Can disk images be used this way?

[dogbone]

I've got an external networked HD. One of the partitions on it is for achiving. It will be used by both macs which are on the network.

What I've done is create a folder on it to be used by the other mac. This folder will naturally keep growing. I thought of doing this and I was wondering if it is a waste of time or if it is actually a good idea with regards to help keeping the external disk optimised.

Instead of having a continually growing folder for the other mac to use I thought of creating a 20 gigabyte disk image on it instead. Is there any point in doing this?

 

[MisterMe]

I've got an external networked HD. One of the partitions on it is for achiving. It will be used by both macs which are on the network.

What I've done is create a folder on it to be used by the other mac. This folder will naturally keep growing. I thought of doing this and I was wondering if it is a waste of time or if it is actually a good idea with regards to help keeping the external disk optimised.

Instead of having a continually growing folder for the other mac to use I thought of creating a 20 gigabyte disk image on it instead. Is there any point in doing this?

What you are talking about is called a sparse disk image. But, why would you want to do this? It is so much simplier and safer to store files directly on the networked volume. If you store files in a disk image, there is a greater possibility that a single corrupted file will corrupt your disk image and possibly every other archived file along with it.

 

[dogbone]

What you are talking about is called a sparse disk image. But, why would you want to do this? It is so much simplier and safer to store files directly on the networked volume. If you store files in a disk image, there is a greater possibility that a single corrupted file will corrupt your disk image and possibly every other archived file along with it.

Thanks, for that info that's why I'm asking

The naive idea behind it was that as the file will be growing I perhaps thought that it would be tidier to have the space already allocated with regards to helping keep the disk optimised. But if you say that dumping files into a folder that will be continually growing is OK then I'll leave it at at that. I can see your point about a corruption of the dmg. So I'll just leave it as it is set up then, with an ordinary folder allocated to the other user.