[X4U] Trying to Backup my Hard Drive

[lj Palmer]

The Following was taken from the SuperDuper! forum.
..lj

Due to a bug in OS X 10.3.9's image conversion, backups "directly" to  
DMGs is failing at the end of the process with the message:

hdiutil: convert failed - image/device is too large

We've reported this new problem in "hdiutil" (part of OS X) to Apple,  
and hope they'll be fixing it shortly -- it's new to 10.3.9.

In the meantime, we'd suggest using a "Sparse Image" as explained below.

Our apologies for the difficulty: alas, in this situation, we're at  
the mercy of Apple's own tools.
__________
Here's how! (Note: I'm assuming that you're using Panther in the  
following instructions... the steps might be slightly different under  
Jaguar.)

This first set of steps need only be done one time, when you  
initially create the image:

1. Open Disk Utility (found in /Applications/Utilities).
2. Without selecting any volume/drive on the left side, click the New  
Image toolbar button.
3. Give the image an appropriate name (like Weekly Backup), and store  
it on a drive other than the one you're trying to back up.
4. In the Size pop-up, choose Custom.
5. In the sheet that appears, enter the size of the drive you're  
trying to back up. Note that the pop-up does not have a selection for  
GB: you need to enter "40000" MB for 40GB. Click OK when you've got  
the right size entered.
6. Decide whether or not you want the image encrypted, and choose the  
proper value in the Encryption pop-up.
7. In the Format pop-up, choose sparse disk image.
8. Click Create.

Disk Utility will create a sparse disk image that can hold up to the  
amount you specified in step 5. The image itself will only be as  
large as is necessary at any given time, however. When the image is  
created, Disk Utility will automatically mount it.

On Oct 5, 2005, at 05:41, Lee Licata wrote:

> Dear List,
>
> With all this talk about file recovery, I decided to back up my  
> internal powerbook g4 hard drive (80 GB, about 50% full) by making  
> a disk image of it.
>
> I am running 10.3.9, and all software is up-to-date.
>
> So, I hooked up an external drive 100 gb drive that had some 55 gb  
> of free space , restarted the g4 from it (also running 10.3.9),  
> launched disk utility, selected the menu option to make a disk  
> image from the menu, and got the following:
>
> "image / device is too large."
>
> Tried selecting other options but got the same alert.
>
> Then, restarted g4 from the internal drive, and as expected, was  
> unable to make an image due to "device busy!."
>
> Looking for a hint?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Lee