If you try to create an disk image of a drive and the option is greyed out, what do you do?
This can occur especially if trying to create an image of a APFS drive, and has macOS on it.
And if you use Image from Folder, it will not create a recoverable bootable image.
Apple seems to have not updated Disk Utility to handle this anymore.
I FOUND THE ONLY CURRENT SOLUTION using Apple Disk Utility to create RELIABLE disk images of APFS drives. It was not easy to figure out. The ONLY path to make a viable re-usable disk image formatted as APFS is to follow these 3 steps exactly:
1. First create a blank image file formatted as APFS and Read/Write (requires pre-determining size of image file).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The image (destination) cannot be stored on the same drive or partition (source) from which you are going to create the image.
2. use Restore from <volume> to clone to newly created image file
(Highlight destination <volume> then click [Restore] button and select Restore From <volume>.
3. convert image file to Compressed format (Image > Convert).
ONLY THEN do you have a reliable APFS image, especially w/bootable macOS. I have done this repeatedly and it works fine.
ANY other options/paths, are greyed out, yield "Resource busy" or "image is not APFS format" errors or produces image that is not reliable. Even using Apple Internet Recovery tools/boot was the same.
NOTES:
CAVEAT: Tested only using Mojave 10.14.4 on 2019 27" i9 iMac w 40GB RAM and 512GB SSD (no T2 chip) using Disk Utility 18.0, so YMMV.
Apple needs to fix Disk Utility to work straightforward like it used to but with better support for APFS.
I FOUND THE ONLY CURRENT SOLUTION using Apple Disk Utility to create RELIABLE disk images of APFS drives. It was not easy to figure out. The ONLY path to make a viable re-usable disk image formatted as APFS is to follow these 3 steps exactly:
1. First create a blank image file formatted as APFS and Read/Write (requires pre-determining size of image file).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The image (destination) cannot be stored on the same drive or partition (source) from which you are going to create the image.
2. use Restore from <volume> to clone to newly created image file
(Highlight destination <volume> then click [Restore] button and select Restore From <volume>.
3. convert image file to Compressed format (Image > Convert).
ONLY THEN do you have a reliable APFS image, especially w/bootable macOS. I have done this repeatedly and it works fine.
ANY other options/paths, are greyed out, yield "Resource busy" or "image is not APFS format" errors or produces image that is not reliable. Even using Apple Internet Recovery tools/boot was the same.
NOTES:
CAVEAT: Tested only using Mojave 10.14.4 on 2019 27" i9 iMac w 40GB RAM and 512GB SSD (no T2 chip) using Disk Utility 18.0, so YMMV.
Apple needs to fix Disk Utility to work straightforward like it used to but with better support for APFS.
How to Create an APFS Disk Image (especially of macOS boot drive) in Mojave?
