Creating Disk Image: "Operation failed with status 49168: Resource busy"

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Level 1

14 points

Creating Disk Image: "Operation failed with status 49168: Resource busy"

Hi:

Trying to create an encrypted APFS 4.1 TB disk image using Disk Utility on a 10 TB external LaCie hard drive.

Small (1 GB) encrypted disk images are created just fine, but when I try and create the large one all seems to go OK with the progress bar slowly moving to the right, but when I come back from the overnight wait I am greeted with:

Two other interesting observations: there is only one high-level folder on this disk whose size, including subfolders and files, is ~5TB:

Yet when I do a "Get Info" on the mounted external drive it says that it is nearly full at ~9 TB:

And the Trash is empty.

The other unusual thing is that I cannot run First Aid on the mounted external drive:

I'm fairly computer unsophisticated, so any and all advice to solve this vexing problem would be greatly appreciated!!! Thank you very much.

PS Monterey 12.3.1

Cymraeg MBP M1 14"

Posted on May 16, 2022 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

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PERockwell

Level 1

92 points

May 16, 2022 1:32 PM in response to CharPatton1

I wonder if a Time Machine snapshot of the external drive could be the culprit. Time Machine snapshots can take up disk space, but won't be visible unless you know where to look.

A couple of things to check to see if this is the case.

First, in Disk Utility, turn on the display of APFS snapshots. You can do this with the keyboard shortcut ⇧⌘S or the menu item View -> Show APFS Snapshots. If you then click on your external disk volume in Disk Utility, you should see a list of APFS snapshots below the drive information. Something like this:

If you see a set of snapshots starting with com.apple.TimeMachine, then Time Machine may be taking snapshots for backup and consuming disk space while you're doing your work.

If you do have Time Machine enabled, you should exclude your external drive from Time Machine through the Time Machine system preference. Once you exclude the external drive from Time Machine the snapshots can be deleted using Disk Utility by right clicking on the snapshot and selecting "Delete". Reclamation of snapshot space isn't done immediately, so wait a few minutes and you should see the free disk space increase.

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Answer 2

CharPatton1 Author

Level 1

14 points

May 16, 2022 1:37 PM in response to PERockwell

Great idea; thanks for the detailed instructions!

Unfortunately, not the case:

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Creating Disk Image: "Operation failed with status 49168: Resource busy"

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