Setting a hard drive as an image?

[armoguy94]

Hey guys,

I want to know, is there any specific way possible I can set up my external hard drive so that when I plug it in, it mounts as an image file?

So say I have a file "Image.DMG" on my desktop, I want to make it so that my external hard drive "becomes" Image.DMG, so when I plug it in, that's what it mounts as.

I would like to do this because I want to make a boot image using my external hard drive.

How would I go about doing this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mal]

No offense, but you clearly have no idea what a disk image is. A disk image is a file that, when launched, presents it's contents to the computer as if a drive has been connected. Making a drive, when connected, "mount" as a disk image makes no sense. There is no such thing.

However, it sounds like what you want to do is create a disk image of your external drive (keep in mind you can't boot from a disk image, you can only then create a duplicate copy onto a DVD or another drive and boot from that), and if that's the case, you'll use Disk Utility. Select the drive in Disk Utility (the volume by it's name, btw, not the physical drive that lists the size), click New Image in the toolbar, and inspect the various options listed.

jW

 

[J the Ninja]

Your hard drive will never mount as a DMG, because it's NOT a DMG, it's an actual, physical hard drive. Now, if you want to make a DMG that is a clone of the your external hard drive, that you can do. Mount the drive as normal, go into to Disk Utility, and highlight the volume you want to image. Select File > New > Image from (disk path/name).

 

[armoguy94]

Sorry, what I was trying to basically say was that I wanted to clone an image file (I was using a dmg as an example...) onto the external hard drive. After some googling (I used google a while ago on this but I couldn't find out specific results so I just asked here without searching again) I think I found the solution. If it doesn't work when I try it, I'll come back here. Thanks anyways guys

 

[J the Ninja]

Oh.

Open Disk Utility, go to the "Restore" tab, drag your external drive (the volume, not the drive itself) into the "Destination" field, then click on the "Image" button for the "Source" field, and select your disk image, then click the "Restore" button.

 

[armoguy94]

Oh.

Open Disk Utility, go to the "Restore" tab, drag your external drive (the volume, not the drive itself) into the "Destination" field, then click on the "Image" button for the "Source" field, and select your disk image, then click the "Restore" button.

Thanks!