

To think that this issue has been unremedied in Disk Utility since 2008, and the relevant knowledge base article not updated accordingly, is something I'd rather not voice my opinion on ⚠.

However I'm not here to be angry at all, I just want to prevent other people from experiencing the same problem in the future and hopefully speak with someone here to help retrieve my company's data as soon as possible - and hopefully before Saturday!

*I greatly appreciate anyone's help or advice.*

Thank you again,

Trent

17-inch MacBook Pro

Posted on Sep 2, 2009 11:42 AM

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Answer 1

Trent- Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 3, 2009 12:36 AM in response to Trent-

If nahnoryb or nobody loopback is here I'd really appreciate their advice, has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have technical knowledge of DMG files?

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Answer 2

Trent- Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 3, 2009 1:14 AM in response to Trent-

Here is the output from hdiutil udifxmldet and hdiutil udifderez.

*hdiutil udifxmldet:*
-----------------------
"Macintosh HD.dmg" has -2053650511386318465 bytes of embedded XML data.
hdiutil(1982,0x7fff7084dbe0) malloc: * mmap(size=16393093562323234816) failed (error code=12)
* error: can't allocate region
* set a breakpoint in malloc errorbreak to debug
hdiutil: udifxmldet: unable to allocate buffer to read XML data from "Macintosh HD.dmg": 12 (Cannot allocate memory).
hdiutil: udifxmldet failed - Cannot allocate memory
-----------------------

*hdiutil udifderez:*
-----------------------
hdiutil: udifderez: could not get resource fork of "Macintosh HD.dmg": Function not implemented (78)
hdiutil: udifderez failed - Function not implemented
-----------------------

Message was edited by: Trent-

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Answer 3

Trent- Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 3, 2009 2:02 AM in response to Trent-

*hdiutil verify outputs the following:*

----------
hdiutil: verify: "/Volumes/Backup Drive/Macintosh HD.dmg" has no checksum.
----------

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Answer 4

Pitiur

Level 1

8 points

Sep 18, 2009 3:59 PM in response to Trent-

I don't have a proper answer for this problem, but this has been happening to me much, much more after I installed 10.6. I would say nearly 30% if the downloaded images from Version Tracker generate this error. In the past this only happened very occasionally. I'm quite positive it has something to do with 10.6. An image file contained within a zipped file gave the same error message.

I took all the image files that did not want to open to another machine running 10.5 and they all opened. I copied the files and transferred them to 10.6 and worked with their content without a problem.

Under 10.5 I could Option drag a mounted image file from the toolbar to a folder and it would copy all the files automatically. This doesn't work under 10.6 anymore. It now poefs into oblivion. Now I have to click on the mounted image icon in the tool sidebar, command-c, move to the directory I want to put the resulting folder, and command-v, basically not very user friendly.

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Answer 5

Sep 18, 2009 5:04 PM in response to Trent-

Hi Trent:

The document you linked is for making a disk image of your entire 10.5 system so you could restore it in case of an emergency. In other words, you imaged much more than just your data. I am not clear on why you couldn't restore it when you tried, but if you had you would have restored your whole 10.5 system. At this point, that is what I think you should try to do. Before doing anything else, I would make a duplicate of your disk image for safety. I would even put it on a different drive if one is available. After making the duplicate, then I would try restoring it to your internal drive again--without removing Snow Leopard. Generally, restoring a disk image will replace a new volume with an older one. If that fails, then post back, and we'll take another step.

Message was edited by: donv (The Ghost)

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Answer 6

KJK555

Level 4

2,906 points

Sep 18, 2009 10:48 PM in response to Trent-

http://superuser.com/questions/14800/tools-tips-to-recover-data-from-a-corrupt-d mg-disk-image

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070419082314524

http://www.pcfastware.com/fileextensiondmg3.htm

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Answer 7

Sep 19, 2009 11:51 AM in response to Trent-

The number of bytes of embeddedd xml data reported by hdiutil udifxmldet should not be negative, and in your case is far larger than the size of any file that HFS+ can support. Here is the output I see when I check my MacOS X 10.5. Combo Updater dmg file:

Last login: Fri Sep 18 20:50:04 on ttys000
CEFlynnsMBPC2D:~ ceflynn$ hdiutil udifxmldet /Users/ceflynn/Downloads/MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.8.dmg
"/Users/ceflynn/Downloads/MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.8.dmg" has 194941 bytes of embedded XML data.
The XML data is uncompressed.
resource 'blkx' (-1) passed.
resource 'blkx' (0) passed.
resource 'blkx' (1) passed.
resource 'blkx' (2) passed.
resource 'blkx' (3) passed.
resource 'blkx' (4) passed.
resource 'blkx' (5) passed.
"CFName" key is missing resource 'plst' (0)
resource 'plst' (0) passed.
udifxmldet: the embedded XML in "/Users/ceflynn/Downloads/MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.8.dmg" appears to be OK.
CEFlynnsMBPC2D:~ ceflynn$

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Answer 8

Ando_56

Level 1

0 points

Oct 14, 2009 3:41 PM in response to Trent-

Same thing happened to me, i just continued with the install, then mounted the DMG to the desktop and used Migration Assistant to replace the info

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Answer 9

Oct 27, 2009 9:26 AM in response to Trent-

I have exactly the same problem here. AppleCare told me it could have something to do with upgraded RAM. The experienced the same while installing 10.6 on machines with upgraded RAM. Back then they told me it was to early to say if that was a known problem or a coincidence. Don't read anything about is here so I think it was the last.
Anyway, knowing that dos not solve the problem that I and obviously more people have.

Thnx Apple, for having a failing DMG creator in your disc utility and making me lose ALL my data.

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Answer 10

Oct 27, 2009 9:29 AM in response to Trent-

Do you still have a problem we can help you with?

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Answer 11

Oct 28, 2009 4:02 PM in response to Trent-

Hi,

please check
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10481294#10481294

looks like NTFS-3G / MacFUSE is source of problem here...
after removing all related files/folder i'm mounting all images just fine 🙂

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Answer 12

Nov 7, 2009 11:10 AM in response to Vladimir Misev

I have a very similar problem, take a look here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2225358&tstart=0

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Answer 13

Dec 24, 2009 5:22 AM in response to EuphangeL

I'm having this same problem with disk images I created in Leopard (on the same machine) but which I now cannot mount in Snow Leopard. Several (but not all) disk images I created and burned onto DVDs now give me the "no mountable file systems" error. I have tried Disk Utility and Terminal mounting with no better results. These were simply folders and files, not images of entire systems, and they used to work just fine so I have to assume the upgrade to SL caused my problem.

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Answer 14

R C-R

Level 6

17,794 points

Dec 24, 2009 5:50 AM in response to Carl Johnson

Carl Johnson wrote:
... they used to work just fine so I have to assume the upgrade to SL caused my problem.

Unfortunately, this isn't a safe assumption, at least for disk image files stored on hard drives. File system corruption can cause data loss & there are a number of causes of this besides bugs or incompatibilities in the OS.

But if every dmg file you have created fails to mount, including those burned to write-once media like DVD's, the problem may be in the installation of Snow Leopard on your Mac rather than a bug. (For instance, /System/Library/CoreServices/DiskImageMounter.app could be corrupted.) You could try mounting the images with another Mac running Snow Leopard or on yours after reinstalling Snow Leopard over itself to test for this.

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Answer 15

Dec 27, 2009 9:09 AM in response to R C-R

It's just the files on DVDs, and it's NOT all of those, so it's inconsistent. However, I did find that if I copied the images onto a hard drive, they would mount. They're not so vital that I want to go through the hassle of reinstalling the system, so I'm going to let it be at that until I find more problems.

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