Disk Imaging, DMG, Zip, COmpressing

OS X also comes with built-in zip compression in the Finder, as well as zip, gz and tar from the command line, and probably others.

To create a zip archive in the Finder, right-click on whatever you want to zip up and select "Create Archive".

Disk images are merely a handy way for packaging up files. An image can be though of as a virtual hard disk, one that you can close and distribute to people in the form of a file (as opposed to a physical hard disk or CD).

Disk images are the preferred way of distributing software on the Mac. You can think of them as containers like ZIP files, but a disk image has the advantage that you can interact with it exactly as if it were an actual disk including dragging files in and out, setting icons and folder backgrounds, etc.

Note that the Disk Utility program of Mac OS X already gives you the ability to create disk images, compress them, and encrypt them. The utility you downloaded simply makes it easier to do (e.g., doing it from within the finder as opposed to starting Disk Utility manually).

Wade,

I'm a pretty comfortable osx user and I'm targetting you with this question as you seem to have a lot of posts and that nifty developer icon. I'm well aware of how 10.4 pulled out from having stuffit in their systems and allowed for creation of native zip archives via Create Archive in the finder itself. I'm glad to have found out in my reading that zip natively now supports all resource forks as a designer using old school fonts.

Here are some of my concerns for my workflow in prepping for archving work and looking towards a compatible future:

-Is there a way to tweak default zip compressions settings to getting smaller archives?

-What about RAR, I'm in the midst of trying to figure out if RAR has any support for resources forks often found in font files. An additional benefit that I see in RAR is the parity factor on windows boxes. (I'm aware of MacParDeluxe and Split and Concat as well) But essentially it would be great to cut down usage of programs to archive to say.. ONE. I'm not a windows user but I've seen some windows users workflows for archiving their work and they can create archivable, "paritied" segments of their projects, and set multiple to go and let their computers do compressing while they sleep.

-which brings me to my next point: I'm a little peeved with my experience at DMG, ZIP, and STUFFIT. Here's why, keeping in mind, I'd love not to have to drop to command line to accomplish these tasks: Compress/decompress multiple folders of projects as separate archives simultaneously, maintain resource forks for legacy files-just in case.

DMG: *.dmg's are great, yet I believe I've found a issue with them... try mounting 3-4dmg's on your desktop from a portable drive each dmg having a couple hundred files in them (images often in my case). Then grab all those mounted dmgs to a local drive. The copy begins with counting... and disappears at times, no warning... and incomplete... I've logged this on macintouch with no response and have tried this with similar results on numerous pristine systems.
Also, in my experience in using a very nice program like DropDMG it does a GREAT job of creating dmgs for a folder at a time... but when attempting to set even two to go, one will error out.

ZIP: Once again, happy to see that I can now preserve resource forks natively in OSX through "Creative Archive..." Bummed when I try on occasion to expand a folder of 24 zip archives at once (Apple+A, Apple+O in a folder) and occasionally they start erroring out... (seems to happen with fonts a lot in my experience). And again/addtionally, any way to tap into compression settings.

STUFFIT: Aladdin... sigh They rose, they fell... OSX x'ed them, they seem to be better... but not quite. IMPRESSIVE compression with the stuffitX archives, but boy, they really start up the turbines on my machine and not to forget lets multitask the mac... I'd love to rightclick one folder after another and set 10 project folders to go overnight stuffing away.. but the instant proceed on the second archive while the first is going... i notice the first one either freezes or the progress bar stops givig me any accurate visual feedback.

So Wade, perhaps I've been going about my archiving all wrong, but I do know some of my concerns are well grounded and as I'd love to set my system to crunch away while I sleep without a concern in the world at night, I really don't think I need to be baby sitting a program while archiving or unarching and I'd love to feel secure in whatever format I choose for archiving/future forecasting. Please do share any thoughts suggestions you have on all this.

regards,

erg8t