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eighteesix

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 11, 2010
21
0
I've been using Disk Utility to make my HDD backups for some time now. I'll plug in a large HDD, start disk utility, create an image of any drive i want to backup, save it compressed (default settings) to the larger drive, then unplug the larger drive and physically store it elsewhere. All that has been going great. I can mount the images and they are good backups. But what if I want to use them to restore a drive?

Here's where the problem comes in. I plug in my large drive with the images, use Lion's recovery boot, go into disk utility, clear the main OS drive, and use the image file from the large HD to restore the image to the main OS drive. However, i have not been successful yet. I keep getting errors like "resource busy" or "internal error". Is this not something disk utility can do?

If im buying a new system and I want to be able to restore an identical copy of my drive to a new HD, should I just use superduper instead? Im confused. Any help appreciated.
 

magneat

macrumors newbie
Feb 18, 2011
3
0
looks SOLVED

I had this problem on OSX 10.8.2 recently.
There is a solution for it!

It looks like there has been an old bug with this in :apple: OSX.
You need to perform some magical passes of Carlos Castaneda to make sure you choose the Source and Destination in the correct way.
Here's probably what you did to reproduce the bugger and get "Unable to scan" message:
1. Run Disc Utility;
2. Click on the "Volume X" that needs to be restored (in the menu to the left);
3. Click Restore tab (to the right). Here: Source now shows "Volume X", Destination is empty;
4. Click "Image" button and chose the restore image (*.dmg);
5. Drag "Volume X" from left menu into Destination. Here: Destination now shows "Volume X", below appears message "Erase "Volume X" and copy the contents of "*.dmg" to it.";
6. Click "Restore" button at the bottom right;
7. Click "Erase" button to confirm;
8. "Type your password to allow this";
9. Click OK. Here: message appears "To restore the disc image, Disc Utility must scan it first...";
10. Click Scan Disk Image.

Expected result: Scanning with further ability to Erase the volume.
Actual result: "Unable to scan "Volume X." (Resource busy)" :mad:

SOLUTION to this problem:
After you tried the above method (which worked for me for couple of years on different MAC computers), the source image (*.dmg) that you've selected got into the left menu, below your current volumes.
1. Click it. Here: Source shows "*.dmg", Destination is empty;
2. Drag "Volume X" from the list of volumes (at the left) into Destination;
3. Click "Restore" button below;
4. Confirm by pressing "Erase";
5. Enter password;
6. Click "Scan Disk image";
7. Enter password again. Here: "Scanning of "*.dmg" completed successfully."
8. Repeat steps 1-3;
9. Click "Erase";
10. Enter password.

Result: "Copying Blocks. Estimated time...". Bon appetit!
 
Last edited:

mxlu

macrumors newbie
Mar 19, 2013
1
0
You can also boot into recovery and use Disk Utility from there. That should enable you to restore from your dmg without any errors.
 
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