MacBook Pro disk utility is unable to restore any images

It seems your last post was deleted for some reason.

I do not need to try making & restoring an image using Disk Utility with macOS Sonoma because I already know this functionality is broken which is why I suggested using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). It is not just broken in Sonoma, that type of functionality has been broken since macOS 10.0. It may work for some things, but it will fail more often than not. I know because it still would not work for me with macOS 13.x Ventura because I tried to make an image from a drive when I couldn't use CCC because I did not have a new license for the latest version. I had to wait until I could get my license for CCC where I was able to quickly & easily create an image of the entire drive & restore it.

Unless you want to waste your time on trying to use Disk Utility and trying to get Apple to fix it, then CCC is what you will need....or SuperDuper, but I've always found CCC to be much easier to use. Both products have been around for decades.

If you are trying to make a bootable USB drive using this process, then CCC is even more important to use.

Also, you need to create the .dmg file on a native macOS file system (MacOS Extended or APFS)....that is the destination for the .dmg file must be on an Apple native file system or the process of creating the image will fail (a co-worker just encountered this the other day).

You can provide Apple with product feedback here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Eprom1 wrote:

Dear HWTech, thank You for Your quick reply and Your honest assessment. That was precisely the information I was looking for. My requirement is a solution that can be relied on when minutes count.

I've never had any problems using CCC over the past two decades.

If Apple don't want to support the imaging feature in Disk Utility, they should remove it entirely to avoid further user frustration.

It isn't that it does not work, it just is not reliable. There are lots of things within Disk Utility that are not reliable....even other parts of macOS as well. I've had older .dmg files made by Apple which I was able to restore to a drive to make bootable USB drives for diagnostics.

And while we are at it. Speaking of a third alternative to CCC and SD, have You ever tried the dd command on the console? Any experience with that option?

Yes, I've used "dd", but it depends exactly what you are doing whether "dd" is a good option. Usually the only time you want to use "dd" is when you are transferring a bootable .iso or .img file to a USB stick....or to create a raw image file .img of a bootable USB drive. Usually only used for bootable USB installers. It can also be used to make a bit for bit (block for block) clone of a drive, but it is really only useful if both drives are the exact same size. The version of "dd" in macOS is very old and limited as it does not have any progress indicator. I would not use "dd" except to create bootable USB sticks for Linux (or to clone a bootable macOS USB installer). Images made with "dd" will likely have a lot of unused space within them as well and requires the same size or larger destination drive, but when restoring to a larger drive there will be wasted space at the end that cannot be used. "dd" is a lot of work and easy to make a mistake.

CCC and SD are file copy apps, but with some extra features such as the ability to clone a bootable macOS drive (Intel Macs only) which can also recreate the hidden recovery partition. CCC also can be used for scheduled backups as well. It is best to have the destination for the resulting .dmg file to be on a native macOS file system just as it is with Disk Utility (MacOS Extended, or APFS).

I've found using "tar" is very useful for creating OS independent archives since I've had issues making .zip files for certain folders. It takes a bit of practice to use "tar". I've even used "tar" to recreate a bootable volume for some utilities (just had to properly format the destination volume).

What I use to archive folders or drives, all depends on what I need to archive.

Which one of the various sections from that Apple article did you follow to create the disk image? Were you selecting an image from a device or an image from a folder?

What type of content is on these drives? A boot drive (what OS?) or just a data drive?

And what file system and partition type?

Can you actually mount the image archive and view its contents? If not, then restoring will definitely fail.

How are you performing the Restore process? What is the destination.....a drive, a volume, or a folder?

I generally avoid using Disk Utility to create images except for small amounts of data and then only using the create image from a folder option. Disk Utility is a terrible app and is only good for the most basic things. If I want to make an archive of a folder or drive, then I will generally use the third party paid app Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC)....or I will use the command line to create a .tgz archive (I have issues using .zip or Apple's "compress" option). I know there are some other third party archiving apps to create .dmg archive files such as DropDMG which some co-workers use, however, it failed for someone and only CCC produced an error which gave insight into the issue.

Eprom1 wrote:

by resizing the partition(s) to fit the destination stick size?

I am not aware of any utility especially on macOS which will do that.

The best way to accomplish this would be to use CCC to make an image of each partition individually. Create whatever partitions & file systems you like on your USB stick/drive, then use CCC to restore each image to a partition. CCC is just a file copy app. You may be able to create a script of some sort to try to automate the process.

"dd" or something similar will do everything except make the extra space at the end of a larger drive usable. Sometimes you may be able to use a utility to make that space accessible with another partition or add it to the last partition, but that may not always work out or be easy to do.

Personally I think the CCC option would be the best, easiest, and most versatile option, unless you are Ok with possibly wasted space on larger drives when using "dd". It really depends on specifics which option may be best for any situation.

I actually made a small Bash script to extract the contents of .tgz archives I've carefully made of non-macOS bootable volumes I've created to make it easier for me to restore those archives to another volume so I can give those archives to other techs who are not familiar with things like this so they can make their own bootable volumes. I still have to manually create the partitions I want on those destination drives.