Disk Utility issue since snow Leopard Ugrade

I talked to a "Mac Genius" at an Apple Store the other day, and he helped me straighten out the confusion over using Snow Leopard with .dmg files; according to him, Apple Support Article #HT1553 "Mac OS X v10.5, v10.6: How to back up and restore your files" is incorrect in its description of using Snow Leopard's Disk Utility to backup and then restore a hard drive via a .dmg file. He said that the steps listed only applied to OS 10.5, not 10.6, and that the information needs to be corrected in the article.

Like many people who have posted on the Apple Forum, I too followed the steps using Snow Leopard, to backup my data as a .dmg file, only to find that it would not restore to Snow Leopard. In my case, I needed to install a larger hard drive in my MacBook Pro laptop, so I backed up my current system to an external drive via Disk Utility, installed the new hard drive, then tried to restore my data from the external hard drive with no luck.

What I had to end up doing was to buy an external hard drive case for my old internal drive (which still had all the original data on it), install Snow Leopard onto the new internal MacBook Pro drive, create a temporary user account, and then use Migration Assistant to restore all the data from the original drive to the new one. (The reason I had to reinstall Snow Leopard instead of just booting up from the install DVD, was that the install DVD does not give you access to Migration Assistant; only Disk Utility.) In Migration Assistant, I selected 'From another Mac' since the hard drive was my original one, and would be seen as another Mac by the new one. Everything restored fine. I did need to run software update a couple of times and reinstall QuickTime Player 7 from the Snow Leopard Install DVD though (I still prefer QuickTime 7 since QuickTime X still lacks many features.)

If you want to back up your entire system, and then restore it later, use the 'Time Machine' application. First click the <Options> button in Time Machine and make sure you do not have any folders or files being excluded from backups, then make a backup. Now you will have a backup that can restore to Snow Leopard. (Keep in mind that you will still need to have Snow Leopard installed on the Mac that you are restoring to though; this is not a "bootable" backup like my old MacBook Pro drive was.)

NOTE: If you have a lot of heavy-duty apps like Final Cut Pro, etc., an Apple tech told me that you would still need to reinstall them after doing a Time Machine restore. If that is the case, and you are restoring from an old hard drive to new larger hard drive, here are the steps I used to do that (without using Time Machine):

1) Remove the old hard drive and install the new one. Use Disk Utility to format the new hard drive:
a. Open Disk Utility (under Applications/Utilities).
b. Highlight the new drive on the left.
c. Click the 'Erase' tab.
d. Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
e. Name the volume under the hard drive 'Macintosh HD'.
f. Click <Erase>.
g. To make sure the drive was formatted correctly, click the 'First Aid' tab, then click <Verify
Disk>. When the process has finished, proceed to the next step...
2) Put the old hard drive in an external case (preferably with a FireWire 400 or 800 connection).
3) Install Snow Leopard on the new internal drive.
4) Make sure that Time Machine is turned off.
5) You will be using Migration Assistant to restore the data to the new drive, but you cannot migrate an account with the same user account name as your current one, so you will need to first create a temporary account, log out, then log in as the temporary account:
a. Click on the 'System Preferences' icon.
b. Select 'Accounts'.
c. Click on the lock icon in the lower left corner to unlock it.
d. Enter your password and click <OK>.
e. Click the <+> button.
f. Select the following (example):
- New Account: Administrator
- Full Name: Boo Boo
- Account name: booboo
- Password: temporary
- Verify password: temporary
- Password hint: temporary
g. Click <Create Account>.
h. Click <Turn Off Automatic Login>.
i. Click the Apple icon in the upper left corner of your display and select 'Log Out (name).
j. Click the <Log Out> button.
k. Select 'Boo Boo'
l. Password: temporary
m. Click the <Log In> button.
6) A prompt will appear. Click <Decide Later>.
7) Now, go to Applications/Utilities, and open 'Migration Assistant'.
8) Click <Continue>.
9) Password: temporary.
10) Click <OK>.
11) Select 'From another Mac'.
12) Click <Continue>.
13) Click <Use FireWire> if this is what you are using. (If using something else, click that.)
14) Wait for your Mac to calculate the size of the files to be loaded.
15) Once this has finished, click <Continue>.
16) Select 'Replace the existing user account with the one you're transferring'.
17) Click <Next>.
18) Allow about an hour (more or less) for the transfer if using FireWire400.
19) Log out of the Boo Boo account by clicking on the Apple icon (upper left corner) and logging out.
20) Log back in by selecting your normal account name.
21) Delete the temporary account:
a. Click on the 'System Preferences' icon.
b. Select 'Accounts'.
c. Click on the lock icon in the lower left corner to unlock it.
d. Enter your password and click <OK>.
e. Select the 'Boo Boo' account.
f. Click the <-> button to delete it.
g. Select 'Delete the home folder'.
h. Click the lock icon to lock it.
22) If you still use QuickTime 7, you may need to reinstall it from the original Snow Leopard Install DVD:
a. Insert the DVD.
b. Open the 'Optional Installs' folder.
c. Double-click 'Optional Installs.mpkg'.
d. Select 'QuickTime 7'
e. Click <Continue> (QuickTime 7 will be installed into the 'Utilities' folder.)
23) Click the Apple icon and select 'Software Update. (You may need to do this twice to make sure you get all the latest Snow Leopard updates.)
24) Once everything has been updated, go to Finder/Macintosh HD/Users and delete the 'Deleted Users' folder.

I think I just read a novel. Seems you're going through a lot of unnecessary steps just to back up. 24 steps and sub-steps. OUCH! Just get SuperDuper and be done with it. It's an investment you'll never regret.

Restoring SL from a Time Machine Backup is easier than that.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Wow. That post must have been a lot of work.

I hate to say this, but when I did the same thing, it wasn't that complicated:

• Install new disk.

• Install OS 10.* onto the new disk.

• Use a $15.00 SATA-to-USB adapter to connect the old disk to the computer when the OS Welcome program asks whether you want to migrate - just plug it into the USB port and it will be recognized.

• Go drink a bottle or two of wine, pass out, and when you wake up, your happy old computer will be back again, just like before, only with a bigger hard drive. All settings the same, same user ID, etc.

That's it.

Can you check this string for me please? (I am not sure if i am doing it correct)

sudo asr -noverify -source </Users/geordielr/Desktop/Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg> -<target untitled 1>

It returns the error below:

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'
cpe-121-222-189-199: ~geordielr

Any help much appreciated

People who are not Spiro: this is golden. Try it. If you can't figure it out, holler and I or someone else will translate the process into layspeech.

Spiro, that was perfect [for me]. Bless you.

(I don't think it's because of invisible files, though... Rather, I suppose that Disk Utility is confused when you tell it to restore from a device, rather than a partition. That's why it worked to mount the device and select as source the mounted partition (the plain little white box, not the white page with the gray hard disk icon); it knows what it's reading from.

The mount also appears to do a Verify Image process, which might help somehow or another... Well, hey, all I know for sure is that it worked, eh? And that's plenty for me.)


The images I'm working with are fair colossal, so they're not near done yet. I'll update if there are any problems at the end of things; if you don't hear back in a day or so, it cleared. 🙂

Thanks Hitokage, this worked perfectly for me on Snow Leopard with my Macbook Pro. The other method caused an error that said "Could not validate source - Resource busy" and the method you provided took a couple minutes to do and worked flawlessly.

Don't forget on 10.6 you can't scan a read write dmg for restore.

Patrick,

Thank you very much for your input! As soon as I "attached" the sparseimage file, I was able to restore from the image on my network created by SuperDuper.

Thanks! After struggling for a while, your method worked!

1. start toast application
2. click on copy disks icon
3. select the *.toast file or simply drag+drop it on to the toast app
4. click "Save as Disk Image" option
5. wait till toast creates a disk image of the original file - this could either be a *.dmg or another *.toast file
6. start disk utility
7. drag drop the newly created disk image [newly created *.toast] in my case on to the disk utility
8. left side panel that lists out all the mounts shall show "MAC OS X Install DVD.toast"
9. double click on that & the volume content will mount & you will see "Mac OS X Install DVD" under the mount point
10. Control+Click on that & you shall see "Set as destination" & "Set as source" options - select "Set as source" option
11. Control+Click the media / mount you would like to restore the image to [my 8gb usb / pen drive in my case' & select "Set as destination" option
12. go ahead & restore the image on the desired media

confirmed working!

took about 28 minutes to restore the approx. 7.45gb image to my 8gb pen drive.

hope this helps!

good luck!

For me the solution was,

Right clicking on the osx dvd image and select it as source.

Do not mount the image!

Select Scan image, from the top bar menu.

then hit the restore button.

Folks,

The issue is that something changed in Disk Utility between Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Use the restore function as instructed when booted into Leopard and everything will work.
For those that don't have access to a bootable Leopard install you will have to use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.

Thanks - this method worked for me. The others did not.

Thanks! This is the way it works.